The General Babblings of Chris Wild
I’ve been having a hard time with my work on The Midnight Engine I get so little done nowdays and I’ve started to get disheartened by it. Anyway after a plea for help from the rest of the midnight commuity I think I may be ready to get on it again… watch this space…
The midnight engine DDR port is about 75% done.
The base engine has been changed to handle most of the differences in a global fashion, however, I have created multiple versions of a mechanic where needed. eg. A scenario writer chooses which type of battle system, recruitment system, etc…
Lately I have got caught up the the frontend – this has been rewritten to allow easy change, the idea being that scenario writers can affect the frontend as well. However this has been much more of a pain than I anticipated and has, to be honest, bogged me down!
I got over a major hurdle today, and thus I hope to get back on track.
The graphics system has completely changed from the LOM version, and anyone who has seen the screenshots will admit it looks lovely. The whole engine works with a patch system allowing for the terrain to change depending on which location it is, this means that the panormics look differently all the time. This process is also used in the tunnles which allows the tunnels to have distinct appearnces depending on where you are.
Ther resolution is 1024x768x32 – which is causing some speed issues at the moment, due to the amount of graphic work being implemented. For example, there is a haze layer that is applied over the seven sizes(distance) of graphics. In some way almost every pixel is adjusted a number of times before being written to the screen. This will all get sped up at the end.
Jure has produced lots of new graphics, and has worked with Bill to use the DDR shield templates and produce TME versions – thus keep consistency across the midnight games.
The last work that I know Jure was working on was the fog system, and we also discussued and inverse landscaping for the sky.
I recently implemented all of Andrews TME mods that he used for WOTS into the new codebase, and will be handing a version of TME over to him real soon so that he can hopefully get moving around the DDR map in the WOTS engine.
Hopefully, once I had it over, requests from Andrew combined with my own needs will move the project along.
Lords of midnight, Doomdark’s Revenge, The Midnight EngineThere are two new screenshots of Doomdark’s Revenge on Icemark. They show
the new UI… as always subject to change.
http://www.icemark.com/winlom99/notes.htm
Here are some screenshots showing the new UI. One also shows of the new sun. We’ve played around a lot with the effects layers. There are now different suns and moons depending on the time of day etc.
Another update on DDR, I’ll try and keep these frequent…
I had a large batch of graphics from Jure today. And the results as you would expect are stunning. The new skies really make a difference.
We all know how much impact the initial dawn shot has in Doomdark’s; it was so different than LOM but that Red and Yellow colouring was so atmospheric.
After much messing around with the Dawn shot myself I felt I was going to be in big trouble trying to recreate that feel. Some of you may remember me asking in the group if I could drop that look… to be told emphatically no!
Anyway, I’m glad to say; Jure hit the nail on the head and the result I found to be breathtaking. I’ll try and upload a screenshot soon.
The new haze effect is really working, and I know how two styles of moon, night and evening/day. I also have a separate sun to drop in as an overlay this time rather than having it painted onto the backdrop.
Anyway, more later.