SITREP - Week 022

Kim (ZPSHicks)
Game Director

"Having momentum on an ambitious project like this, is one of the best feelings in the world, we're all super excited here at Zero Point Software: We love Unity's AAA commitments hinted in Unity 3.5, especially now that we've started pushing Unity in a direction where its absolutely crucial that it'll deliver AAA quality and performance, which we can continuously harvest, as we make Deadlock the complete immersive and dynamic experience, we all so desperately need to play.

Most of the Deadlock concept is nailed and will slowly start its transformation into game assets, the network systems is getting off the ground and our immersive character controller is progressing fast and we've even rearranged our office to make room for two more people .. It seems like there is nothing but clear skies an open roads ahead (at the moment at least! :)) and its just pedal to the metal, not looking back before we start playing Deadlock with you; our awesome community!".

Mikael (heks)
Lead Programmer

"Most of the week has been all about cleanup; cleanup of the office, cleanup of planning and cleanup of our minds!

In the time in-between office moving and company meetings I've been researching a bunch of networking-, animation- and physics-related resources as I've hit a few stumbling blocks in Unity. These are mostly related to how the multiplayer experience will "feel" and react in circumstances where the client(s) and server are "out of sync" in their physics simulations, and where corrections are needed.

It will be interesting to see how far we can get and I'm pretty sure that the end-user experience will be pretty good *most* of the time, but for the edge cases I have a hard time seeing how we can solve the issues as elegantly as most other AAA FPS'es that run on non-closed-source engines. Time will tell.".

Jesper Andersen (Scribblehead)
Concept Artist

"Hey all - this is gonna be a quick update. Yesterday and today i've been having a couple of talks with Kim and anders about our how we'll tackle the interiors. So far i've made some progress, but its all early WIP concepting at best :) along with a couple of moodboards to sell my ideas to the gents. Next up though i'm off to weapons it seems - i think you guys want that more than interiors atm maybe, am i right?

Cheers!".

Anders (cptKickASS)
Lead Artist

"Prepping week, office and code got a nice overhaul. I'm starting to long for more art related work. Still working on weapon setup on character pawn.".

Jess (NecroSonic)
Level Designer

"I guess that you have all seen the Combat Range 01 – iteration 1 that was put online for inspection. The map was created by Kim and I aided him a bit with suggestions as well as supplying the bunkers. Besides that I have been experimenting with a few bigger size maps and creating a few additional structures like the ones that Kim used. These are however only being used while waiting for the final set of Deadlock modules, but as it will take a while to get those manufactured the placeholders are needed for developing ideas for maps.

As many of you pointed out the challenge of creating these outdoor type maps is to create enough visual blockings so that you can’t simply sit on a hill and cover the entire map with a sniper rifle. We can do this in a few different ways:

1) We can create some buildings that block the view behind them and that you can move inside of to be safe from snipers. Spending a lot of time on these does not however make that much sense as we will have to redo them with the new modules.

2) We can use trees and rocks that may make sniping harder. These are good but we can’t use too many due to performance. This may change with the new version of Unity.

3) We can use crates. We actually need LOD models of the crates as well to use a lot of them, and secondly too many crates may make the game look/feel a bit too old school.

4) We can make hills and canyons. This is a good option but my first attempt proved to be a bit too extreme for Kim’s taste :D

5) We could do underground buildings. This would be the best thing ever but unfortunately Unity does not let you cut holes in the terrain which means that you cannot connect two topside buildings by an underground pathway for instance. We hope to find a workaround for this somehow.".

Nicolai (Reese)
CEO & Composer

"The sound design on Deadlock is progressing. This week Heks kickstarted my newly attained programming skills,- something I didn't know I possessed... or should possess for that matter. Although these skills currently are at an absolute minimum I am convinced that these occuring "syntax errors" are probably all overrated ;)

The sounds are good though.. so is the coffee :)