Post#1 » 01 Apr, 2017 4:23 am

Good Evening citizens of Rhyldan!

On this the 31st of March, I would like to update you on the current work that has been done and is being done within The Repopulation! This work has begun in the starter area, because it touches so many other systems within the rest of Rhyldan.



I would like to reiterate that the developers working on The Repopulation is not the same engineering team that is working on the HeroEngine. The engineers are focused on updates to the engine and assisting teams to bring their games live. The Repopulation developer team are all game developers, that are focused on the development of The Repopulation.



UI/UX adjustments:

Most textures have been converted to be cleaner, sharper and optimized. New organization of the gui folders have begun as well for future updates.



The larger gui revamp update will much later, but we have begun the cleanup and planning so it should coincide with future updates that involve systems like combat and crafting.



• 87 texture files optimized, converted and cleaned up and replaced

• Icons mapped and listed missing or icons that are too similar to be created

• Began organization of gui textures, removing files no longer in use

• Began new layout for skill and item icons

• Edits and adjustments made to the Client scripts and file paths for changes applied for current and future development

• There are going to be some adjustments made to the minimap in attempt to optimize and reduce the overhead of the current map.



We have also made some adjustments with some permissions and hot fix updates to the GM permissions and abilities. GM adjustments being made with more work in this area to come.



Pathing and collision:

Pathing is being examined and adjusted with the world, as we’ve identified most of the problems with the los in the starting/training and other areas. Majority of these issues were/are caused by oversized meshes (and too large of collision boxes), pathing and spawn points going through assets, and underground assets with large collision boxes causing “not in range/view” messages.



We have identified and fixed some of the following issues:

• Line of sight issues with collision of trees and rocks that have been oversized

• Pathing issues for some npc’s

• New nav mesh created to work with the new terrain/heightmaps



Starter/Training Areas:

New terrain has been shaped and replaced. The new terrain textures and details are being worked on with the addition of a new terrain shader being added to the fold, and the number of materials being used has been reduced to lessen draw cells. This work in the starter area will expand outward to the rest of the game, allowing progress to pick up as this process gets farther along. Screenshots of this will be coming in a few weeks.



• New unified terrain using the same resolution for all heightmap nodes

• New shader and optimized texturing to reduce draws

• More in depth “painting “ and detail

• Asset placement

• Pathing improvements

• LOD adjustments

• List of assets to be reworked due to sizing issues and redefinition errors (materials)



Combat examination/development:

The combat has been mapped out, and planning/development has begun to adjust, update and correct some of the math libraries to help improve combat in future updates. This will be a slow process as this touches upon many sub systems. Though this list seems small as outlined, there is a lot involved.



Work done so far has been:

• Mapping out and documentation for current combat

• Adjustments for combat calculations

• Comparative testing of the math/calculations between offensive and defensive skills



15.10.1 Staging Update:

After examining data integrity of ABT's update patch, we have found it should be coming in about 5 weeks.



There are two reasons why this update will take so long. The first is due to bit/data rot of the current build that was started in 2015. We want to make sure that all is good before we begin the new build process. The second is because HE engineer, Christopher, will be working with the Repop team to fix and walk them through the build process. This will include what files will be included, the compiling process, DLL process and build process. This will be done in steps so the process will be done correctly and will in turn speed up the builds in the future.



Steps:

• Reduce current build to under 4gb

• Exclude old art and assets no longer in use

• Update the crafting and 3rd party db

• Create the new deploy build

• Create the new client build

• Test the build

• Deploy the build