Critical Updates Everyone Read news - Alpha Team Six

First of all, I would like to give a big shout out to all you AT6 fans for being probably the most dedicated and supportive fan base I have known. I know I haven't been fair to you guys so I will explain what's going on.

Hey there so sorry for not updating the page in a while I have been busy with school and football and my schedules has gotten even tighter, but I'm still pushing the release date to be asap. Now onto the bad news..... The reason I labelled this as everyone read, is because the PSP version is being discontinued. I feel as if it has been the real reason we haven't been getting a proper release in.

You see the PSP is very limited and I would say game dev is hard. So with the psp it makes it 10x harder because on top of regular development you have to really optimize your models, textures and code which has gotten me frustrated and is the reason why you would see updates every month or so because I would have to leave the project, get my focus back and then work on it etc... You may also notice that when I start posting PC content it comes in a series of updates meaning there is a lot and they come fast. This is because the PC is pretty stable for Game Dev and I don't get frustrated (as much) when working on the PC build. So I decided the only way I would be able to finish this project within the next year is to work on the PC version.

Now I haven't just been goofing off with the PC version, I have been building a custom engine. Now I know I said I was using unity but I quickly learned that I was contradicting myself. How? well I started making a custom engine so I can know the engine inside out thus making it easier to code certain aspects of the game. Now when I moved to unity I realised that I dropped the darkplaces engine because I'd have to learn all it's features and it would take a while to master it, and the same applies with unity I have to learn how the engine works! So now I'm back on my engine dev and have minor details of what it will contain. Also I'd like to note that there won't be many updates till november/december ish because I am going to school and I am apart of 2 football teams which practice almost everyday. So I will have about 2-3 hours at home everyday to finish my homework first and then game dev. Homework takes a while so most days I can't get much in. My season will finish in November so I will have more time, but i'll still be in school so be patient with me.

I'd Like to introduce the earliest build of the Lightning Engine, Powered by Visionary Gaming Studios( Was not as FANGS but we had a name switch).

The Lightning Engine is going to be a very sophisticated engine when it is finished. It is programmed in c++ and has the easiest framework I have codded yet. As of now the main function only contains 3 lines of code which can easily be turned into 2, even 1 actually but too keep everything organized I like to keep it at 3. It is currently using OpenGL 3.0 as a place holder but soon will be upgrading to OpenGL 4.0 to better the user experience. Can't support OGL 4.0? No worries the Engine automatically detects that and drops back to OGL 3.0 and adjust's it's functions and features according and currently we are debating on whether to add a drop back to OpenGL 2.0. It uses Model Stockpiler technology which in it's current stage allows you to load 4, 3D file formats, soon to be 6, but in the end it will automatically identify the model type by itself without you having to code the location of the model, ex. all models will be placed in one folder and one by one the engine will read all the models, sort them by file types and use the appropriate file format loader to load them. I t currently loads: .x,.ase,.obj and .ply. Our aspirations are to add .fbx or .dae to that list.

It comes with a state of the art map editor which is in heavy development process. This means that we are focusing a lot on the map editor part because the engine will be loading a custom map file format that will satisfy our engine's needs.

To end this off I would like to say I have gotten textures working with .obj files and I am working on an animation system for .ase files. Here's a video of the early Model Stockpile feature, I recorded a while back.

Thanks for reading and for your patience we hope you are not disappointed with our decision and if you are just know that this will be better for Alpha Team Six.

Oh ya don't forget to donate to our cause, we only want you to donate if you wish we are not going to tell you that you'll get "exclusive dropbox privilege" or"early releases", the donation money will go on mostly books so that I can expand my knowledge and make the engine better.

Check out the MODDB page now for the video and if it doesn't show(because I know some people couldn't watch our previous video) here's the YouTube link to it!: