General progress
A lot of polishing has been done on the I-Novea engine. This means investigating all sorts of bugs and problems that we had noticed, but didn't have the time to fix so far.
For example, support for minidumps where added. When the engine/program crashes, the exception gets intercepted and generates a dump file that contains a stack trace as well as local variable values. It works in release mode too, so there's no performance cost; the only restriction is that I need to keep the .pdb files associated to a release. From a user's point of view, a small dialog box pops up and asks whether a minidump should be saved or not. If agreed, it generates a file called 'minidump.dmp' near the executable. This can be packed together with the log file and sent to me for further investigations.
All future releases of prototypes, ASEToBin, StoryGen etc.. should include this minidump.
Modelling challenges
Congratulations to the winner of our first modelling challenge; Sparlin, closely followed by Bahamute.Kickman. The goal was to model a space or ground-based prison that fits the style of our sci-fi universe, we are very happy with the results!
Want to participate in the next modelling challenge? Don't hesitate to become a member and check out our modelling challenge forum section.
Lava experiments
On the "visual" side, Flavien Brebion(aka InfinityAdmin) has spent a couple of hours on 'lava'. We are happy with the effect so far but later on, we plan to add a screen-space heat (distortion) effect.
With HDRI enabled (like in the following screenshots), and the glowing effect, it's looking rather nice.
It's likely that similar shader will be used for the sun surface effect.
A couple of day and night shots:
For more information check out the latest entry in the Development Journal.
I really like the lava!
I'm still waiting patiently until more of the game becomes playable, until then these screens will have to tide me over :P .
Keep up the great work!
awesome stuff, keep up the good work
awesome stuff, damn i was really hoping for a video :)
A new video is planned in the coming months showing off all the things we have been working on the last months, but we want it to be polished and breathtaking. We still have a couple of things to do.
Oh and thanks for fixing the layout-probs of the newspost(whoever did it) The editor is a bit messy sometimes.
God i love these updates.
cool! and will the lava, or any of the environmental features have an effect on your ship, or is it improbable that ships subjected to the harsh environments of outer space are affected by heat, wind or water?
I'd really dig it, if there were some submarine, sublavae and subterranean bases in this game, but I guess the plan is to have skydome-like cities only on the surface.
Yes it will have some effect on your ship, Im sure lava will damage your ship if you get too close and your ship can get dirty when flying in an atmosphere of a planet.
We are not going for underwater environments so submarines are out, subterranean bases(tunnels, caves, bunkers, sewers,...) on the other hand will be in the game. We are aiming to get some Descent-like gameplay in Infinity.
Every update of infinity is eye candy or brain candy;) lava looks so amazing if not photorealistic you guys doing such great things while making this game and your not a big moneymaking company:)
I really not much for flying around in space and shooting at ships, but I'm still looking forward to this one very much, I always enjoy a well made game. :-)
Amazing, as always! Pretty crazy that this was done in "few hours." Can't wait to see the finished effect.
So how far are you guys done? I keep going on your website and there is never much new information. How about some videos and maybe a planet beta where we can fly about please?
Awesome work btw!
On the smaller spaceships is there anyway that we can walk around inside them? Get in and out? Are we going to be able to walk about like in GTAIV?
Our website is outdated, we are working on a new one. Check out our forums we have monthly updates n the progress of the game and lots of discussions about the game going on + you can take a look at the contributions people are making for the game. You can find a link to the Development Journal in the newspost.
We have released a lot of videos in the past and we plant to release other videos in the future. Not a lot of games show so much so early in the development.
No you can't 'walk' around in Infinity, its a space game not a walk game ;). Adding a walking feature would mean atleast an extra year of work for something that doesn't add anything to the gameplay of our game.
Infinity is very different than GTA.
Wow! Lava looks amazing, can't wait to see my first red dwarf filled with the stuff :D will be pretty awesome to use it as a tactic as well, draw the enemy into hostile conditions :D. And to think this is an mmo. Nice work as always.
best part is the last picture :D
Thanks for reply Betelgueze. :)
Have you seen the start of star wars episode 3? Hopefully the space battles will turn out something like that heh?!!!
Space combat in Star Wars is cool but not very realistic, we will go for a more realistic feel, ocourse that doesn't mean it will be less cool ;)
You can try our free combat prototype to get an idea what the combat will be like in the full game:
Infinity-universe.com
our check out our videos from the ICP:
Youtube.com
awesome stuff.
Ooooh pretty! :B
We appreciate the positive and constructive comments we get from you guys, thanks!