It's been a few weeks since I last posted. I got pretty sick a couple weeks back and it took me almost a week to recover. I kept working on the game, but didn't post any progress. I am feeling much better now and I'm back with a big update.
I spent a good amount of time building out the game map and the world structure of Anduraen. I created custom heightmaps for the continent and generated over 60km of world landscape. The core terrain is underway and I've segmented the different biomes of the world.
I also purchased a new Intuos Pro tablet to work on the landscape sculpts and painting. This it the part of the process I have been looking forward to for some time. I get most excited when I am world building and seeing the realm come to life. Most of my best memories from my early gaming days were the days I spent exploring open worlds and experiencing the unknown. Every town, city, field, dungeon and quest was new and exciting. I hope to create the same vibe for players of Pandemonium. I am a hardcore-wanderer player type and I love to enjoy the art and explore every inch of the game world. The first game I ever 100% completed was Uncharted 2 on my PlayStation and it left such a lasting impression. Shout out to the crew at Naughty Dog for making such an amazing game that still stands the test of time.
I generated this world map using a custom hand-drawn heightmap in Photoshop:
I had to export the image in 16-bit grayscale to properly import it into Unreal. The landscape is 8km² so the continent is approximately 64km! This is as big as games like Red Dead Redemption.
I am both scared and excited as hell to design a world this large. This is typically the work of a large team and they will spend many months creating a world of this scale. I love a good challenge and will be working over the next few months to create custom shaders, materials, textures and sculpts to build out the realm. I will certainly be throwing some hidden easter eggs into the game world!
Time for a progress update on the game! I have made some big strides in the last few weeks and here's a list of what I accomplished:
Added logic for enemy spell-based attacks
Added new hit react animations for orcs
Added new spellcasting attack for orcs
Added shaman enemy AI blueprint
Added enemy firebolt blueprint for shaman
Adjusted sockets and animation montages for shaman
Updated character class info to allow shaman to start with spellcasting abilities
Set hidden shadows flag on character mesh so player will always cast a shadow even if mesh is hidden at full zoom
Started experimenting with the procedural content generation framework for creating different biomes and landscapes
Removed default lighting setup and replaced it with a new dynamic lighting system
Imported Ultra Dynamic Sky and Weather system and tested all seasons, time of day, and various weather presets
Enabled water plugin and experimented creating spline-based bodies of water like lakes, oceans and rivers
Added landscape auto multi-material for painting materials onto environment with runtime virtual texture volumes
Adjusted foliage two-sided rendering
Adjusted scalability settings to ensure 60+ fps during gameplay
Fixed a visual bug with global illumination and foliage causing dark flickering across the world
Setup random weather events based on daily, hourly, or random intervals based on the given logic
Created a custom hand painted heightmap for the realm of Anduraen
Generated brand new landscape with a 8km2 spread (64km environment!)
Custom painted landscape layers for the different terrain types
Separated the game world into distinct biomes
Setup animated time of day cycle
Setup random weather events
Fixed an issue with landscape materials not appearing correctly on all world partition cells
Setup custom water shader for lakes and rivers
Setup procedurally generated forests
Tested global lighting in all weather and time of day conditions
Generated new navigation meshes for updated game world
Built all new HLOD sets for the game world
Rebuilt the realm mini-map to be accurate to the latest changes to the game world and landscape
Investigated fixes for distance field AO flickering
Generated 3 new runtime virtual textures and landscapes from scratch to practice my skills in creating novel content
Switched the landscape foliage system from PCG to instanced foliage actors which increased the frame rate by an average of 10
Optimized grass materials and textures
Removed pixel depth offset from foliage materials to prevent artifacts when indirect lighting casts shadows
Added animated time of day with sun and moon system
Tested stratosphere rendering and stars above the weather and cloud system
Optimized texture maps to be less resolution when the map in question is not as important visually to keep a high resolution
Adjusted post-process volume settings to amplify color and contrast while maintaining the color balance in the world
Added water bodies to the game world
Tested options and graphic settings to keep the frame rate at or above 60 at all times
Added GasAttachEditor plugin to the project to begin testing the ability system and gameplay tags in more detail
Tested Brushify plugin built ultimately decided not to use this solution due to the overhead of the shader and my performance goals for the game
Here's a bunch of screenshots of the different weather effects in the game!
I won't lie. I was pretty discouraged the last few weeks. After being sick it took a lot of motivation to get back into the game. I had moments of big doubt where I thought "why the hell am I even trying to build this game?" This project is insanely large and complex and every blog and post tells you to not even attempt to build an RPG game let alone a multiplayer game. While I understand and greatly appreciate the sentiment behind the warning that "no one should try this", I also look at it like a supreme challenge. If no one should try it, that makes me want to try only this. If I don't end up building a fun game that I like to play at least I will have learned a ton of new stuff in the process! I find that I am so hungry for new knowledge and information that I will seek out the unknown and incredibly challenging quests to find fulfillment. Without great sacrifice and investment nothing of greatness has ever been realized. I will build this game no matter what, even when my own worst enemy (me) is telling me to stop and give up.
Cheers,
Vinny
Great to see you powering through the doubts. It's inspiring; always has been.