BF1942: Gunner's Mod News update by the developer mmkr1

Gunner's Mod News update by the developer mmkr1!

To this article (I've realized this project needs a blog, maybe I'll start it at itch.io later)

(Note: the current project state is 'frozen'. I'm planning to return to it in the future though. Contact me if you have any suggestions. Any feedback is still welcome. The current state of the development hasn't shifted lot, because since this article I only started working on the editor..)

It's been awhile since the last update. What has been done?  

- The vehicle system (the parts that you can build vehicles from). Some work is still required here. Only the wheeled and tracked vehicles are currently present.  

- UI framework (not all controls have been added yet but in overall it's an already defined (and well optimized) system (check out the .dat files in the UI folder))

- The animation system (only the tank track has been animated so far, but the core is suitable for the player animation as well)  

- Baked AO shadows to the terrain (only an approximation - there's no real baker yet). Blob shadows under some dynamic objects (will be replaced with shadow mapping later, as I'm personally dissatisfied with the results..)   

Testing Particles: 

Testing Particles Part two: 

What's next?

(Please, note that this project is currently in a halted state. The following was the plan at the moment of writhing of this article. When it will be unfrozen again it will probably start here.)  

- To release some tools to create content for this engine (may be some conversion tools for BF -- please, tell me what you think). Level editor, model exporting tools.

- Player animation (including 1-st person weapon animation). Note: this should refer to the system only, I'm not an animator and planning to use 3-rd party animations.  

- Better player physics. Right now it uses a step and slide controller, which has some troubles integrating into the world. I'm planning to replace it with a fully physicalized player controller (a dynamic capsule constrained to rotate only around the up-down axis)

- The sound system  

- (Maybe) water   

Tree Animation Test: 

Raw Gameplay with Bots: 

The latest playable demo can be found here: imagetools.itch.io

Any feedback is appreciated. The engine already supports sort of modding, you can edit the .dat files for example (if you know how) and see what's changed. It is not by any means ready to create finished projects on it (I would discourage doing so, because many things at the bottom level may (and will) change).

Autor: mmkr1 (developer)

Source: moddb.com , imagetools.itch.io