That will be a short update (for once).
This week mostly under the hood stuff has been going on: fixing bugs, fixing things that are not bugs but need to be fixed anyway etc.. I also took the time to look at some of the features of PyPRP that I haven't been using much so far (materials, reflections, lights); and I'm evaluating how I could provide more visual variety to the Age. Lighting in particular is a problem..
Right now the Age doesn't have any real lights, just vertex painting, and adding some would really enhance it. Unfortunately it may sound surprising but for several reasons providing real lighting in this Age would be *very* difficult. For two reasons essentially: one is because of an obscure problem between Blender and PyPRP, and the way some rotated objects aren't lit properly; and the other is that when I first started working on the Age last year there were no lighting features at all in PyPRP, and the Age wasn't planned with this in mind. This is a mistake I pay today. Especially because I would need to update all the shells to properly lit them.. And that includes all the shells that have already been sent to their owners... Beside this I would need to place litterally hundreds of lights throughout the city, and not only would it take a lot of time to do (too much to be ready for version 1) but I also fear it would have a very bad impact on the Age performance ingame.
I'll have to give this some serious thinking over the next days, but I'm afraid I already know the answer..
Also I did some tests with fogs and I am running into problems that I hadn't expected, especially with the Hub building. To make it short I have to set the fog to be quite thick to look good, but then the Hub gets lost in the fog. So I have to set its material not to be affected by the fog. But then it really stands out too much... I think I will end up doing a fake fog with a transparent texture all around the building that will disappear when you get closer. That will be a hack but that should work. At any rate I think will keep the fog, it really enhance the atmosphere of the Age.
Next update next week (which hopefully will be the last one before the final release). Next week will be intense...