Sorry been a bit behind which is frustrating and annoying for me and you guys. We had such a positive start on this mod then things kinda slowed down far a bit with family events and huge game releases.
Refractor 2 Visual Enhancement
Well, Uber (being the genius he tends to be) taught himself how to make shaders. That darkness filter is now being removed and in it's place the shaders are being remade. Along with that he has to change the overall coloring of the maps to match the new shaders. So with the new release the maps may have an overall different look. We will be posting screenshots when they are available. (The new water shaders are NICE)
When where there be a new release?
I plan for there to be a new release once the first level is 100% completed and ready to play. Even though some development for one of the later missions has already started. Currently, all that is left is some audio work and the cutscene. So I am hoping late May at this point.
What is the "cutscene"?
The end of mission 1 of the campaign will feature a cutscene that will kick off the main story to the campaign. Originally this was going to be a directed short film, but things got complicated with custom animations and special coded drivable cameras that got annoyingly complicated to run in an internet hosted match. Plus with these animations nothing would actually be allowed to interact with each other, and where is the fun in that with zombies?! So currently I am building an animated comic style cutscene. This is the idea of taking still pictures/artwork and adding audio work to make it seem more real, and have it more interesting than just looking at pictures. All the audio work for the cutscene is completed and now I just have to build the custom models that will be like the animations but as a still.
What more is being done?
Well, to fully enhance the BF2 engine visually, Uber is making his own shaders for the mod. We are hoping this will either replace or improve the current filter we have going. I can assure you the work he is doing is an insane improvement to the normal look to BF2 and it is already starting to look like a whole new game. (which is what a mod is all about).
As far as gameplay not much has changed. I personally took a huge crack at the AI system and to be honest if anything the bots are much more aggressive than they used to be. My attempts to make them not run from a grenade have sadly failed since with AI breaking one thing breaks everything. I've had zombies think they were helicopters, I've had zombies dance in a straight line doing a conga line, which was hilarious but not what your typical zombie might do. Overall, they failed my Zombie Academy, and I was forced to shoot them all dead.. Unfortunately, they were already dead in the first place and I was forced to retreat.
OPDD has a lot left to be done, once the first mission is out I hope for all later missions to be much easier to code.<!--Session data--><!--Session data-->
