Reporting Friday is on the air, friends, for the ninth time and right on schedule!
Hello everyone and get to the point.
Firstly, we want to talk a little bit about an implementation of a structure for our reports. Our reports basically consist of demonstration of the content (pictures) and text. The text often contains simplified recap of a project development, description of mechanics or just our thoughts and experience.
We want to highlight such text in a certain style. If our reader isn’t interested in it or doesn’t have enough time he can just skip it.
We need to make up a new title for this section. Write your variants in comments and remember - don’t be so serious! This section has the title “Plenty of time - I’ll read it!”
And the best one win (majority of likes)!
I 3D models - ladders
And today we’re gonna talk about step ladders. Behind the apparent simplicity, it’s a big headache for developers. Mechanics of ladder interaction seems working only with some tricks.
But first let’s see them.
That’s how the simplest ladders look like in close up:
There are many ladders of different length:
And there are ladders of different strength:
Also there are ladders of different tree species, but we’ll talk about it later. Now let’s talk about difficulties, caused by step ladders.
II Animations with ladders
[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]
The main problems with this animations are:
- feet shouldn’t step on air;
- a character should “hold on” to the right place on the ladder and do it with a suitable range;
- a character should come down off the ladder;
- and a character also should climb the ladder from upstairs.
Developers solve the problems in different ways:
- someone turns a blind eye to “ski” and invisible steps;
- someone speeds up the third person camera and moves it backwards from a turn of a character to make different fails invisible (movements near the ladder, sliding);
- someone creates all step ladders at an angle to let a character to use it without a loss of functionality;
- and someone turns a ladder into the interactive subject, teleporting a character up or down.
This is not an exhaustive list of decisions. It is used even by giants of industry. Anyway all of you met these moments somewhere;
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
We don’t reinvent the wheel, only add the rim. Let’s see the results.
That’s how movements up and down look like.
A character steps the suitable places because the animation based on unified set of parameters such as the height and thickness of ladder steps.
Yes, it means that all step ladders can look different but this parameters will be the same.
This is an example of unification of the in-game content that allows to optimize work input and time but reduces the diversity.
That’s how it would be if our ladders didn’t have a ledge upper the last step about 1 m:
A character holds on the void because this is not an unified ladder.
III Level design
Mikhail, our producer (he is also responsible for the instances - internal parts of buildings) is so obsessed with the review of the level design of our designer Vladimir that he can’t stop taking screenshots of the world.
[Plenty of time - I'll read it!]
We remind that at the moment 90% of 2 counties are ready, each of which has 1 big city, 2-3 villages, 14-18 mining places. Its total surface area is about 70 square metres.
We’ve already told that such world area gives us huge space to add more content. It could happen that you leave beta at the edge of the desert forest and came back into a little village or a new mine. May be even next to a river or a lake.
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
Now we offer to look at these locations while we think how to optimize it!)
Mason's workshop
Village
Donjon
It deserves clarification.
[Plenty of time - I’ll read it!]
We have come to the moment when we want to show our castles, adapted only to our system of castle capture.
Castle, as a building complex with its instances, will be unusual for the players.
First basement of a simple little donjon with a level 15 is presented below.
The castle mostly consists of the wood but the donjon (as the main building) has stone basement.
It is basically semi-basement section for the storage. But we know that the storage without table and wine for the storekeeper - is not a storage at all!)
In the next reports we will talk about scrolls, treasury, mechanics of capture and holding of the castle and territories!
[Had the time - I’ve read it!]
IV Conclusion
In conclusion we’re going to talk about around-development:
- A new programmer, Pavel, is engaging in work successfully! The controller of the flying mobs was under his mouse. Now he is responsible for the mechanics of controller’s movements on the ladders. And then, more likely… drum roll… - mechanics of the siege weapons. It’s not the most important work on schedule but it’s easier to join the project with this work.
- New site has some problems, as always. It could not be otherwise, so we don’t worry. We failed the deadlines, previous executors were fired. New executors started the work yesterday. Some may ask, why? Because we have an extremely non-trivial task. If you make MMORPG in a big way, you need the same magnitude with the website!
- Expect the updating of Alpha page with added status of the remaining work next week. We’re still searching for the testers. We will start inviting those who have left applications by the end of the month.
- And also we will return to the promoting in the West and add a page about ROG in Steam. Before this we will put to a vote few artworks, that will be used for this page.
And it’s only a small part of our plans and goals. The report isn’t made of elastic!
That’s all, take care and have a nice weekend!
And one more feature at the end:
It’s Friday evening - ROG’n’roll, friends!
Yours sincerely,
Reign of Guilds Team