Hello, IndieDB community; my name is Rodion and I'm developing "On the Other Side of Wormhole" game and Game World Engine for it. I'm from Russia and English is not my native language, so sometimes I make literature and grammatic errors, sorry for this in advance, and I'll try to be as English-correct as possible. Now game is developed by me alone, later after completion of all features of the game engine and creation of prototype version of game, I'll hire 1 - 2 2D artists to draw interface elements and screens graphics, 1 musician to compose music and 1 native English literature editor to help me make texts and dialogs of game better in terms of literature English language ( maybe there will be volunteers, who will be willing to do this work - their names will be in titles of game, but this is the question that will go up no sooner than after 3 - 4 months from current time ).
One of the main aims of creation of these game and engine is to create real-time GPGPU raytracing and make game, that uses it. Raytracing is usually very intensive in calculations and will load GPU very much. So, I made some initial simplifications that will allow to make it and make it real-time :
- Geometric detail level of game will be lower, than is present in modern rasterization games.
- There will be no textures in game, except of textures for interface, fonts and screens. Later, if GPU will allow this - real-time procedural materials will be added to engine. So, basically there will be only materials, which differ in colors and BRDFs' parameters.
- Relief will be implemented as infinite plane.
- There will be lots of parametric objects in the technics and world : ellipsoids, cylinders and boxes.
- With triangular meshes there will be implemented only parts of vehicles, that are hard to model in interesting way with parametric objects - like wings and pilot's cabins of aircrafts.
If GPU will allow this - reflections and refractions effects along with real-time procedural materials will be added to engine. Now I orient on these framerates :
- 30+ frames per second with 1600 x 900 resolution on my middle level GPU ( AMD Radeon HD 7750 ) are very good.
- 5 - 10 FPS are more or less good.
- And 1 frame per second is absolute minimum.
So, on top level GPUs game, hopefully, will run 2 - 3 times faster and provide more or less comfortable frames rates. Now there is need to make real-time GPGPU raytracing work and, with GPUs advances and engine optimizations, in next games on this engine - new effects and techniques will be added and detail level increased.
The other main goal of game and engine creation is to create interesting for me and other players real-time tactical strategy with role-playing elements.
There, probably, will be players, who will not be satisfied with graphical detail level present in game. But at the same time, I hope, that there will be players, who are interested in real-time GPGPU raytracing; real-time tactical strategy with role playing elements; and in sci-fi story of this game.
Now first milestone of game and engine creation is completed - in it I made basis of game engine and functions, that are necessary for performing physics simulation; levels files reading; creation of scene representation for CPU and for GPU; real-time raytracing of scene; sound output; user input reading; and basis of game logics, which is created via OOP objects. And now creation of second milestone is started - in it version of engine with fully completed functions and systems, that are necessary for "On the Other Side of Wormhole" game creation on this engine, will be created. They include : interface system; triggers in physics; triangular meshes support; composite objects support; WASAPI sound output support; and other functions. After that third milestone with creation of prototype version of game will follow, but its details will be present, when time of its creation will come. Probably creation of second milestone will take 2 - 4 months - this will mainly depend on my workload on my paid jobs. If there will be ability to obtain funding for game creation ( crowd funding, paid advertisements or other form of funding ) - this will greatly help to speed up game and engine development.
Gameplay design is mostly completed, major story and dialogues events are decided, now game world history and environment are worked through. There are two approaches to games creation : 1. Make interesting gameplay and adjust story and dialogues details to it. 2. Make interesting story and dialogues with all their details and then create gameplay for it. Games creation veterans say that first approach usually is easier and works better for games; I agree with this, so, exact minor details of story and dialogues and exact amount of missions and goals in them will be decided after creation of prototype version of game.
This is all for today. Feedback is welcome, especially about how presentation game build works on your computer : whether there are some errors during application launch ( in this case, please, send compressed Logs folder from application directory to my e-mail, given in the Read Me file of application distributive; no confidential information is placed in logs - only information about specifications of your computer and about work of application ) or everything works fine. Now I very loaded on my jobs and with work of implementation of functions of second milestone of game creation; so I'll answer to comments once per week or around so and will publish news, screenshots and game builds, as soon as new major functions will be ready.
