Fortress Overseer 0.50 - Project Ogreseer Preview ReleaseDownload LinksDFFD pageGithub mirrorProject Ogreseer has landed! Before I start rambling, here's some screenshots:
Overview of the latest skyscrapes:
Closer to the ground, at night:
Savotfeb, the volcano:
The Golden Hall of Nuts:
New Features- Water - With live reflection and refraction. The reflection and refraction maps take a while to render, especially when done every frame. Right now, the maps update 0.5 seconds after all camera movement has ceased. This will likely change in the future.
- Sky - The crazy old skybox is gone, and a dynamic sky is in place! The rate of time passage can be changed with the scroll wheel, and the default speed can be set in overseer.ini
- Trees - the dorkly little billboard trees are gone! Much better trees are in place. Still no flexibility, so all will be firs for now. This will change soon.
- Built-in screenshot mechanism. Pressing P or SysRQ/PrtScrn while Overseer is running will cause it to save a screenshot into its screenshots directory.
- GUI - Right-clicking will now make the interface show up. Pretty minimal so far, right now you can change the base screenshot filename, and toggle the stats box and wireframe.
- Materials - Ogre has a very, very robust material system. We've got 5 levels of detail set up (if your computer can handle them )
Now, for what's changed/missing.
- Export isn't supported yet due to the way Ogre handles things. Nothing would really be different from the OSG exports, so if an export is still desired, you can continue using that until that functionality is added in.
- Right-clicking no longer releases the mouse from Overseer, it now brings up the menu. Spacebar is the binding to release/grab the mouse now.
- No linux support (yet). The sky library that we're using is currently DirectX only. There are other reasons too, and we're working on them. Next release should definitely have linux support.
Controls- WASD + RF - standard directional movement + vertical movement
- P + SysRQ/PrtScrn - save a screenshot to the screenshots directory
- Mouse movement - looking around
- Mouse wheel scroll - Speed up/slow down time
- Right click - toggle menu
- Spacebar - release/grab mouse
- Escape - close the app
As for materials, there's 5 levels of detail that you can use. The default is the lowest, so if you have good framerates, try bumping it up! Take a look into overseer.ini for more info.
Now that this is out, I'll elaborate on our current direction. This preview release was, as mentioned earlier, pretty much a direct port over from OSG. There's some fluff added onto it, for sure, but the core app is still in OSG/sample design. I'm currently in the process of rewriting the backend into a legitimate extensible framework.
Here's the idea: We're giving up the possibility of having a real-time 3D visualizer right now. What we are going for is something interactive. The idea is that every object that isn't the terrain will be selectable - you click on it and its bounding box appears. Multiple objects of the same type will be able to be selected via a double click, like an RTS. Selected objects will be able to be moved, scaled, and rotated. You'll also be able to go through a menu, with previews, of other models that you can load in the selected model(s)'s place(s).
All of my work right now is going into the new backend, followed shortly by the new rolling geometry generator. It'll be fairly flexible, so if you turn down the settings on it you'll get the normal blocky look, with more believable ramps in weird cases.
Also, I'll be trying to move all overseer.ini functionality into in-visualizer menus, so you don't have to go rooting around through it anymore.