Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - Standalone => Diaspora => Developer Blog => Topic started by: karajorma on October 06, 2011, 09:11:04 pm
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Those of you who follow developments with the SCP will have noticed that Valathil has been doing some very impressive work getting shadows to work in the FS2_Open Engine. A couple of days ago he released a test build which basically meant that production on Diaspora stopped for a few hours while we all decided to see what the game looked like in it.
Since the game looked really good, I told CooperHawkes (who usually makes our trailers these days) to grab some footage for the fans to see. So here you go.
Self Shadowing Test (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfNm9WP_vTA) - Youtube link
Music : Diaspora Mission Briefing Track by PhRey.
Since Valathil isn't a member of the team this is really the work of the SCP being used to make us look good. But we figured that it's been a while since we showed off some eye candy, so we'd be forgiven for that. :p
Now we need to point out that this code is still very experimental so we can't promise it will be in R1. It generally takes quite a while to stabilise big new features to the level where they're ready for inclusion in a release build of the engine. As you might have noticed from earlier posts Diaspora is slowly inching closer to a release so it will be interesting to see whether this feature is done quickly enough for it to appear in R1.
If not, it will be in a patch/R2 since it requires very little effort on our part to make sure it works with our game.
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Amazing what the ol' engine can do :)
Could you post a link here to the relevant SCP thread, so some of the thankyous can be directed at those responsible? If you think they'd get a kick out of it and not find the Diaspora forumers annoying :p
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http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=78329.0
That's the development thread. If you read it you can see the feature still needs a lot of work.
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Shouldn't Diaspora be able to run on standard nightlies/SCP releases? From what I've seen, most Diaspora-related coding goes into trunk anyway, so I don't see why builds used by Diaspora would be any different from normal. Patch might be necessary only for easy access, currently, enabling shadows don't require any alterations to anything on the modder side.
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Yep, but for most people, a patch would be preferable to simply downloading a nightly build when they barely understand the terminology.
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I think you said that backwards?
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An HLPer will understand 'nightly' immediately, a BSG fan who just wants to play this fantastic mod may not, and it costs them nothing to accommodate them by releasing a patch, rather than telling them to get the latest SVN.
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It's not just that either. Saying "Get this patch" means we hand out a single, selected set of builds with known flaws and bugs. Saying "get a nightly build" means that the user goes and gets whatever night has just come out and which is probably untested with Diaspora.
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In a previous topic I said that the only thing missing was self-shadowing. And now you even have that!!
I really didn't expect it. GREAT!
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Looks incredible. And a lovely nod to Philip Glass with the piano piece.
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HOW ABOUT SOME UPDATE?
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Is this the part where we yell at the caps lock using noob for demanding an update? It might have been, only it's Vidmaster who's pretty much a veteran, has done a lot of this type of work himself, and does know better. So I guess it's a joke, then? :)
In all seriousness, I doubt there's going to be much in the way of updates from this point on, at least not until we're officially in beta. The moddb c&d thing has us being more careful.
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Nothing like the ham fisted approach NBC Universal, heh?
Whether it C&D letters, accusing innocent people of piracy and bullying indie artists, they seem to do it all the wrong ways.
Lame joke aside, I wouldn't recommend getting too noisy until its damn ready.
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Besides, for updates regarding the subject of this thread, please refer to SCP forums. :)
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JOKES ASIDE ( ;7), I'd actually like to ask how's its going. are you planning something for december, ModDB awards whatever?
It has become somewhat quiet around Diaspora lately.
Oh yeah, especially this question lingers at the back of my mind: Are you planning to use some special new feature from .14 ?
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JOKES ASIDE ( ;7), I'd actually like to ask how's its going. are you planning something for december, ModDB awards whatever?
Given that the ModDB deleted the Diaspora entry, I don't think there is much hope of us winning. :p
It has become somewhat quiet around Diaspora lately.
The quiet is somewhat deliberate to be honest. We actually have lots of stuff going on at the moment but since the ModDB thing we're pretty much keeping a low profile until we're ready to release.
Oh yeah, especially this question lingers at the back of my mind: Are you planning to use some special new feature from .14 ?
Given that a large number of .14 features were invented for Diaspora, yes. It's unlikely that we'll release with .14 though as we still have features and bug fixes we'll need that aren't in that build. We'll probably end up using a special .16 build (i.e sticking to that branch and adding some features) or going with 3.7.0 depending on how long things take.
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Hi, first post from a long-time follower/lurker. Just wanted to say that no updates is totally cool with me; I'm glad to hear that things are still progressing behind the scenes. Keeping things quiet is probably a good idea.
Good luck with everything!
-J
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Likewise. Haven't logged in for ages, but sometimes pop by to see how things are going. Nice to hear that it's all going on behind the scenes.
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I'm on that same boat. About that is there any way we can get a notification when the game is released? I want to try it out right away since I'm so excited about it. If the forum has an option to notify us when a message is sent to us or something when the event happens or event just adding our emails to some list that would get a message when it is released?
Or is that not a good idea with the low profile?
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We're only keeping a low profile until we release. Hopefully you should hear of us afterwards. :)
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Same as Harlequin above.
I've been following for years and especially after BTRL died i was hoping this would replace it. And i still am.
I pop in every now and then to see how its going and say hi.
Imagine my horror when i went to take a look at the ModDB page and found it no longer exists.
I litterally shouted Noooo!
I'm glad it's still alive, Thanks the gods.
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the easy way is to use the board notify function (upper right corner next to reply).
You can even use this to notify about new posts on entire sections of the boards, not just individual posts.
I'm sure that the day the game is released the boards will be flooded with new posts, an so will the inbox of anyone who has subscribed to the Diaspora board.
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Alright sweet thanks for the tip, i'll do that.
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wish they would occasionally update their diaspora website, I totally forgot about this mod, (and Im sure tons of fans are) when news stops flowing!
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Diaspora is still alive incase anyone thought otherwise. It is just after ModBD was told to pull the Battlestar mods Diaspora decided to keep a low profile. Play possum as it were. But it is still alive and kicking.
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wish they would occasionally update their diaspora website, I totally forgot about this mod, (and Im sure tons of fans are) when news stops flowing!
Hey, we're right here! No need to talk about us in 3rd person! :p
We don't update the website for much the same reason we don't update on here, we're keeping a low profile. Work is still carrying on though. If you need a sign of that you only need to follow the SCP. You'll notice quite a few code commits still coming in from those of us on the Diaspora team. :)
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wish they would occasionally update their diaspora website, I totally forgot about this mod, (and Im sure tons of fans are) when news stops flowing!
Hey, we're right here! No need to talk about us in 3rd person! :p
We don't update the website for much the same reason we don't update on here, we're keeping a low profile. Work is still carrying on though. If you need a sign of that you only need to follow the SCP. You'll notice quite a few code commits still coming in from those of us on the Diaspora team. :)
very true, it's amazing to see how far the technology has come everytime I check back here!