It has been 9 months since the last update. We have had two entire semesters and a few short school breaks. What progress have we made since last September?
Sadly, we haven't made a whole lot of progress on the game itself, but we have been seriously working on something that we think will seriously help PLH flow: ABSYNTHE!
"What is Absynthe?", you may ask, well it is our own heavily-modified and updated branch of Source 2013 that uses the Source Engine's source code to offer a more advanced SDK/Engine Branch. It utilizes many of the advanced lighting techniques seen within Alien Swarm. This is pretty much why we haven't made much progress in the way of gameplay. A few engine modifications will be implemented as well to ensure easier modding and yes, we will attempt to get it released onto Steam for free. For the making of Absynthe, we have officially teamed-up with some of the developers of Loreleine, another cool mod for Portal 1. Together, we're going to include a couple of mappacks/demos to showcase the engine, while at the same time, adding plot/story to PLH as a whole.
You may be asking, "Why do you need to make a new engine branch/SDK?" Well, we (both Cloud 6 and the Loreleine Team) have gotten sick and tired of having to build our own mod in Source SDK for every single thing we do. The Vanilla SDK/Branches are great and all, but seriously annoying at times.
As for the capabilities of Absynthe, we are able to do:
- Realtime advanced lighting calculation, much more powerful than what the Source SDK is capable of normally.
- Camera Bob and View-Model Animations.
- Compatibility with far more than just Bink video and Cinepac codec for startup videos and the content of the media folder.
- Little to no map porting required, just put the maps in and run them. All needed files will be generated on startup.
- Black Mesa Engine-style particle physics.
- Post-processing (Very similar to that of the Black Mesa-engine).
Currently, some additions we are working on are:
- Making the lighting more beautiful in other aspects.
- Projected Textures.
- Post Processing (or a low-quality version of it, at the very least).
So now you can see why we have been so quiet for so long. Engine programming is very time-consuming and very difficult most of the time. Hopefully, by the next update, we will have more to show so please bare with us!
Until next time,
-Gamer#1 - Storywriter
Oh, it's look very nice! Very hard and beautiful work! I like it, hope that's will a great story :)
This sounds absolutely amazing, can't wait to hear more about this engine! Will it have portal physics more similar to Portal or Portal 2 (camera rotation and portal standing)?
So far side Physics we didnt change anything but the the movement are simillar to Portal 2 and you even get Portal 2 Chell in this engine ! Not the one from GameBanana or else ... the real Portal 2 Chell seen in Portal 2.
Soon, once i get enough maps done, i'll record a short video showcasing a bit of the engine and Loreleine will also use its capabalities !
Also if any of you guys knows about Programming or whatever that could help us, well comment below because we're still very few working on this. With more peoples, more things could be possible for this engine such as custom shaders or post-processing and more !
Thanks for the support ! Have a nice day !
Greenyred ~ Lead Dev of PLH and Co-Lead of Absynthe
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The work we've done in such a short time is amazing!