Frozen Worlds and the Rise of the Machines
This Main Branch built from the past five Experimental builds adds a never-before-scene-surprise...the Security Unit!
This is a very significant update for Osiris: New Dawn as it graduates the new Cloud Data System, Seamless Space Travel, the new moon of Lutari, the new creature Moon Mantis, restored and improved moon of Aziel, Herd Behaviors, improved Droid AI and Pathfiinding, while adding hundreds of improvements, fixes, and polish.
Vastly Improved Droid AI
This is the first version of the new Droid AI systems, and although they're a little rough around the edges we decided to share them with you now. The O.M.P.A. has also been upgraded with the latest AI system, putting it's specialty into repairing and base maintenance. If you have a large base, you'll want to have a few OMPAs around to keep everything in tip top condition.
Security Unit
Mining Assistant
These armored bots will follow you into any combat scenario. Sentry Units feature a highly powerful blaster and can travel in squads.
The Mysterious Moon of Lutari
Why mine when a Mining Assistant can do the dirty work for you? These handy bots will seek out minerals and continually mine. Simply access each one to grab what they have harvested.
The second moon of Theseus Prime is Lutari. Lutari is positioned very close to the Theseus Prime ring system, giving a beautiful look at the “hot Jupiter’s” rings. Similar in appearance to our own moon, this world features reduced gravity, strange “Moonshrooms” and is rich in rare minerals.
Infinity Terrain
We also added back in our “infinity terrain” system and improved it greatly. Added first to Lutari, the infinity terrain will generate in all directions at huge distances, completely removing any end of the world. We optimized the system from previous versions and improved the visuals to allow for parallax mapping and detailed shader system, the same shader system on the primary terrain area, which gives a nice cohesive look.
Seamless Space Travel
Refactored and restored Moon of Aziel
The first planet restore since the code rewrite is Aziel, and she's looking better than ever. A full 7K world, Aziel is the largest planet we've made for Osiris: New Dawn. Aziel also sports a fancy new lava illumination shader for the heated areas of the world.
A side note - the worlds will continually be worked on as we go. For instance, this version of Aziel is missing the Tundra around it, and this will get added as we continue.
This second version of space travel incorporates asynchronous loading, removing the need of having a loading screen in between planet travelling. This will allow you to travel seamlessly from Proteus 2 to Aziel, including being in Low Orbit and a new zone called Deep Space.
Moon Mantis
Moonshroom
The first discovered Lutarian is the Moon Mantis, which appears to be some sort of predator that roams the surface.
The Moon Mantis takes advantage of our new IK Creature Animation system which allows math driven IK for traversal and feet planting while using expressive key framed animations in the attack sequences. We’ve had a lot of players ask for this, which has also been on our roadmap, and now it’s here. Other creatures will be receiving this animation treatment as we go.
Not completely desolate, there seems to be a strange iridescent shrub called a Moonshroom on the moon’s surface.
Upgraded Herd Behaviors
Cloud Data Save System
We previously showed what we can do with stealth gameplay using the hearing and vision senses of the updated AI. Taking the AI further is the Herd system, which just like nature has a leader with the others following in a flocking style movement. Disturb the herd and they will scatter, all while avoiding obstacles, pathfinding, and not taking any hit to the game's performance.
Change List
For a full change list, see these build notes and check out the monthly recorded lists:
Version 1 of our file cloud save system deprecates the old SQL system, which was prone to errors due to data parsing over server connections. This new system has numerous benefits, such as automatic back ups of your data, much faster saving and loading (especially in high density worlds with lots of objects), and has an automatic migration feature which will bring over all your data. We took extreme measures to make sure to handle your data with care, and though it was a lot of work, we think it was worth it.
Additionally, the cloud data allows for far more variants in our save game states, which will allow us to explore more ways to customize structures and vehicles, along with being able to add more interesting game play elements. This system essentially frees us up to explore more, while adding stability, redundancy, and speed.