Jsonedecker

I put in some good hours on the demo map and thought I would share some of the results. This is also the same map that Kris showed in his post the other day.

This is a multi-purpose map that we are using to test out various game types, profile performance, use for various visual benchmarks and prototype day/night/weather setups. It will also be the map that will first be released in a public preview build.

-John



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Spent a good amount of time on replication this week. Original plan was to use a system that converting loadouts from a JSon formatted loadout to a replication friendly version that would then be updated and sent from server-to-clients as required. This worked fine, but was never quite as easy as I would have liked.



Before I began working with John on Ground Branch, I had been using a method that let the item on the server send itself across the network. A rather brute force method, but I liked it at the time because it didn't require any mucking around. You just did what you needed to do with an item on the server and it made its way across the network as required.

New version does the same, but 'nicely'. The conditions an item has to meet before it is sent across the network are much more tightly controlled, based on the player they are attached too, distance and the importance of the item in question.

eg. At a distance, only the players platform and currently equipped weapon are important enough to be sent across. Once they get closer, any long gun they may have slung over their shoulder is sent. Closer still, and holsters & pouches become relevent too.

We're not aiming for 32 vs 32 epic battles, so bandwidth should not be an issue... though that would make for an interesting test.



Forgive the green lens - I broke the scope when I redid all the item archetypes...

-Kris

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Hey everyone,
Just wanted to let you know we had some unexpected downtime for a few hours today due to my ignorance. I messed up changing some nameserver assignments so the domain went offline. Everything should be working as expected now, but if you experience any issues post here.

-John

Only missed it by a few weeks.



An Oculus Rift DevKit arrived near the end of May. I was hoping to have some footage of its use in Ground Branch, but alas, I don't have the UE3 Oculus Rift SDK (yet). Rather frustrating, as it is fairly awesome, despite being low-res.





John recently finished up work he was doing for Tripwire in relation to Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm. This has freed up more time to devote to Ground Branch.

Meanwhile, I updated the UI again.(Please kill me...)
As sick to death as I am of the damn thing, it is my own fault. In my efforts to enable some other features, I unwittingly made it possible to recreate the UI in a fashion significantly closer to original concepts. It also simplfies the code and removed the need to for UI related map entities, both of which make Ground Branch easier to modify.

Gameplay wise, the system that handles actions such as reloading has been updated to one that is native to the engine. The original, though functional, was rather old and originally created with a early version of the Unreal Development Kit. Unfortunately, the actions are being held up by my approach to certain animation blends and lack of action-specific animations.

Based on a suggestion from the forum, I changed the dev-builds mouse setup. The middle mouse button now toggles between on/off target weapon positions. The mouse wheel is used to set them. In this way, you can easily go from engaging a the weapons sights to a low ready position, or between close ready and sul in confined areas. This is fixed for now, until I update and convert the original scripting system to a native version.

I would like to demonstrate this, what I mentioned about my approach to certain animation blends means you currently aim via your feet when you move (don't ask).

That's it.

-Kris

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This is a pretty big deal. firstly, I didn't know that NO developer has ever been sued for using weapon names and likenesses in games. But more so that if EA is blazing the trail then small guys like us can follow without fear of litigation. They will set the precedence and deal with the headache/cost if someone decides to put up a fight.

http://www.gamasutra...ir_branding.php

In case you can't get to the link:

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