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       DEVBLOG 83
   DIR By: jjed11
       Date: October 26, 2015, 1:35 pm
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       DEVBLOG 83
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       Devblog 83
       Posted on October 22, 2015 by Maurino Berry
       Sentry Turrets are Online, Bug fixes, Performance Improvements
       and Art
       Maurino
       Sentry Turret
       I finished up most of the sentry turret and it’s live on the
       development branch, I’ve already spotted a number of bugs but
       thankfully they’re all mostly easy fixes. I will continually
       update it based on feedback and ensure it’s balanced and ready
       to go for next week’s update. Next blog I’ll outline exactly how
       it works but if you’re itching to try it you can hop on the dev
       branch and give it a whirl. You can only craft it from
       components found at a helicopter crash site and/or supply drops
       Next Week
       I have some ideas for improving the early/middle game and I’m
       going to add some things as an experiment. I’m also going to fix
       a whole bunch of really old stubborn bugs that we keep ignoring.
       P.s. Buck is on holiday so I had to do the devblog this week,
       please excuse any formatting errors!
       Andre
       Footprints
       I got started on implementing the footprint decals Scott created
       last week.
       All animals and players leave behind footprints, though in its
       current state it doesn’t allow equipment to change the footstep
       type yet, so the barefoot player footprints will have to wait a
       little longer.
       While I was at it I also refactored some code that was used to
       spawn the footstep sounds and hooked up the stab impact effects.
       Shadow Optimizations
       As promised I looked into shadow performance and implemented
       some ways to significantly reduce the building shadow triangle
       count and draw calls.
       I added simplified proxy shadow casting geometry to all of the
       building blocks, which greatly reduced the amount of triangles
       that have to be processed every frame. Once that was done I
       added our custom geometry batching to the shadow casters to
       further speed things up.
       On my machine both of those optimizations yielded decent
       performance boosts in the test scene above. Your results may
       vary, but if your frame rate mostly drops around big buildings
       you can definitely look forward to this change. The same
       approach should also help us keep things smooth in the new and
       much more complex dungeons when they go live.
       Tuesday Update
       I worked on a bunch of tweaks and fixes that went live in a
       small mandatory update earlier this week.
       Fixed roof building block conditional models
       Fixed foundation step placement being blocked in certain
       situations
       Made triangle floor deploy volume in line with the triangle
       foundation
       Added UI warmup to reduce stuttering when opening certain UI
       panels
       Allowed upgrade / rotation when inside certain building deploy
       volumes
       Made the building block rotation and upgrade error messages more
       descriptive
       Fixed projectile ricochet chance being far higher than intended
       Disabled sound voice limiter priority sorting (back to first in
       first out for now)
       Fixed campfire building prevention collider reaching beneath the
       campfire
       Fixed door collider not being solid on the server right after
       placement
       Next Week
       Finish up the footprints and shadow optimizations for testing on
       the dev branch, then move on to the building and stability
       overhaul.
       Diogo
       This weekend I spent some time tracking and fixing a Linux crash
       – happening at startup self-check – preventing users on that
       platform from launching the game. Turned out to be related to a
       Unity issue causing an unexpected change in order of operations
       during graphics initialization. It should run properly now, even
       though some non-critical optimizations are temporarily disabled,
       so please let us know if this isn’t the case.
       After taking two of days off this week, I got back to memory
       leak analysis and eliminated all the relevant leaks I could
       find. While none of them were too serious, any little bit helps
       in this regard. We suspect the larger, more unpredictable leak
       to be attributed to a UI-related problem that was fixed in Unity
       5.2.2f1.
       Sorted out a nasty visual issue causing some transparent objects
       to be drawn under rivers, instead of over them, like placement
       gizmos, holosight, powerlines.
       Next Week
       Right now I’m working on improving underwater surface rendering,
       for when the player is submerged; it’s been consistently
       postponed due to other priorities, but is now in desperate need
       of attention.
       Vince
       Another week where I do not work on what I had betted on in the
       previous devblog! But it’s good for you guys, instead of having
       gates skins that won’t be implemented yet, you’re going to get
       new content right into your hands shortly. After a chat with
       Garry we decided it would be better for me to spend time on new
       content that can be derived from our existing code/tech. It just
       so happens we have the signs in for a long time. It’s a very
       strong feature of the game so far, but I believe we can expand
       on it. I tried to reward all types of people who use signs, we
       have hanging signs for shop owners, signposts and community
       signs for villagers, and painting frames in various new sizes
       for Artsy people.
       
       I also changed the way the larger wood signs are placed ingame,
       by requiring more precision on your part. This should limit the
       abuse of signs being placed as cover, or used to limit access to
       radtowns and monuments. By now if you want to plant signs on
       surfaces other than vertical surfaces in general, you should
       look at standing ones.
       Obviously I do understand that if you used the wooden signs as
       cover it’s because our current cover deployables are not to your
       liking. One of my next tasks might be to re-evaluate the amount
       of cover these provide, in order to make them useful on the
       battlefield.
       Next Week
       I am currently working on Banners, there’ll be two type, one you
       can hang on walls, and one that will stand fiercely atop a flag
       pole. The banner should be paintable just like signs, and big
       enough to pimp your clan.
       Gooseman
       Work continues on the M249. I finished the hipoly version of it
       and am currently in the process of running it through Mudbox to
       give it fine details like small screws / dents / scratches /
       etc.
       
       Next Week
       After I’m done working with the M249 in Mudbox, I’ll then
       retopologize the hipoly into a lowpoly vesion and bake the
       normals, and finish off the texture.
       Tom
       So last week I weighing up whether it would be better if I
       worked on a new weapon or worked more on add-ons. I chose
       add-ons so you guys, when the time comes, can have more
       customisation over the weapons we currently have. So i’ve
       started off with the AK47. I’ve taken the alternative ak47
       concept that Paul drew and i’ll be adapting the parts/chunks to
       be used as alternatives swappables for the current AK47, so
       there’s more variation.
       I’ve got some good progress on the new stock and I’ve begun
       sculpting the mesh for the alternative grip/trigger.
       
       I’m actually really excited about this for some reason. I feel
       it will bring a lot more “personality” so to speak to the game
       and begin a sort of Rifleman’s Creed mentality, if that hasn’t
       happened already ;)
       Next Week
       Next week consists of lods for the alt stock and texture
       optimisations for it for Unity. The textures you see at the
       moment are at full res and i’ll be tweaking the frayed edges of
       the wraps too to make them sit a bit better. Hope ya’ll have had
       a good w
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