HOPE IS FADING
THIS WEBSITE IS ABOUT THE DEVELOPMENT SIDE OF THINGS AND CHANGES DAILY / FREQUENTLY,
PLEASE MAKE SURE TO REVISIT.
The early state.. of Early Access
BEFORE PURCHASING TAKE A MOMENT TO LOOK AT THE INFORMATION ON THIS WEBSITE,
IF YOU WISH TO PLAY SOMETHING MORE FINISHED PLEASE WAIT A COUPLE MONTHS,
THIS IS FOR REALLY EARLY SUPPORT.
CURRENT STATE
YOU ARE JOINING A WORK IN PROGRESS, ANYONE WHO WANTS TO SUPPORT AND FOLLOW THE DEVELOPMENT CAN JUMP IN ALREADY.
This is a technical foundation. It incorporates a lot of the functionality that will be found in the main game.
However it is the first implementation and has not had the polish or iterations needed to make every system, combat, enemy behavior, UI or visuals feel smooth.
You can play through in about 30 minutes.
WHAT IS NEXT
The plan is to provide several updates a week until it makes sense to move away from what is playable in Early Access to the development of the main game. The priority here is that it is fundamentaly fun to play, includes enough variation to support the play styles found in the game, implements most technical work and no issues remain.
Major focus right now is to resolve enemy behavior and variation. Additional armor and weapon parts and upgrades. Abilities. Lighting change from Lumen GI to hybrid or baked.
Additionally all visual fx and animations will be replaced. Along with removal of some of the last third party 3d meshes.
When all this is done, I will return to visual work and increase graphics quality.
There next year and a half will merge the technical foundation with all the high end graphics workflows.
The plan is to provide several updates a week until it makes sense to move away from what is playable in Early Access to the development of the main game. The priority here is that it is fundamentaly fun to play, includes enough variation to support the play styles found in the game, implements most technical work and no issues remain.
Major focus right now is to resolve enemy behavior and variation. Additional armor and weapon parts and upgrades. Abilities. Lighting change from Lumen GI to hybrid or baked.
Additionally all visual fx and animations will be replaced. Along with removal of some of the last third party 3d meshes.
When all this is done, I will return to visual work and increase graphics quality.
There next year and a half will merge the technical foundation with all the high end graphics workflows.
IMPLEMENTED OPTIMIZATIONS AND GENERAL TECHNICAL CHANGES
NOT ALL OF THIS IN THE CURRENT VERSION OF THE GAME,
OVER THE NEXT MONTHS THIS WILL SLOWLY GET ADDED
spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to understand this engine, which means story, gameplay and visuals are only coming in now, later than i want to, but it is critical to have a strong functional foundation before pushing the visuals
by default everything is on.. so the task is to turn everything off. Some of the work done, in no particular order
optimized prepass
optimized occlusion queries, taking the faster route where possible in code, harder on instances
custom precomputed visibility culling
uobject management
shadow management, better way of keeping track of cache validation
shadow disabling methods
instance management
optimization through scripting, set visibility and other variables on components, tick behavior
cast shadow from LOD
caching shadows for various actor types
tickbehavior
foliage shading
texture maps storing a wide range of data, multi channels and compression
memory managed
normal map management and compression, reducing file size
texture streaming behavior, preloading and keeping in memory
additional mip settings or switching
addtoroot, preloading an entire level for fast opening
custom light bake GI method, hybrid lumen
performance tracker
Manage PSO related data
user available perf data, game, render, rhi gpu timers to make perf settings more clear
NVAPI, showing nvidia related gpu stats
gpu memory stats
dev overlay, allowing you to see when garbage collection, streaming, visibility, saving or other things happen in the background, bigger events that can cause stalls
memory and texture memory pool management, based on current available memory and system
drawcall and shader optimization
general 3d pipeline, asset and texture creation workflows
flowmaps for water, foliage and more
custom tree building tools, replacing the need for other applications, fast implementation of changes if needed, custom library and behavior, instant results in engine and optimization via workflow
custom root system,
2D fluid systems, allowing for more detailed interaction
water tile system with prebaked fluid sims, blending in different ways with velocity and anims and behavior
custom instancing tool replacing the 10 year old foliage tool, lack of placement behavior, lack of control after placement, lack of library and preset management ect
simulation tools
custom vertex color tools, for animation and storing additional data
custom instance data, sampling and storing other data, able to sample ambient values, disabling cast shadow, disabling lit shader model and using a cached brightness value
particle interaction
storing data per pixel
various render target driven data
world normal tool, allowing for accurate blending of ground or terrain meshes
AI optimization and scaling based on cpu
AI pathfinding
animation optmizations, update frame
bone updates and for foliage lot of different blending and switching out
control rigs
rootmotionscaling, tested implementation of motionmatching but dont like the workflow, lack of control, prefer a more custom ruleset
xbox controller, custom deadzone and angle behavior
build every function in the game, needing to expand and layer as i go
spend a lot of time reverse engineering code
spend a large amount of time optimizing workflows for content, photogrammetry and capturing foliage
supersampling, increasing texture detail for beyond its regular baked result
light weight respawning the player without breaking references, heavy restarting or streaming
...
