Performance and Graphical user interface conversion
This week I've been sitting with the artists to do some much needed optimizations. These are mainly important for VR, in which you have to render at a very high FPS to reduce motion sickness. For example; for the Oculus Rift this is 90 FPS. We've began with the first level, Diving Base. We've managed to improve a lot, and after we do some code optimizations we'll reach the target FPS.
As for the GUI conversions; Now all of the systems are converted, I'm currently working on getting everything stable and ready for putting live.
Jeroen
World of Diving Oculus support
This week I've been working on fixing bugs for support of World of Diving on the Oculus Platform. Steam provides functionality for handling user lobbies, inviting users to a game and matchmaking. This is something the Oculus platform also supports, but in a different way. So another implementation of our networking system using Oculus platform had to be implemented to allow multiplayer to work. We would like to have the implementation and the interface to player to be almost identical between Steam and Oculus.
This is still work in progress, because there are slight variations in how the 2 platforms handle matchmaking and inviting other users. On top of that, there is not always a clear and good documentation on how third party code is designed, so often some experimentation is required to find out how everything works exactly. So the end goal of this is to have multiplayer while playing the game using the Oculus platform that gives almost exactly the same experience to users as multiplayer does in Steam. Please note that this means that matchmaking will therefore not allow a player from one platform to connect to a player from another platform. This is to allow for the functionality like inviting friends through Steam & Oculus.
Vincent
Diving Base optimizations
Hi there,
It has been a while since we did a blog. This reason behind it was that we felt the blogs didn't make sense when we don't have anything useful to show for. We are doing a blog right now to show we are still dedicated and working on WoD.
Last weeks I have been working on optimizing the game for VR. This should also be noticeable in the non VR version. I have redone most of the rock in the diving base. Right now there was a lot of 'popping' from LOD models and there were a lot of different materials on the rocks.Now every rock is done with a bigger rock so it are lesser seperate models. I also deleted all the polygons that are beneath the terrain. Normally this would not matter too much but because VR need to run on 90fps we needed the optimisation and it look better to. This is the same for the coral rock which are now grouped and have no more polygon under the terrain.
Hopefully you like it.
Bjorn
Art optimizations
In the past couple of weeks we have been working on alot of optimization for the game and we have tried our best to make the game look better than it did before.
Below are a few screenshots of some of the new models in the game, After posting some work in progress shots off some collectables in the past Dev Blog I worked on a few more. Next to this I did alot of optimization work for the levels so the framerate should run alot more stable now.
I hope you guys enjoy and I will stay hard at work at some more stuff to make the game awesome ! :)
-<
Niels
More art optimizations...
Hello Divers!
My job has mostly been focussed on optimizing current artwork, and I have had the chance to get some work done on new models aswell.
I hope to be creating more visually appealing artwork in the future.
Jeff
Even more art optimizations!
I have been working on optimizing existing items, areas; making new items (collectables); Creating new textures; And also well on the way for the community shipwreck.
The ship itself is nearing completion after which it will be turned into an actual wreckage.
Also the environment is being blocked out and concept arts have been made for the look and feel.
Mermaid statue for the shipwreck
Yorick
And another artist doing artist work things
Hello my name is Yorick. I'm one of the 3D artist at vertigo.
I've been working on some new stuff for World of diving. Mostly I was busy optimizing art.
I've been combining different assets so they use one texture, which is good for performance. I did this for the corals, seaweed and the assets that can be found in the Diving Base level.
I've been making new textures and new assets. If you scroll down you can see what I've been working on.
