von Marcel Kleffmann,

Medieval Engineers: Der Fahrplan für die nächsten Monate

Medieval Engineers (Simulation) von Keen Software House
Medieval Engineers (Simulation) von Keen Software House - Bildquelle: Keen Software House
Obwohl schon viele Features wie Survival-Modus, Burgenbelagerung, Multiplayer, (einfache) computergesteuerte Charaktere und Crafting in Medieval Engineers (ab 7,37€ bei kaufen) implementiert seien, würden sich viele Elemente noch sehr unfertig anfühlen und fehlerhaft sein, erklärte Marek Rosa (CEO, CTO & Founder Keen Software House) in einem Blog-Beitrag. Laut Rosa seien auch die ersten Minuten ziemlich unerfreulich und das Spielgeschehen sei nicht wirklich intuitiv. Und genau diese grundlegenden Probleme wollen die Entwickler zunächst in den Griff bekommen, bevor sie neue Features in Angriff nehmen. Der Fahrplan sieht jedenfalls folgendermaßen aus:

ME roadmap
  • Add planets to ME - this will unify the technology in our games and make future improvements easier
  • Animation polishing
  • Inventory size rebalance
  • Character stats rebalance
  • Multiplayer fixes and polishing
  • Polish the in-game screens
  • Fix all sounds, 3D (ask programmers and our sound designer to make a list of all sounds used in the game and then have someone test them all – so that we don’t miss anything)
  • Combat system
  • AI changes, fixes, simplification
  • Building on a grid
  • Large grid construction site
  • Small grid construction site
  • Rethink if the respawn cart is necessary - why can't the player respawn in a normal way?
  • Testing scenarios for DEV
  • Tool durability, tool damage
  • New animals – e.g. wolves, bears, etc.
  • Fix Z-fighting
  • Door / window blocks
  • Gate blocks
  • Mechanical blocks
  • Redo the manipulation tool, remove it from the toolbar, add it to the context-sensitive action key (e.g. T), disable physics while the player is holding the item
  • Faction system
  • Claim of an area
  • Support to add voxels in survival
  • Area inventories – remove this feature (players should not have access to the inventories / items that are not in the direct vicinity or those that they are not interacting with directly)
  • Regrowing trees / bushes
  • New maps / worlds
  • More voxel materials such as iron, sand stone, etc.
  • More multi-blocks
  • More compound block combinations
  • Specialized workshops
  • Specialized furnaces

VRAGE / both games (Space Engineers & Medieval Engineers)
  • Add/build new blocks/grids – finish the redesign – static, dynamic; small, large; creative, survival, construction sites
  • Multiplayer server optimizations (read the second paragraph under the Space Engineers roadmap section for a more detailed analysis)
  • Falling in 1g (especially in SE) doesn’t feel like 1g – the falling is way too slow; this was caused by changes in physics due to the Moon gravity, but the result is not good (yes, we want higher jumps on the Moon but we also want “normal” jumps/falling on Earth)
  • Finish transition to PBR (physically based rendering) and DX11, all models and textures needs to be checked
  • Redesign and simplify the key and mouse controls and GUI, check F1 help screen, left and right mouse click - try to do things with as few keys as possible by adding context-sensitive commands, get it to a stage when we don’t need to show 5-7 lines of default screen hints
  • Fix the 3rd person aim-point; first-person is ok
  • First-person movement and camera – the experience needs to improve, since now it feels all wrong
  • When pressing ESC while playing single-player (menu screen), the game doesn’t pause (and that’s just weird)
  • Proper sound when the character is running on armour blocks – players don't hear metallic steps
    • need to check all sounds in both games
  • Faster executable loading - when I installed the game on a new computer and launched it from Steam, I could only see a black screen and game mouse cursor and listen to game music for about 15 seconds; I don't understand what the game is doing during this time before the main menu – trying to upset me?
  • Particles fix
    • Consider Nvidia Gameworks / GPU particle
    • Editor
    • Rendering, especially DX11
    • Fix individual particles in each game and keep the low number of billboards and pixel overdraw
    • Programmer – make a list of all particle effects in the game
    • Artist – make a list of all particle effects in the game
    • Then match these lists, so there’s no unfixed particle, and we’re not fixing a particle that’s not used in the game
  • Faster world loading
    • Cache assets that don't change between worlds – when the game needs a voxel texture in one world and I exit to the main menu and load a new world, this texture can stay in memory - and the same applies for hundreds of other assets
    • In the main menu, the game should pre-load the most used assets, so that when a player loads a world, most of it is already loaded
    • Streaming assets, but make sure this won't break the game (lags, crashes, delays) when something suddenly jumps to the player (jump drive, spawned object, etc.)
    • Or if pre-loading isn’t a good option, then at least load assets asynchronously so the game doesn’t lag for a few hundred milliseconds every time new assets are needed
  • Refactor code (e.g. cube builder) – for two years we have been adding new blocks to this class, and it’s time for some spring cleaning
  • ME + SE player skills
  • In-game server admin tools (with GUI) – take the best from Midspace’s SE Toolbox and Tyrsis’ Server Extender; assume players want to become space masters
  • Main menu redesign
    • Think about how we can simplify it
    • Workshop button – move it somewhere else (e.g. Load), because it shows only world workshop items and not the entire workshop (blueprints, 3D models, etc)
  • Blueprints – simplify the user interface and GUI
  • Economy model (very simple)
  • Camera shake (e.g. when near explosion, when hit by a larger object, when shooting, etc)
  • Analyse the player stats and see where people get stuck, where they have problems, if tutorials are actually helping them or not, what changes in game design can prolong their game time (by making the game more intuitive and better)
Quelle: Keen Software House

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