This week was a mix of all kinds of work. Radiosity, ragdolls, scripted entities and automatic doors. I would say that all the hard things in the life begin with "ra" but I couldn't think of a third one. Those two are definitely hard.

 

03/09-10: working on radiosity lightmapping, finally achieved good results but they took way too much time, thought of an optimization

03/11: finished hitbox generation - this is going to be useful for gunshot detection later...

...and created a trigger entity with script function picking (which means scripting integration was done, too)

03/12: worked on polishing things and did some post-FX sketching:

03/13: started to work on scripted entities, first goal is to remake the trigger entity completely

03/14: finished initial work on scripted entity, trigger is available...

...started to work on a mesh array entity...

...and later finished it so that meshes become compiled into the level

03/15: implemented ragdoll animator, verified body alignment to bones...

...then upgraded scripted entity system to support a new entity - door that opens when information-emitting entities are detected nearby...

...then thought of one way to improve block creation in editor...

...then got the auto-door entity fully inside the game world...

...and finally implemented that editor upgrade idea:

03/16: finished the editbox that had no use for me until now, created a sliding door editor entity without proximity trigger

 

This week had a fair share of ups and downs regarding technology and some revelations weren't hiding anymore. Though to me it seems that it ended on an extremely positive note and should continue that way for quite some time.

One of the main reasons for that is, a new contest has begun and I'm rushing to get a preview of the engine out with a different game. Lots of stuff in common and I'll make sure that I don't spend much time for now on things that aren't going to be used in both games.

As for the weekly tech info:

• using SGScript for scripting/serialization (obviously)
• found some serious bugs and other issues with the code, fixed all, going to push changes back soon
• currently only editor entities are scripted, gameplay entities are simple enough to be implemented in C++ (and I didn't have to spend time on game binding code yet)
• reason the work is currently paused on radiosity is that it's super-slow, anything more than 10000 samples has great potential to be intolerable - so I'm going to implement a method that keeps sample counts that low and keep compensating other parts of the global illumination lightmapping with ambient occlusion
• the reason for implementing a static mesh array entity is simple - stairs, ladders and anything of that kind - I don't want to revisit the modelling app in case something changes in the specification, I just want to tweak a slider (or in my case, a number wheel) - now I can do just that

If you think I can keep up the development, and if you're interested in what's going to be made here, please visit the Steam Greenlight page and vote for the game. It would mean a lot to me.