~ Time for a review; another one of those neverending entries...
My latest entry here was over a month ago, where did the month of september went? Hmm.. let's blame that on reallifeâ„¢. The fact is, right now my work on Ahra has been put on hold because of the bugs I have listed on my previous entry; and because of others that have appeared since. When I say 'put on hold', I don't mean it has stopped, just that all new work has been stopped until I can fix (or learn how to work around) all the current bugs that spoil the city.. As much as I hate that, most of the new work I need to do might be bugged a way or another so there's no use.
For today, let's do a quick round up of the current development so far and what's to come..
We are currently at version 0.8, which implies that v1.0 should be the final version of the city. Which, by the way, is only my part of work on the Age; shells, the Hub, the nexus, and other stuff are not in there. So whenever I reach v1 the whole Age might not be complete yet (Though it might indeed be a good idea to try and match both..). Version 0.8 has been the most advanced version (despite the bugs) and has required the most work, because all the city layout & structure is now complete. That includes: streets, courtyards, walls, district walls, all the empty shells, and other things in Blender that I'll use later on to add more stuff (see 'duplication' in previous entries). From now on, not much needs to be added; mostly modifications and improvements. So what's left to come? Well, I have that big list I use to keep track of everything; here's a look at the biggest entries:
- Courtyards - So we got all these nice courtyards.. all identical. And we want them all different. I can't wait to work on that, I'll have tons of fun doing those. But, as for the shells, I'd want them to be open for anyone to work on; so I won't be alone doing those. We'll see at a later date how to do that properly. That might also mean that all of them will not be there for v1. We'll see.
- Differentiate Districts - So we got all these nice 4 districts.. all identical; and again we want them all different. To do that, several things will be done: different courtyards of course, but also different objects (like lampposts and book pedestals), and various different decorations like rocks, plants, stuff that I'll spread through all the streets to differentiate them. That might be a bit of work but that'll help a lot in bringing the Age to life.
- Footsteps - That city is a bit silent, and that will have to be fixed.
- Textures updates - Textures for the empty shells are done, but I'll do another pass on the others (streets, walls, ..etc).
- Cones & Barricades - oooh.. coooones. Yah, cones. The DRC won't let us borrow their cones unfortunately, so we'll have to make some new ones.
- Plans & Signs - To make navigation easier in the city we'll have plans and signs (like in Ae'Gura) at key locations.
- River & Canals railings - Jumping in the water is a bit dangerous right now as it is still frozen in ice, so we'll have railings too.
- Nexus & nexus book pedestals - As Robert says in his journal, a lot of progress has been done on this, and the pedestals are almost finished. As soon as they are, they'll be added in all the courtyards.
- Age environment - That is not something I work on, but it's interesting to talk a bit about it here. Right now we have the city, but the rest of the Age itself is only a nice sky surrounding said city. While it is nice, it is not very original, or final. We have precise ideas of what we want for the actual Age, and they should be made into something real at some point. I can already say that it will be very different from the current sky; or different from any other Age we've seen so far..
But beyond that list, the truth is I face a problem that I both hate and love: the fact that the Blender plugin evolves continuously; and that there's always new stuff to do. So with each new version of the plugin come new possibilities and new stuff I want to add. Not that I systematically want to use every new possibility, but it just so happen that they will actually allow things I always wanted to do but couldn't so far. Over the last two weeks here's what I noticed that could (and should) be added to the city:
- Light flares - I can't wait to add those to all the lampposts, so they can finaly look like this.
- Cameras - I may not use those much yet, because the default camera works well for most of the city which is mostly made of wide open streets. But in the courtyards, where we'll have very different structures, they will be really useful.
- New materials & multi textures - That will add a lot to avoid the repetitive aspect of some textures (in the streets in particular). That'll probably means lots of work, but it'll be worth it.
- Boats - This has been on everyone's mind from the beginning, but that really requires a lot of work (both technical work and design decisions). However I've made sure to think of everything I could to allow this: canals & rivers are large and deep enough to host boats; canals 'crossroads' should prevent boats to take unrealistic sharp turns; some stairs will go in the water so people can jump easily on them when getting down of boats, etc..
- Loadings and optimization issues - That's technically even farther away than boats; even though it is probably more important. The biggest problem we will face soon with this Age are the loading times and various 'optimizations' issues. The Age is HUGE, and with all the different shells, that'll be really hard for computers to handle. Without going too much into the details of this (I could write a whole entry just on this) that's one of the reason the city has been designed with districts that are separated by high walls, and why there are limitations to the height of shells. Eventhough right now it is mostly useless (because of the plugin current set of features)it is something I had to set up 'for the future'.. I think I'll write an entry about this.
- Sounds & Music - When the great guys working on the plugin will have nailed down the sound question (and I'm confident they will) that's something we'll definitely add to the city. At which point we'll need people able to create the sounds and the music of the Age.. but one thing at a time.
For now, I'll go squash some bugs...