NOT ALL OF THIS IN THE CURRENT VERSION OF THE GAME,
OVER THE NEXT MONTHS THIS WILL SLOWLY GET ADDED
spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to understand this engine, which means story, gameplay and visuals are only coming in now, later than i want to, but it is critical to have a strong functional foundation before pushing the visuals
by default everything is on.. so the task is to turn everything off. Some of the work done, in no particular order
optimized prepass
optimized occlusion queries, taking the faster route where possible in code, harder on instances
custom precomputed visibility culling
uobject management
shadow management, better way of keeping track of cache validation
shadow disabling methods
instance management
optimization through scripting, set visibility and other variables on components, tick behavior
cast shadow from LOD
caching shadows for various actor types
tickbehavior
foliage shading
texture maps storing a wide range of data, multi channels and compression
memory managed
normal map management and compression, reducing file size
texture streaming behavior, preloading and keeping in memory
additional mip settings or switching
addtoroot, preloading an entire level for fast opening
custom light bake GI method, hybrid lumen
performance tracker
Manage PSO related data
user available perf data, game, render, rhi gpu timers to make perf settings more clear
NVAPI, showing nvidia related gpu stats
gpu memory stats
dev overlay, allowing you to see when garbage collection, streaming, visibility, saving or other things happen in the background, bigger events that can cause stalls
memory and texture memory pool management, based on current available memory and system
drawcall and shader optimization
general 3d pipeline, asset and texture creation workflows
flowmaps for water, foliage and more
custom tree building tools, replacing the need for other applications, fast implementation of changes if needed, custom library and behavior, instant results in engine and optimization via workflow
custom root system,
2D fluid systems, allowing for more detailed interaction
water tile system with prebaked fluid sims, blending in different ways with velocity and anims and behavior
custom instancing tool replacing the 10 year old foliage tool, lack of placement behavior, lack of control after placement, lack of library and preset management ect
simulation tools
custom vertex color tools, for animation and storing additional data
custom instance data, sampling and storing other data, able to sample ambient values, disabling cast shadow, disabling lit shader model and using a cached brightness value
particle interaction
storing data per pixel
various render target driven data
world normal tool, allowing for accurate blending of ground or terrain meshes
AI optimization and scaling based on cpu
AI pathfinding
animation optmizations, update frame
bone updates and for foliage lot of different blending and switching out
control rigs
rootmotionscaling, tested implementation of motionmatching but dont like the workflow, lack of control, prefer a more custom ruleset
xbox controller, custom deadzone and angle behavior
build every function in the game, needing to expand and layer as i go
spend a lot of time reverse engineering code
spend a large amount of time optimizing workflows for content, photogrammetry and capturing foliage
supersampling, increasing texture detail for beyond its regular baked result
light weight respawning the player without breaking references, heavy restarting or streaming
...
