Dark Storm: VR Missions is a single-player stealth/action title developed by Fenrir Studios and inspired by classic games such as Metal Gear Solid and Deus Ex.

Post news Report RSS Sometimes We Need to Go Backwards Before We Can Move Forward Updates #16

Over the past 2 months we've been using extensive profiling and memory analysing tools to ensure we are properly utilizing all computer resources available to us. Plus restructuring our team since the key departure of our lead Prop Modeler Rob lawrence. He's having another kid and needs to take time away from the project so we've been planning with him over the past few weeks how the transition would and how it would work. Which it has worked over perfectly and today is his last day on the team.

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Over the past 2 months we've been using extensive profiling and memory analysing tools to ensure we are properly utilizing all computer resources available to us. Plus restructuring our team since the key departure of our lead Prop Modeler Rob lawrence.

He's having another kid and needs to take time away from the project so we've been planning with him over the past few weeks how the transition would and how it would work. Which it has worked over perfectly and today is his last day on the team.Good luck on your future endeavours! You'll always be welcome on this team.

So without further ado! Let's get right into the nitty gritty and update you guys on what we've been up to.


“Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow.” ~Albert Einstein



Level Design

Joel(The Knightly One)

Has been working on our tutorial system for the introduction of the game and scripting and doing low level tests before we go in and place in the final text. You can see some examples of that in work below! We're aiming internally for QA testing sometime very soon and all these simples are on the crunch to get finalized and ready for that stage of development. You'll also notice we removed all the textures which we'll go over in the optimization section.

Dimitry & Joel
Have both been working to block out and get the final trainstation in so the modelers or rather Dimitry can make a unique mesh set for that area. This should come together rather fast and be ready for our final builds in the coming weeks internally

Jacob

Has been working to polish and clean up the last hour of gameplay in the first chapter by doing patrol placement and getting final assets in the Parcel Room & Armoury. These areas are vast and allow the player to accomplish their objectives however they wish so he's planning for them the best he can. Till the QA testers jump in and make him go crazy from all the possibilities he didn't think of! (Im looking at you here blade!)

Rob Lawrence

Left us a few last goodies with "Floaters" that we can additively apply to our floors with practically no cost at all.

Animation

Stacey

She's Currently working on some replacement VR Intro cutscenes so we can get rid of those rather "Meh" intro sequences we have currently in the VR.


Ellie

She's been working on better and more improved hit and death animations. Heres a few for your enjoyment!


Programming

Robert

I've recently brought on a new programmer 2 in fact so im no longer the sole programmer on the team anymore! So cheers for that. Over the past few months ive been researching GOAP and other AI approaches to implement so i could get the quality i was looking for. I settled on GOAP this approach to AI is utilized in Fear, Deux Ex Human Revolution and the last 2 tomb raider remakes. Below i will document my progress in this regards.

From a GDC talk from last year i was able to plan out and figure out the best methods and length i should aim for . After having some research and ideas of how to proceed i further devolved into establishing the base libraries.

I started utitlizing more source code and wrote the entire system in C++

This is an example of a system where they will "mark" all the paths on a destination and attempt to find a better location that doesn't over expose themselves to the player. Below is an example of the system in action utilizing a base GOAP system ive setup.

Over the next few days i plan on working polishing up "Rush Player" to improve their shooting location logic. Plus also improve their move to cover logic so it doesn't choose such silly cover so far away and in the players line of sight. Once these systems are established all i will need to do is work on their ability to sprint to further away goals and revamp their Focus Manager system. Im extremely confident in the progress ive had rewriting the AI's combat code and i cant wait till they are done so i can ship them in the next HUGE VR update latter this year!

Optimization

Now the nitty gritty! From profiling and playtesting the builds myself and with other team members we noticed several red flags related to our usage of VRAM and overall FPS stability. In key areas we were hitting well below acceptable ranges so we decided to whiten out all the base materials and focus in optimization in stages so it's more practical. First this means we wont be adding textures till all final meshes/assets are in so we can process things in this order.
1. All Base Meshes in (No Textures) : Is base target frame hit?
2. Base Lighting Work
3. Having Texture/Shader artists work in the section to maintain a agreed upon framerate
4. Final Lighting Done : Final checks to ensure the lighting is effective and isnt draining to much upon the computer (Overall Framerate)

Motion Comic:

Our talented Storyboard director Alejandra has also been working on a motion comic. She's actually looking for a few artists to help us release it early next year in anticipation for our games promotion. Heres a few recent boards from that. If you're interested apply below! You have to be able to draw within the style of the first picture i posted below.

Discord and Dev Community Server (All are welcome!)

What we're trying to do by opening up a public discord for people that are interested in the game to talk to devs and follow news and to make a hub for our patreon to talk with us. If your supporter or pateron message a dev or post in the chat so we can verify it and give you the proper tag.

Team Discord ^


Recruitment:

Due to our game being a royalty contract. (You get paid after the game is released based on how much time and work you put in), we often have people drop out randomly at random intervals as life demands. For this reason we are almost always looking for new people to bolster our ranks and join the Fenrir Team.

If you are interested, please check our post here for more details.

Other Ways to Support our team

O and remember, buying the VR Missions helps keep our server infrastructure up helps us keep developing the game. It makes our lives as indie developers that much easier. If your not interested in the VR or already have it check out our Patreon by clicking the image below. Thanks for following us and we hope to have a solid release soon next year! Also we'll be looking for QA testers to test performance and gameplay! So watch Indiedb closely!


A Link to our Team Patreon! ^




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Omegakill
Omegakill

Good luck to Rob :) This is a really well detailed post and the game is looking fantastic.

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Ripley
Ripley

Looking great!!!!

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Coconut2024
Coconut2024

Great

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