Good and bad!
Posted by EchoJerichoX on October 06 2010 10:51:27
Hey everyone! Got some good news and some bad news.
Basically, we have to postpone the AI Demo for the... I've lost track how many times we have had to postpone it, but we have to again. With Garrett not being around to do anything with the half-complete Ragdoll engine, we have to set it back even further. But I'll be willing to cut a deal with everyone - I will release the AI Demo in ONE WEEK (Next Wednesday) if I do not receive word or progress from Garrett before then. Deal? Deal.
On another note, don't think his busy-ness and absence will stop us from working. We have already started working on Raelis Station! In fact, the first room is basically finished. The station will be much like Frigate Orpheon in Metroid Prime 1, if I have to compare it to something, but much larger. In fact, you will get the Missiles, Morph Ball, and Ball Bomb while on the station. This is tentative though.
On the subject of Raelis, we have SIX new screenshots for you! Check out the respective page on the site, or check out these links!
Raelis Screenshot 1.
Raelis Screenshot 2.
Raelis Screenshot 3.
Raelis Screenshot 4.
New Menu Preview 1.
New Menu Preview 2.
Hope those appeal a bit. Also, we have finished the first cutscene! I don't wanna give any spoilers, but they behave like they do in Metroid Prime 1. The player is stopped, and a short scene ensues in the room they are in, or in a nearby room, and then play resumes. It is a BITCH to code manually, if I do say so myself, but the result is really great. You will see this particular scene in the very first room at the start of Raelis Station involving 2 Space Pirates...
On another note, we have done a TON of debugging, but we have not even rounded out the features that need to be changed to accomadate persistent rooms. Persistent rooms are rooms that stay the way they are when you leave them, with the objects in it not running certain events. This will be VERY DIFFICULT to track down every single bug and screwy sub-engine. I must thank LegendaryHero over at GMC for helping me through it, trying to help me understand what happens/doesn't happen when persistent rooms are entered/left. When I first heard that "Room Start" events do not run when a room is persistent and is entered a second time, I was completely overwhelmed with thoughts like, "Oh my god, this will be bugged, and this will stop working, and I have to fix this..." et cetera. Thankfully it turns out that I was misinformed, which eased my mind.
We have made a ton of other changes to certain parts of the engine, such as making lights that can flicker, changing specific details about scan targets, severe optimization, and a TON more. Keep track of the new section on the Change Log page!
Great news! Tons of people have noticed that many of the sounds in the game were taken from the Halo trilogy as placeholders. Well, fret no longer. We finally have a long-sought-after audio engineer! Welcome Rx to the team, everyone. He will be a great asset, for he can also compose some exceptional music AND has a strong grasp of the Metroid series.
Another thing ya'll should know is that DoctorM64 - revered developer of AM2R (Another Metroid 2 Remake, located here: AM2R Blog.), which is nearly complete - has helped me a ton with making the map/minimap feature for the game. He also has given me a lot of advice in terms of transitions, so a special thanks goes out to him.
EDIT: Added 2 more of my drawings to the Concept Art page! Also, read my bottom-most comment there. I think I'm getting the hang of detailing and shading!
This was a COLOSSAL update, so I think I will stop it here. Thanks for reading!
- Echo