PLANNED CHANGES AND FUTURE WORK - EVERYTHING IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND MAY BE DELAYED, INCORPORATED INTO OTHER FEATURES OR MAY NEVER BE DEVELOPED DUE TO NO LONGER BEIGN RELEVENT OR OTHERWISE
Lumen is an amazing piece of tech great while working but for end purposes not a good fit for this project, I need more control, ability to blend multiple lighting options
remove LUMEN GI, it needs further testing but it smears due to temporal sampling probe gathering causing a soft blur which is really bad for the high resolution content I am building,
its sampling method is not a good fit and performance cost is too high. Would be able to support more GPUs with better perf as not all support RT that well
Implement various lighting cache methods to avoid issues above, baked lighting with own memory management
Re introduce nanite, nanite is fantastic and has a great benefit but is not the default
Color management, need different monitors to further expand my knowledge.
shadow optimization reducing increase while moving
add extra layer of occlusion culling method, precached
canopy system, where trees in the level actually are structured to work together
futher exploration of 8K and multi GPU
customizing the engine, looking for a more custom renderer, potentially branching off in the future
custom terrain tools, current setup is not enough
Look at erosion based workflows
terrain formations tool, creating low memory high detail shapes that can be manipulated
finish my foliage creation and placement toolset
3d performance heatmap and reports
further optimizations and hand crafted environments, spending time creating real art and not rush every decision or action
playstation controller support on pc
xbox and playstation support
Lumen is an amazing piece of tech great while working but for end purposes not a good fit for this project, I need more control, ability to blend multiple lighting options
remove LUMEN GI, it needs further testing but it smears due to temporal sampling probe gathering causing a soft blur which is really bad for the high resolution content I am building,
its sampling method is not a good fit and performance cost is too high. Would be able to support more GPUs with better perf as not all support RT that well
Implement various lighting cache methods to avoid issues above, baked lighting with own memory management
Re introduce nanite, nanite is fantastic and has a great benefit but is not the default
Color management, need different monitors to further expand my knowledge.
shadow optimization reducing increase while moving
add extra layer of occlusion culling method, precached
canopy system, where trees in the level actually are structured to work together
futher exploration of 8K and multi GPU
customizing the engine, looking for a more custom renderer, potentially branching off in the future
custom terrain tools, current setup is not enough
Look at erosion based workflows
terrain formations tool, creating low memory high detail shapes that can be manipulated
finish my foliage creation and placement toolset
3d performance heatmap and reports
further optimizations and hand crafted environments, spending time creating real art and not rush every decision or action
playstation controller support on pc
xbox and playstation support
AS A COMPANY
Main priority is to keep development going by becoming self sustainable.
to deliver a stable product extensive testinging across wide range of gpus is needed, slowly invest in this
Build many test scenarios to identify bottlenecks and provide presets.
Motion capture equipment
Camera equipment, I do not wish to upgrade my current camera but it is several times over what it is designed for.
As well as upgrading capture setup for foliage
Sound design, more recording equipment
Starting a studio with a small core focused on delivering highly polished games.
RND to further optimize, improve and customize rendering pipeline
Main priority is to keep development going by becoming self sustainable.
to deliver a stable product extensive testinging across wide range of gpus is needed, slowly invest in this
Build many test scenarios to identify bottlenecks and provide presets.
Motion capture equipment
Camera equipment, I do not wish to upgrade my current camera but it is several times over what it is designed for.
As well as upgrading capture setup for foliage
Sound design, more recording equipment
Starting a studio with a small core focused on delivering highly polished games.
RND to further optimize, improve and customize rendering pipeline
CURRENT OPEN ISSUES AND TASKS
add crosshair option to crafting
camera collision
Need a way to restart
using energy signature lures or draws in enemies
enemy types
flashlight should consume energy
Nav Marker animation
buy or trade should pop up AFTER the story line from vendor
rifle aim forward with control rig
ammo pickups need to have some form of storage vs just disappearing
high velocity bullets swap, for now just a global upgrade
rename plastic metal to 3 new compounds, common and rare
outlines fade after interaction
Terminal marker should wait for dialogue
random bug with animation sync jumping the character forward
iondize harden or strengthen a piece
prevent salvage all items
radar ability UI
ask vendor to link stashes
play scripted sounds
while shooting DOF kicks in
melee hit with rifle
script the concrete blocks falling better
stabilize energy cell, allows you do recharge faster
add difficulty, make robots more accurate
if player is not indoors after fallback add a dialogue warning forcing it
load game save game
