it's finally time to bring out the completely reworked techDemo 0.7!
20$+ Patrons can already get it here
10$ Patrons will follow on 16th and a
public release will be on 23rd of September
you can check out some of the changes here in the preview videos
apart from a complete UI overhaul the main part of the work on 0.7 was to completely rewrite the code for the new game engine GameMaker:Studio2
in the process of rebuilding the game from ground up I also rewrote many of the internal functions to improve on stability and future proofness for later updates
I completely changed the way that dialogs and "events" are handled
in previous versions it started to become a real mess because there was no clear hirarchy on what gets executed first and which element can influence or change another element
for example each dialog was stored in its own file and was activated or "called" either by an event or an interaction with an object (like another NPC) or by another dialog (yes... chained dialogs)
this turned out to be a lot of trouble because I lost track of who pokes whom really soon and there aren't even that many dialogs in the game yet
so I changed the way it works: dialogs are now stored in groups of the same (like all dialogs concerning the Ficus are in one file) and easily adressed via "flags" so instead of manipulating the dialog directly the game engine switches the state of the corresponding flag and when the player now interacts with something, that something checks its stored dialogs and compares them with the flags and if a flag and a dialog match, you get that dialog shown
this way it is much easiert to keep track of the whole mess and things like Mike bringing Tamara home after school can't happen anymore because Mike has other flags available than Lena so the dialog that triggers the scene with Tamara and Lena will only appear for Lena in the first place.
so in general a lot happened under the hood and not much on the visible side with this update but there will be another content update later this month right in time for the projects one year anniversary at the end of September!
what happened to Gemini?
Gemini is complete now, it has both CPUs and both GTX1080TIs on separate watercooling loops now and is running like a charm.
I already did some test renderings on it and also a little animation render test
that was especially awesome because I once did an animation render test with my older PC (dual GTX970) that was around 3 seconds long (25 frames/second) and had a resolution of 480p (853x480 pixel)
but that animation I rendered on Gemini is around 8 seconds long (also 25 frames/second) and has a resolution of 1080p (1920x1080 pixel) which is 4x the pixel count and twice the amount of frames
and it took Gemini around 5 hours to render all those 200 frames in 1080p which is roughly the same amount of time like my previous computer took for the 90 frames in 480p!
Patrons can get the original 1080p animation file here
speaking of Gemin, thats how she looks now in her final form:
I also designed and built a custom case just to fit that huge Z800 motherboard and both 360 radiators in it. That "little" DIY case project cost less than buying an equally sized computer case and I think it is a fitting case for this hacked together ex-Z800 workstation :D
btw the GPU loop never exceeded 40°C during that 5h render marathon having both 1080TIs running at max load so I'm very satisfied with its performance
so... we can has animations?
well... yes... kind of.
Rendering them is not an issue anymore and I am more than willing to spend render time on animations!
BUT: I need to find a way to integrate animated content into the game that does not consist of loading 200 images in 720p into your RAM for a short fucking loop
I don't know why but GM:S2 still does not support media files natively so I need to find a script or plugin that allows me to add, play back and control media files (like webm) easily so I can pre-fab the animation files as single media files and then just inject them into the scenes or dialogs when needed
this sounds more than doable so I'm confident that I will find a way to add animated content
ok, whats next?
well, as already mentioned there will be another update this month delivering contentthis will include the "drunk dad" scene with Lena and Steve and some other content I'm not going to spoil yet :P
