A long-standing bug which had me stumped for a bit has been solved. This was an issue with the view vector and how I was calculating it. It affected both aim and movement (though the movement was insignificant to notice). That really gave me a nice sense of accomplishment. I also made the changes to the weapon skins and I really like how the game feels visually in that regard.
Two of the levels, IMO, are pretty great in their look, though the layouts are incomplete. The third, Saucer, is kind of an eye-cancer mess. A lot has to do, as I previously mentioned, with creating a ton of assets from scratch all at once. Some things kinda got re-used, some techniques got overused, and some of it was just not really seeing the forest for the trees. I spent a few days looking at some other games, and some older ones, as well as some really great texture sets, like PhillipK’s stuff. Now I 100% am not going to go the route of using a canned texture set for Saucer. Look, we already have Alien Arena and Xonotic, and quite a few other FPS games using PhillipK’s textures, and to me we have enough similarity going on there.
However, looking at some of the nicer texture sets really illustrate some of what I’m doing wrong in Saucer. I have way too much color. Much of the level has this peeling, scratched paint look. Its overdone. There’s simply too much of it, and I need to fix that up. I’ve spent a good deal of my free time taking a look at the existing Saucermen screenshots of that level, and I see where I need to revamp a number of spots/items and do it in a way that makes the level not seem so repetitive visually as well.
Some areas just needed to have the colors moved around a bit. For example, this hallway that has too much red, and needed some variation:
This level has proven to be difficult to make attractive to me, but I do think it’s heading in the right direction. There’s probably room for some details to eliminate the repetition. Some trash, equipment, etc.
The robot room got some needed updates too. That one really bugged me, and I was able to improve it significantly.
The floor is a huge improvement, the other changes are far more subtle. I worked on changing on other areas of the level as well, and I’m definitely feeling better about things overall.
I’ll need to review my past blog posts to see what my plans “were”, regarding the overall scope of the game. My current thinking is that I’ll create six maps. Perhaps three, or four even, will be remakes of Alien Arena maps. I know I’ve mentioned Violator as one, and I’ve been thinking lately about Invasion as another. In the case of Invasion, I believe I have all of the assets I need to pull that off. This iteration would be a far more intricate design that would allow for a bit more vertical game play, using many of the buildings and structures of Ground Zero. Violator would require importing a number of existing Alien Arena assets to complete, and probably use some of Saucer’s as well. As for the final map, I’ve had some various thoughts. Perhaps Babel. That could be a map that really shines using this engine.
I have recently polished up, added a few minor things to the game play, and should be able to wrap most of that up and get back to the maps and rendering features.