3/28/16 update
Hello everyone! Lots of things to update!
I hope everyone had a fantastic GDC! The goal of today’s update is to get ya’ll up to speed and give you all a bit more information about how we’re moving forward with it.
First of all, we’re looking to launch *Our Ghosts of * Steam Early Access launch sometime in August. That should be far enough removed from the Steam Summer sale for players’ wallets to have healed and early enough so that we don’t get steamrolled by the Fall and Christmas releases.
We’re aiming to launch with 78km2 of accurate Nazi-occupied Normandy, France. Every couple of months we will add to the terrain size and make the game bigger and bigger. A typical game like this in AAA would have a two year development cycle with a full budget and that would still be considered rushed. A three year development cycle is more reasonable and so how we will move forward through Early Access and to final release is going to be based off of a three year development cycle. This 78km2 terrain is already in-engine and using the Road Editor Plugin (Road Editor - Showcase - Epic Developer Community Forums - This thing is fantastic. You should really pick it up!) we’re going to be placing all the roads to accurately match the roads as they were in 1944 based off old maps.
So when you play *Our Ghosts of *, not only would players experience 1944 Normandy, France as created from DEM Satellite Data, but the roads will be EXACTLY the same as they were back then. This IS going to be the most accurate depiction of Normandy, France in the history of videogames! You wouldn’t believe how important achieving this is to us but we’re all on the verge of getting it exactly right. We’re waiting on the 4.11 VXGI build from Nvidia to come out before we put the roads into the project but the roads should be taken care of in a week. We’ll have screenshots for you as soon as they’re in the project. Considering we’re picking up Steam now it’s best to keep everyone updated as much as we can.
Throughout the rest of this week I’ll update you on the team, how the game is intended to work, and other points of discussion as it relates to the project. Here is this week’s coding update.
**Change Log - Alpha 0.5.2.1366 **
- Work on UI framework 2.0 for Our Ghosts of begun.
- Widget reworking on the main menu begun.
- Initial backend folder structure cleanup work complete.
- Custom widgets supporting GOW’s horizontal, vertical, and menu bars created.
- Style’s interfaces cleaned up for easier swapping of UI elements.
- Access to UI functionality extended into Blueprint for quicker prototyping and iteration.
- General bug fixes and performance improvements in prep for OT1.
- Implemented layered tiled UI
- Began laying out main menu based on designs
- UI framework improvements regarding tile clicking, animations, and placement.
- Implemented modular vertical content bars, currently used for selection menus.
- Psuedocode / planning for Faction Component (how AI will know if they should combat each other, players, be friendly, neutral, etc.)
- Psuedocode / planning for Aggro System (what makes an AI aggressive - a calculation of damage received from a specific source, current line-of-sight with an enemy source, and current distance to that enemy source (weapon types will affect this)
- Added way more information to the design docs
- Revised some class information
- Began to define player progression
- Researched a ton of AI resources around the UE4 community to try to save time in overall development. Cached documentation and videos for future reference and use.
- Began to define how to get AI to dynamically swap its EQS query context (who we’re testing against). This allows for AI vs AI encounters and open the flood gates for new possible game modes.
- Updated the AI detection system (where AI can “see” other players / AI in their proximity and line-of-sight).
- Tweaked the patrol behavior (where the AI moves to a node, then spawns a new node within 5 meters, then moves there, repeat).
- The start of an “Enemy Aggro” system. The enemy will calculate damage taken, distance from each enemy, and if that enemy is within line-of-sight, then calculate these factors into a score. The higher the score, the more threatening the enemy.
- The AI is now aware of when it’s been shot. It stores this to memory and begins to calculate a score of who is the most “threatening” to them.