Decided to go for simpler icon looks for the powerups which players can pick up along the tracks as the older powerups were harder to identify from afar.

Here's a sample rocket pack powerup.

Posted by Prometheus
Small real time outdoor test scene to test paging geometry as well as our new water shader materials. Several future wish list improvements include more material blending for terrain surfaces. Further stress tests and optimizations for dense foliage systems needed.

Posted by Prometheus
More screenshots on our SSAO implementation. This time with all textures+lighting+post processing on.

Image01 Before SSAO









Image01 After SSAO









Image 02 Before SSAO









Image 02 After SSAO









Image 03 Before SSAO









Image 03 After SSAO









Image 04 Before SSAO









Image 04 After SSAO









Image 05 Before SSAO









Image 05 After SSAO









Image 06 Before SSAO









Image 06 After SSAO
Posted by Prometheus
Touch this powerup and several mines spawn on the track within the area.

Posted by Prometheus
Just completed this missile pack powerup to replenish those used missiles.

Posted by Prometheus
Oooh yeah. Left-Hand just added in screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) to our Solid State Engine. Now all added details such as normals really POP out ! >:)

Image01: Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (BEFORE)















Image01: With Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (AFTER)















Image02: Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (BEFORE)















Image02: With Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (AFTER)















Image03: Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (BEFORE)















Image03: With Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (AFTER)















Image04: Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (BEFORE)















Image04: With Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (AFTER)















Image05: Without Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (BEFORE)















Image05: With Screen Space Ambient Occlusion (AFTER)
Posted by Prometheus
Early stage ammopack powerup FX test.

Posted by Prometheus
Just a day before I tried back network play of aftershock and to my dismay the jittering issue came back. I thought I had nailed it but apparently I did not. So I delved more into the design of my code and did tons of debugging again. After a few test cases, I finally found out the issue. It was two fold.

Firstly, there was an issue where my client side's simulation was shifting farther and farther away from the server's simulation due to time discrepancies between both systems. Secondly, my camera simulation code was not entirely in sync with the physics simulation code when applying frame smoothing.

After some tinkering, I managed to fix both issue. For the first issue, I kept a 5 frame buffer of frame latency to get the average latency across snapshots. From there, I use it to cap the frame difference between the current physics frame and the given server physics frame.

Now everything works like a charm and no more jittering from my test case. In fact it's so smooth compared to my last work that I'm mightily proud of it! :-) I do know that I'm not revealing much of how I did my network syncing here. I'm rather busy working on many things right now. But I promise I'll put up a post with some diagrams some time later to explain the approach I used. In short it's what Gaffer suggested for the server client approach though like I found out as I did this, it's not as simple as it sounds. There's slightly more to it than just sync and smooth.

Aside from that, I wish that bullet provides a proper method for me to selectively simulate a group of rigid bodies. This would help a lot for the prediction simulation after snapping of server update state; we don't want to end up wrongly simulating non networked local rigid bodies or non important rigid bodies that are not part of the network update snapshot.
Posted by Lf3T-Hn4D
Decided to work on our new Solid State Engine logo which is responsible for all the visual goodness which is seen in Aftershock.

















The 2 gears in the center represent our engine's earlier loading screen :D created by Lih-Hern.

Posted by Prometheus
I could not resist playing with our new semi-deferred renderer and decided to add play around with more real time lights in our editor >:) Imagine it with lightning effects emitting from the device.....

We'll be able to place in virtually unlimited lights real time for not only indoor scenes but also FX effects like fairy dusts...sci fi weapons blazing....the possibilities are just endless !

Posted by Prometheus
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