September update news

Hello all!

Welcome to our September update.

Since our previous update in July, we've finished production on our soundtrack. Both the in-game files and album versions are completed and implemented, so unless we find further issues with it, that part of the project is pretty much done. The album, which consists of a series of suite arrangements, is going to be available on Bandcamp and some other venues (such as YouTube and SoundCloud) when we are ready to release the mod.

In mapping news, we are still working on the exterior Area 51 location. Progress there has been slow, as it's a large map and our environment designer has been busy with his personal obligations. It is close to being done, and compared to the original map, has nearly tripled in playable area. We have also tackled the bug list quite a bit, and coding-wise some bits and pieces have been optimized and trimmed. Various other improvements have been made to a wide variety of the other maps such as implementing our own wish-list items, adding decoration and improving on the assortment of ambient sounds in the game.

The playable area has been vastly expanded.

We are also proud to present that in collaboration with unifiedDX we have implemented switchable 1x/2x UI sizes. For those with a resolution of 1280x960 or above (note that both the height and width have to be larger) can use the new 2x graphics mode so that texts, menus and other screens will be readable. Our graphics artist has also been busy recently with creating new 2x Davavault images in addition to the 1x that will be used by default. These new datavaults will contain more details then their 1x counterparts due to being 800x800 compared to 400x400.

As an example of lingering technical difficulties I've personally struggled with, I’ll talk about a BSP issue in the Paris Cathedral map. A BSP issue is where the world geometry is not assembled correctly by the Unreal editor. This particular error occurred after I went in to fix a texture misalignment on a “mover” object, which requires having the editor reassemble or “rebuild” the map. After the rebuild I discovered the BSP error tearing up a piece of a house near the canal in the map. A lot of time and effort went into trying to solve it by changing surface solidity and the positioning of brushes (geometry details) on the house, with several attempts at rebuilding it (each rebuild takes around 15 minutes). When that didn’t solve the issue, I finally gave up and removed some brushes on the house, namely a set of windows. That solved the problem, but then another issue came up with house nearby. As much if not more time went into fixing that second house, creating zone portals for all the windows, changing solidity and so on. When that was finally settled I found out when testing that the entire map was accidentally flooded due to a leaking water zone- although the method of fixing the issue is quite different, it is a remarkably similar problem to the real-world circumstance. And that's what I am working to solve right now.

I’m looking forward to sharing more with you all as we begin to finish finishing Revision.