runtime menu music wont play if you re open it quickly while its fading out
hit indicator disappeared investigate
second ability power surge aoe? cmpliments the overload hint at stacking energy is higher output
make weapon sounds its own audio subclass
if you die reset ammo to minimum if lower
make sure hud damage dirt mask is dynamic and updates / changes
make energy shield small on equip, add proper animation to scale / deploy with fx
rifle trace into aim direction, create a trace or offset to point it at world location
dead ai become static or something cheap
add a max texture size option
crafting machine, upgrade weapons, add weapon function, too many weapons
upgrade colors
player flashlight shadow too low res
build in perf checks
allow opacity changes for perf overlay and outline in UI
focus indicator while playing melee which enemy you are locked on
AI run away, different behavior
add current objective to in game menu
target lock or focus on enemy trace and move to
start with smaller jump distance, uses less energy
overloading core to gain an energy boost can cause damage, balance this
physical animation
support exporting perf data to xml
perf profiles and gpu overview per mode
theres an issue when walking on odd collision that causes the on jump end stuff to trigger rapidly
dropping left shoulder from inventory to equipped right shoulder pushes right shoulder back to inventory and equips left
leap in the air needs a curve fall off so its not straight up but looks affected by gravity
check which sounds play as 2D
switching direction while sprint is held is inaccurate and skips playing the stop start or pivot animation state
follow up on bug "for some reason a grenade retriggers death event in ai base bp"
find out why jumping is unreliable, events are not always firing as they should
create utility to disable all receive decal, but then turn it on for a radius of actors around each decal actor
measure depth when jumping into water to spawn a small or large splash in combo with velocity
tool to disable affect nav mesh
tool to see which material do not have their physics set
...
add crosshair option to crafting
camera collision
Need a way to restart
using energy signature lures or draws in enemies
enemy types
flashlight should consume energy
Nav Marker animation
buy or trade should pop up AFTER the story line from vendor
rifle aim forward with control rig
ammo pickups need to have some form of storage vs just disappearing
high velocity bullets swap, for now just a global upgrade
rename plastic metal to 3 new compounds, common and rare
outlines fade after interaction
Terminal marker should wait for dialogue
random bug with animation sync jumping the character forward
iondize harden or strengthen a piece
prevent salvage all items
radar ability UI
ask vendor to link stashes
play scripted sounds
while shooting DOF kicks in
melee hit with rifle
script the concrete blocks falling better
stabilize energy cell, allows you do recharge faster
add difficulty, make robots more accurate
if player is not indoors after fallback add a dialogue warning forcing it
load game save game
runtime menu music wont play if you re open it quickly while its fading out
hit indicator disappeared investigate
second ability power surge aoe? cmpliments the overload hint at stacking energy is higher output
make weapon sounds its own audio subclass
if you die reset ammo to minimum if lower
make sure hud damage dirt mask is dynamic and updates / changes
make energy shield small on equip, add proper animation to scale / deploy with fx
rifle trace into aim direction, create a trace or offset to point it at world location
dead ai become static or something cheap
add a max texture size option
crafting machine, upgrade weapons, add weapon function, too many weapons
upgrade colors
player flashlight shadow too low res
build in perf checks
allow opacity changes for perf overlay and outline in UI
focus indicator while playing melee which enemy you are locked on
AI run away, different behavior
add current objective to in game menu
target lock or focus on enemy trace and move to
start with smaller jump distance, uses less energy
overloading core to gain an energy boost can cause damage, balance this
physical animation
support exporting perf data to xml
perf profiles and gpu overview per mode
theres an issue when walking on odd collision that causes the on jump end stuff to trigger rapidly
dropping left shoulder from inventory to equipped right shoulder pushes right shoulder back to inventory and equips left
leap in the air needs a curve fall off so its not straight up but looks affected by gravity
check which sounds play as 2D
switching direction while sprint is held is inaccurate and skips playing the stop start or pivot animation state
follow up on bug "for some reason a grenade retriggers death event in ai base bp"
find out why jumping is unreliable, events are not always firing as they should
create utility to disable all receive decal, but then turn it on for a radius of actors around each decal actor
measure depth when jumping into water to spawn a small or large splash in combo with velocity
tool to disable affect nav mesh
tool to see which material do not have their physics set
...
Adding more segments about visual work and many prototyped workflows shortly.
https://www.mobygames.com/person/492447/rense-de-boer
https://www.artstation.com/artbyrens
Forest with custom trees test in 2018, updated 2 years ago, not in the game at the moment, an example of where this is going
Rock simulation test, 3 years ago, not in the game at the moment, an example of where this is going
My work on stage, presented by nvidia
