August in Review
In-case you weren't already aware, the front page of the site, News Board on the forums, and the Twitter feed are the go-to sources for daily progress reports on BR's development. There I post the daily Twitter log, as well as our (community suggested!) random development snapshots!
Tidbits from August Week 1 (End of July)
In Brief: Gabe researches into splines and catmull-rom, Nathan hunts an issue with entity expansion that has plagued Blockade Runner since W2, Micah experiments with different styles for the character models, Zack modernizes our 7 month out-of-date multiplayer logging methods, and Nathan corners and eliminates some very important old chunk collapsing bug.
Tidbits from August Week 2
In Brief: A poorly placed Clear() method gives us a scare and leads to some code refactorin'! Micah experiments with making heads from scratch and Z & N clobber rendering issues, Nathan discovers a single line of code that's caused chunk expansions issues since the beginning of BR, Gabe finishes integration of the new scroll bar, and Gabe condenses and simplifies bunches of redundant code.
Tidbits from August Week 3
In Brief: Nathan solves a major issue with prefabs and blocks, Zack resolves issues that were cropping up with Normals, Gabe and Aaron reap the benefits of months of hard work on refactoring the UI engine, the new 3D pipeline is just about wrapped up, and Micah continues his experiments on character models (from serious, to too cartoony).
Tidbits from August Week 4
In Brief: Zack and Nathan condense and cleanse bad lighting code, Gabe and Aaron finish up the new revamped main menu, Nathan's able to eliminate old rendering issues that were long held off, Gabe and Aaron finish off the new code for dialog windows, and Zack begins restoring thruster input in MP using Gabe's awesome new Input system.
Tidbits from August Week 5
In Brief: Gabe and I start to run into problems with the current state manager for UI menus, Nathan and Zack consolidate 2-year-old code logic for thrusters and reduce the clutter by hundreds of lines of code, Zack makes some really useful 3D diagnostic tools to help us diagnose issues in 3D space, and thruster glitches are hunted down.
Closing Comments
In July we'd built a vastly superior input system, as well as a much needed re-construction of the 2D/3D Pipeline that makes drawing elements a breeze. August has seen further progress on the revamping and refactoring of old code, from the elimination of entity expansion issues to cleaning up the old deferred lighting code. All of this work is making the game engine easier to develop content for (UI work that used to take days takes only hours now!), and allows us to make the game we set out to make without restrictions.
The month of August also represents a whole year of development since W71, a long road that has seen us (for various reasons) essentially rebuild the entire game engine from scratch (there's not much code from pre-W71 remaining). We have to thank you all for your continued patience and understanding during these hard months (and months) of waiting, and ask your patience for a just little longer (should be no later than the end of 2013).
Work on thrusters and menu revamps is a positive sign that we're out of the days of "black screens of death", and are getting back to a playable state of game again (a requirement for supporter involvement). The frequent mentioning of multiplayer LAN tests will be your best indicator that the return of supporter access is imminent.
To follow the daily development resource postings, head to the forum, follow the Twitter, or check out the Facebook page! We're also on the Dev Chat from 9:00am-5:00pm (EST) almost every day, so if you've got a question or comment fire away!
- Aaron
