Long time no see mr. ... news - Epsylon

With the restart of studies and school for most people a certain delay krept into the project which resulted in not having news posts for some time. This is though not something bad as behind the scenes work still continue.

On one side there is the Game-Engine itself where further work went into the animation system and more Refactoring of script classes to make the step from path-work-code to a solid code base like it should be for the final release. This still takes time but each step yields more power and flexibility. One such use of the improved animation system is Extended Blending and Real-Animation Camera. The Real-Animation Camera simply means that whatever your character is doing your camera in first person view is doing too. Playing the game using this system gives an entire new feeling for the characters you have at your disposal. Especially usage of objects, and hence weapons, is heavily influenced by animations of the character and of course physics later on. Showing this system without a video with only a still image is a bit problematic but for the time beeing there is not yet a video capturing facility in place hence only screenshots. The first screenshot in the batch shows this a bit.

Also included now is the first version of the Attachment scripts which allow you to easily attach one object to another on any bone of the parent-rig. The first screenshot shows this. The Tranquilizer Rifle is a separate object attached to the player model and the Scope of the rifle is also a separate object attached to the rifle. Such attachement hierarchies are easy implemented and once setup need only a few lines of code to operate correctly.

Besides this SiegfriedX went for some models including two versions of security cameras which will then be used to show the image feeding capabilities of the engine by attaching them to the security monitors already around. This will be included in the next news post.

Another new thing is that the Contributor Forum on the Epsylon Forum has been opened to the public. I decided that it is better to open this part of the forum to allow people playing with the idea of doing some work without beeing tied up with the project to see what work is around and what has been done so far. You can also add your ideas there and also pick something to put your hands on. Skinning work is by the way something that we could really need at the moment.

So here are some screenshots. Have a nice day.