I'm going to start doing some lore updates to explain the back story leading up to the conflict that we chronicle in Fractured State. My hope is to do these as separate blog posts but this week my tech update is a bit light so I decided to combine the two of them together. Enjoy!
Technical Update
I've been working on adding functionality to the Editor for publishing maps and getting the Game to load those files when starting a Skirmish match. My goal was to pack terrain data and prop placement all together so that basic maps can be transferred among users as a single file. This involves serializing the vertex data for each terrain chunk and writing each vertex's position, normal, and UV coordinate.The shader that powers the Editor's texture painting uses two control maps to do the color blending. The implication with this is that each texel is potentially comprised of up to 10 texture look-ups. In order save some processing in the game I decided to dump the final texture data for each chunk into the map file and use a simpler shader. This also means that all the texture data can be included in the map data file as a base-64 encoded string.
Lore Update
The Founding of Laperia and Formation of the Royal Triumverate
In the Summer of 1157 William Falone of Dor-Juk, Yorg Falsiki of Calahran, and Philip Salek of Filae reach an agreement to merge their city-states in order to combat the barbarous raiders under the command of Jalohn the Transient. The new nation is Laperia. The three men form the Royal Triumverate to rule equally over the land. Each Triumverate member is awarded the right to name their successor and has equal vote in matters of military and state. Their first directive, Royal Directive 1157-1, orders that an army be raised against Jaolhn the Transient. The following winter the Royal Laperian Army under direct command of Supreme General Francis Thwaite of Filae.Six weeks later the two forces confront each other at Westridge. Jalohn's men suffer heavy casualties and retreat into the Andress Mountains. The Royal Army pursues and in the Winter of 1158 they arrive at the city of Haven and lay siege to it. The Last Stand of Jalohn the Transient begins during one of the most brutal winters on record.
I've also updated the Editor build on our Downloads page. This build doesn't include map publishing but it does include the per-pixel texture painting system. Go grab it now and don't forget to leave us some feedback in our Forum!
