Unreal Windows, RTX game

Status report on latest developments:

Work on Terra Mining Region persists, the day to night cycle has been in alot of ways refined but still needs some work to correct a few things, and early but crude tests have been done in the climatology aspect to which we have a clearer direction on now and a better idea of how to pull it off. Previously, we had planned for 12 weather states, but the issue became apparent that this made the weather too repetitive. Instead we have decided on having thresholds bound to a set of rules to determine the weather conditions.

Sublevel borders (points in which the player crosses over into another map) and how they overlap seamlessly is another topic of brainstorming. We have several ideas which we plan to experiment with and we'll try to see which one works the best, but ultimately if we can't get seamless transitions to happen, we will have to plausibly turn those areas into passive/combatless areas where AI will only travel over into another map when the player is not near that crossover point. The static world is able to be viewed from another map, but being able to see AI and shoot enemies across those borders would be another issue, however disabling combat and not having AI move near these areas when the player(s) are there would only be a last option, there are still some ideas we can attempt before that though.



Out of all 3d aspects of the project, the base assets/models/textures end up taking the longest time to create, while the map geometry itself and layout itself is the quickest and most leisurely thing to work on. There's no time limit or deadline (that would be more unhelpful and impossible to predict honestly), but development will start to feel like it's flowing faster the more base assets get created, as that way we're able to focus on the open world itself which is probably the easiest part.

Lastly, I recently wrote a tutorial on how to use Blender to create large levels for Unreal (the specific workflow only works with 227J+ as it relies on some of it's features) without the risk of BSP holes or glitches, Terra Mining Region uses the same workflow -

That tutorial can be found here on UnrealSP.org


Credits

Terra Mining Region is worked on by the combined efforts of -

(T:S:B)IceLizard - Project lead, Story lead, Lead level designer, 3d Modeller and texture artist

Alternative Projects (Alt) - Soundscape, Lead musician, Sound designer and Brainstormer

Bleeder91<NL> - Lead UScript Programmer

G4lactic (GFour) - Musician, Brainstormer and Mapper

Sly - Concept artist, Feedback

Original portion of the map which the project is built around created by

Nivlek of Legend Entertainment

List of current and past contributors -

Rikia - Feedback

Wolfrayne - Feedback, Playtesting and Technical advice

Krull0r - Technical help, Kismet feedback and General feedback

Sunar (Tera) - Brainstorming, Feedback, Technical advice and Scientific feedback

Vulpes - Technical help, Technical advice with AI, feedback and playtester

.:..: (Dots/Marco) - Debug tools, Technical feedback, Community Update developer

Smirftsch - Technical feedback, Suggestions, Community Update developer and liaising with bug reports

TLX - 2d Art contributions

BlumpkinKing - Extensive 3d Modelling feedback, Playtester, Material Authoring advice and help

DeathPax - Technical feedback

Xaleros - Technical feedback, Technical support

Losanatinf/TheGrislyGrotto - Sound effects, Feedback, Playtesting

Diego Zarate - Leather and Fabric materials

Oleh Slabiy - Sculpt Brushes