Last week continued to be pretty constructive having everyone working from the San Diego office. Heres what went down:
Last week I finally got around to displaying an image when the game is loading. You will not be seeing this graphic for too long as currently Zero Gear loads super fast. Some code was added to make debugging easier. The server’s framerate is now displayed on the client’s network display GUI. It is now easy to see if the server slows down for any reason. I also added some very simple spike detection code to display when a game system (networking, rendering, sound, etc) slows down for some reason. So far the results have been… interesting.
This week I will continue optimizing, smoothing, and polishing. I also hope to spend some time on making the game build faster.
Last week was split between nursing a really bad cough and head cold and working on Zero Gear. I spent the majority of the week tweaking suspension and other physics values on the physical kart model. After days of tweaking the mass, wheel friction, suspension stiffness, compression and dampening, I finally arrived at a physical model that is much more stable than it was previously. You can never totally control what happens in a fully physical simulation, but we can try and help it in the right direction.
This week I will be working with Ian to continue putting polish on our existing game modes and general player experience.
Last week I got my feet wet in the Zero Gear Lua script code by implementing “air steering” so the player can control the rotation of their karts when in the air. After that I spent the majority of my time reworking the camera system to look a little nicer with plenty of help from Brian. This week I’ll be trying to fix even more Zero Gear odds and ends.
