Overhaul of the entire game, and stuff...
It's been about 3 months since our last Development Blog. There's been a lot of developer activity on World of Diving in that time.
First of all; we've made some really big improvements on the performance side. All levels are now running at a solid 90fps on an Oculus minimum spec PC in VR mode. For this, almost all art has seen a complete overhaul which you will be able to see once we put the new build live today. We have also added HTC Vive support.
Personally, I've been doing lots of work on getting everything working again since so many systems have been changed to provide a smoother experience in VR. Next to the systems that have been changed, a lot of systems have also been added:
- A complete re-do of fish rendering. Small fish now all have trailing so their turing is smooth instead of jerky, as it was. Also, a lot of changes have been made to the AI so the fish appear more natural. The improvements for the bigger fish in the game will come soon.- A story has been integrated into the game. Instead of only the first tutorial mission being in the game, the game now guides the player through the game.
- A tablet has been added which now features a lot of the interfaces in the game which did not really have a good place.
Of course we're really excited to have you play this new version of World of Diving, and are eager to hear your thoughts about it.
Trevor
In a World of Diving
Over the course of the last couple of weeks I have been working on the finalization of features and bug fixes in order to get the game in a proper playable state.Tasks include the implementation of existing UI in the tablet, and the implementation of the redesign of most of these UI's. For this I have been working closely with Bjorn.
There were some interesting challenges with the implementation of the new UI on the tablet. For example, we display some 3D objects in certain interfaces, such as the Oceanopedia and the new mission view. If we were to display these on the tablet, they would appear pierced by the tablet's screen. I have worked on a few solutions to this problem and we finally ended up with creating custom meshes for the screen in the case there are 3D objects displayed on the tablet. Additionally I worked on the blur script which we apply on the screen to blur everything behind it.
I'm glad we have been able to work on the game as a team again during the last period. This has been very pleasant and inspirational for all of us and we are finally able to deliver more of the game we had envisioned to make.
Bjorn
An artist's journal
Hi there!
In the past couple of weeks I have been working on the user interface of world of diving. I started out creating a Tablet for use in game to show all the menus, For this I used a concept from our concept artist Bang. Right after that I have been working on a completely new User Interface together with Trevor, one of our programmers. At first I drew some blockouts to get the ideas out of my head and on the paper. After that, I built the new interface while Trevor built it up in engine. We also did a lot of testing in-game to make sure the interface works on multiple platforms and controllers. I really like how the interface turned out and I hope you will enjoy it as well! Below I have collected some screenshots from the new items I made. I hope you enjoy!
Jeff
Another artist's journal
During my last crunch in World of Diving I have been busy with optimization of art, making sure the performance remains steady on 90 fps.This means setting up Levels of detail for models, culling distance, combining textures and efficiently use the amount of polygons where they matter most.
Something else I have done is placing mission items through the levels; Collectibles; Ocean garbage; mission markers.
In between tasks I have spent a few hours on setting up a block-out of the community shipwreck level that is going to be released in a future update.
U-boat new modular interior
Modelling various new items
Yorick
Yet another artist's journal
Hello guys,
So I’ve been working on optimizing the levels to get them to 90 fps. I’ve done this by combining rocks with each other and make LOD’s for them. The meaning of LOD is (level of detail). We work with lod models, because, if you see a model in the distance, you don't want it to have 10.000 vertices. You want it to have 2000 vertices. The closer you get the more vertices you can see. This is how the LOD system works. I also made a lot of LOD’s for the 3d models in the level. I added more fish for the people that have a good PC so they can play in high mode and see more fish. I’ve also been adding new mission markers, instead of the air tanks it became a starfish. We’ve been providing the levels with garbage, for clean the ocean mission, and we’ve been placing the collectibles.
Greetings Yorick
