There's a road, but there's not much of a map
There are several blocks being developed in parallel. The modules that are currently closest to completion are:
- FBX importer
- character animations
- initial version of clouds
While the character animations will be shown soon, it will take a bit longer until they get into the public release, as we need to get us a model made for the game. Currently we are working with models and animations owned by our licensees.
As the actual game is slowly going to get a clearer shape, we increasingly feel the need for a graphics designer, someone able to come up with a unified and characteristic design for Anteworld characters, vehicles and buildings, including the colonizer module lander and the mothership. But for that we need to provide a better description of the game concepts and the game mechanics that can utilize all the engine features - a global world, the scale and detail, deformable terrain etc.
NetworkingThis is the part that we'd like to get out ASAP, but it's one of the most problematic ones as well. The problem is, of course, the scale and the detail. There's no server that would hold all the data used by the physics on all the connected clients, being able to arbitrate client action conflicts reliably. There are actually two parts to it. Static data of the world (buildings, roads, altered terrain etc) will be stored in the cloud, replicated to others and allowing them to see the world changing, the land being taken. This is for the main, common game part, but obviously there may be different realms where something is happening independently, as if in a different spacetime, and that something may be also a sandbox where a group of people modifies the world together to prepare it for their game or whatever.
The networking for a dynamic interaction between players is something going atop of that, allowing for a different gameplay within given realm, or on a snapshot of the world. We are still pondering how to make this work efficiently, to be able to have user-hosted servers adaptively handling a limited number of players that would be allowed to go anywhere.
BiomesWith Kelvin preparing lots of textures and data for regions all over the world, the biomes got a bit closer, but I still need a contiguous period of time to finish the work on them. Having to suspend it for 3 times already doesn't help. I hope that at least I'll be able to release the first phase with the global coloring taken from the satellite color maps - i.e. no new textures yet but colors matching the view from space in ~500m resolution, further refined by the current fractal coloring. This can also remove grass from the deserts, but mainly it will remove that unified greenness.
Other stuff in the works- global physics - even though the current one works globally, interaction with all objects needs optimizations
- lighting pipeline, support for multiple lights, AO etc
- further particle effects
- vector overlay support for altering natural distribution (larger scale terrain modifications, fields ...)
- rivers and lakes (depends on ↑ and ↓)
- importer for vector data sources (OSM ..) and building placement
- fixing errors in terrain database, better support for transitions between source data with different precision, coastlines
- 3D trees, in combination with biomes
- global weather
- extended roads functionality (markers, poles ...), railroad support
- extended ground vehicle physics - support for tracks, solid axles; proper friction for ground materials, terrain deformation
- watercraft physics, better ocean rendering
- special vision modes - infra, night vision
- ballistics
... and the other half I forgot to list here
