Hey, Just saw on their youtube page they posted a video demo of the Isometric overhaul, And it looks pretty awesome in my opinion.
here's the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9-I9Q3IOvg
Hey Mazarus, thanks for the post, man! You beat me to it!
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Spring
is a good time for news, Tchey.
Sorry it's been a while since I posted, but Torvus is correct. Things have been progressing on my end, and most of the core code for the isometric rendering framework has been done for a while. There are still a bunch of details and peripheral features to be implemented in code, but it's getting there.
The biggest challenge has been getting all the necessary isometric sprites made. I think I'd mentioned it before, but we had some personnel issues on the art team that wound up causing the project a few months worth of delays. On the bright side, I think we've finally got a reliable team assembled, and sprite production has been proceeding steadily since about the midpoint of winter. Just last week, we brought an animation specialist onto the team, and the first animated, isometric assets should be making their way into the game shortly.
One of the difficulties we face in developing Outer Colony is that the sheer numbers of things to render is just staggering. When you factor in isometric angles, higher fidelity frame rates on the animations, and the system for procedural sprite generation we're using, the number of images is borderline astronomical. Thousands of individual images are needed, and it just takes a lot of time and money to produce them all.
With all that said, I think things are finally approaching a point where I can share some screenshots of how it's looking so far. Keep in mind, this is just a very early preview, and it's still very much a work in progress and subject to improvement and change. The focus in these screenshots will mostly be on environment visuals for the biomes (terrain, ground cover, and plant node sprites are all complete), with some concrete buildings (structure sprite production is underway) and basic items (also underway).
I'll start with screenshots, and video demos will appear toward the bottom.
Just as a reminder, this is a graphics / renderer-only overhaul. All the gameplay is identical to the alpha release from last year (although it's being gradually expanded, too). The only thing changing here is the visuals. I think, though, that the isometrics are already yielding gameplay benefits, as world-space feels much easier to navigate, and the 3D nature of Outer Colony's worlds is now much easier to comprehend.
Here's a screenshot showing the intersection of a few different biomes, badlands, desert, and xeric shrublands:
The same area, at a farther zoom level:
Here's an image a treeline, with a mountain sloping upward to the west:
A river running through tundra, with taiga to the south:
A temperate rain forest at night:
Coast line of a temperate rain forest:
A small stream, flowing down a mountainside:
More coastline, with badlands transitioning to prairie:
Here's a concrete cantina in a desert;
A glacier creeping into tundra:
A river bisecting arid terrain:
A view of a single Z-level slice, showing the inside of a concrete building with some dressers scattered about:
Here's a temperate forest in the summer:
And that same temperate forest in autumn:
Some conifer trees near a lake at nighttime:
Some concrete ruins, an abandoned outpost in a marshy jungle:
A canyon, winding through scorched lands:
And here's quick video showing some basics of world navigation, just going around to different parts of a small world, viewing different Z-levels, scouting different biomes and structures.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9-I9Q3IOvg&feature=youtu.beI'll be posting more about procedural item sprite generation (we're dynamically generating and shading item sprites to show the materials they're made of), procedural character sprite generation, and some early animations in the near future. I've got to be up early for my day job tomorrow, so I'll get some sleep for now, but I hope you guys like the look of this so far.
If you've got any questions, as always, feel free to ask!