Over the last few months we've been silent, some may say we've been lazy, while others will say we've stopped working on Solitude. Oh how wrong can people get. We've been making textures, models, maps, and adding a hell of a lot to Solitude's engine.
Today, lets talk about one of the new engine features, Half-life BSP support. This is a massive step up on engine-wise, this allows our artists to have all the creative freedom they need to make the textures, as they don't need to use the same 256 colours for every texture in the game. As we would of had to if we didn't have HLbsp support.
Here's a comparison.
Now some people might say they can't see a big difference, some may say they don't see a difference at all. After all, I picked the textures that looked best compared to all the other one's after they were forced to the Quake pallet. Have a look at it zoomed in 300%.
That's not all, now we can use colours that we previously couldn't use. One of the main textures we could never get to look right at all was grass. Look at the Quake pallet :
That's all the colours we had before, one very important colour is missing. A range of greens!
Make a nice grass texture, your really happy with it, now it's time to convert it.
What the hell!? Oh yes, Quake pallet doesn't like green.
Solitudes current engine that, as I've mentioned before, allows 256 colours per texture allows that random mash-up of pixels, to turn into :
Here are a few screenshots showing the HLBSP support in action.
So that's hlbsp support wrapped up. It looks better, it gives us alot more freedom. A strange feature is that it seems to be rendering maps faster and giving us a faster framerate. Maps that usually ran at 40fps now run at 60-80!
If you have any questions about Solitude or want to talk to any of the developers join us on IRC: irc.EnterTheGame.com, #Solitude channel.
If you like what you see, we encourage you to Track the Game to be updated on future media and to vote for us for a spot in the top 100 list!
See ya!
Thanks! Don't forget to vote!
You'll find out soon. We're making a video feature. But another big thing is that the framerate is increased.
I'm glad to see you guys have made some impressive progress.
Thanks!
Does this mean that we can expect specular lighting/bump maps? Halo's always been a "shiny" game, whereas all of the surfaces are super reflective.
If only. Sadly that'd kill the GPU. Never know though.
honestly... im not sure if you'd notice it too much on the psp and even so... if it didn't, would it matter? common HALO ANYWHERE! who cares about shininess? the psp it's self is shiny enough!
NIce work. Are we going to get some action this holiday season? That would be a great gift =}
You might SEE some action. But not experience it yet :(
Cool!
Thanks.
This is awsome, when looking at some of the screenshots in there small size it looks like im actually seeing the first halo, brilliant.
Thanks, at least we know were achieving some of our goals :)
I call you god solitude THAT IS FREAKING AWESOME!
We do try :)
I will vote for ya
Thanks!
Good job guys :)
Ah thanks :)
OMG
you could add a glass like covering to the floors of your maps to increase reflection.
wow all these new indie games..cant wait for a bunch of them!
keep up the good work!!
awsome but one question evertime you switch weapons the energy bar goes jumpy to low and high can you fix that it would help a lot
It doesn't.
then look at the engery bar at all the videos its just weird
All the videos will be quite old.
awesome guys. I cant wait for this to come out, it just keeps getting better and better. I know FI is going to start their own game after this but you should at least have a side team to work on a sequel. A special group of FI members that would work on a Solitude 2 while the main group of FI is working on their main game.
We might do that if you vote ;)
lol - "might" Way to get votes Sami! =) jk
Actually if the story is good enough for a sequel that would be cool!
samuk im glad u guys are back i was wonderin where you guys went! cheers dudes if ya need anything u have me on msn :)
The difference between quake and HL BSP? other than higher quality textures is that
With the newer halflife compilers we can put much more polys and textures in maps!
awesome job guys! can i get a sticker(cough*beta*cough) saying i voted?
You can have a virtual cookie :)
hey, thats good enough