So, things are progressing quite well.
Adrian's been gathering reference material and drawing concepts. Here's a concept of an interior space in Orbital Assault.
And here's a variation of that concept. This is what it might look like after the bullets have been flying, grenades exploding, and humans leaking their innards all over the place.
Conor's been working on sounds. He's working on some of the environmental sound effects we're going to have in the first demo (a subtle background hum, industrial light buzzing, hydraulic doors, etc). He's also been working on some of the sound effects we'll employ in each room of the demo, like pickup noises, weapon sounds, etc.
The pickups in particular are designed to be computerized dispensers of a particular thing (like medicine, ammunition, etc). So the sound is designed such that the machine is activated, dispenses, and then the player uses or stores the dispensed thing.
That's what led to the medkit pickup sound being... well, creepy. Let's just say it involves needles. And stabbing. And the squishy sounds of flesh.
Nothing to show for these just yet, but you'll get to see them in action in the first demo.
I've been continuing to work on the multiplayer prototype. A lot of new things have gone in.
- Recoil and inaccuracy have been added. The assault rifle now kicks the view up and to the side randomly. It also has a configurable cone of fire, rendering it somewhat useless for long range combat (as it should be).
- Shields now recharge. After a one second period of not taking any damage, your shields begin to recharge.
- Fixed a bug where damage messages from server to client were redirected to the wrong entity if the actual target entity was subsequently destroyed (in the previous video, you can occasionally see Health at 0 even though I'm not dying - this was a symptom of the bug)
- Ammo is now serialized from server to client over the network, and reloading is fully networked as well. Client predicts ammo depletion and reload locally, while server will send correct ammo values if necessary.
- Switched the assault rifle over to a magazine-based ammo system, with a 60-round magazine and 10 magazine limit.
- I've also tweaked the fire rate from 10 RPS to 15 RPS. It felt a too slow before.
- Announcer sounds are in! At the moment, First Blood, Headshot, multi-kills, and killing sprees are in, as well as Game Over if you lose or Victory if you win (you hear Game Over and Victory overlapping since both clients are playing sounds at the same time)
Here's a video.
We've been making some good progress, and we hope to have the first public demo ready as soon as possible (within reason).
Until next time!
- Alan Stagner.
