Our article this week is something a bit different! John Hardy, ST Excalibur's technical lead has written up a nicely formatted article which describes how the game will keep track of all the thousands of objects in an immersive universe without comprising on modability! See the abstract below for more details!
Abstract
Computer games continue to grow in size, detail and complexity. This trend holds true in ST Excalibur where our core goal is to create the best looking, most immersive and most readily modifiable space simulator to date. Clearly, space is vast and it is difficult for a computer to keep track of all the objects in the game universe at any given time. Without careful design, this computational complexity can result in developer frustration when it comes to modding. This brief article is intended to introduce our Game Object Model concept and present a number of scenarios which demonstrate its efficacy.
For the record, as much as I am entertained by videos showing off the cool things you guys have done as of late, this article gives me a deeper understanding of the 'less visible' stuff that is being worked on. I think we're fast approaching a time when free, open-source games match the complexity of triple A titles. But the key is that 'indi' games are free to try new ideas that monstrous publishers would never approve of. (Instead they'll let games like this figure them out, and then copy the crap out of them)
Keep up the great work. I'm looking forward to playing with this engine!
interesting read
You guys are my heroes, really.
Thank you so much.