As I also mentioned in the last blog post, this was somewhat inspired by the Project Zomboid programmer adding smooth lighting to that game (and now I notice that they also posted some comparison screenshots just yesterday!). I believe he accomplished this by overlaying a multiplied and untextured polygon that completely matches the shape of each ground tile, with the vertices of that polygon set to color values that create a smooth transition. I tried this as well, but wasn’t quite able to get the same results, and switching the OpenGL blending between normal mode and the multiply mode each frame also added a bit of overhead, so I went for a simpler method where I just supply the smoothing color values to the vertices of the sprite itself, skipping the overlay entirely.

The Project Zomboid method results in much smoother lighting on the ground (there really aren’t any hard edges at all), while my method still retains some of the per tile lighting, which I kinda like. It’s sort of halfway between the old X-COM hard lighting and the completely smooth lighting of Project Zomboid. I’m adding a toggle to the options menu to turn smooth lighting off if you prefer the old school hard edges.

Watch it in HD!

New stuff in this video:

• Wall decorations
• Some more art assets
• Light sources can now be added/edited in the map editor
• Light sources can also be “baked” into the map to avoid having to calculate shadow casting for static light sources
• Added the Remote Trigger
• Integrated some more of the scripting language so that light sources and elevators can be toggled off/on
• Added a briefcase with money to your inventory showing how much cash you’ve got

Work continues on the female character sprites for getting shot and killed, and I’m almost done with the doubling of male character aiming and shooting sprites. I also just today managed to improve the lighting engine to allow for more smooth lighting (partially inspired by the great work done by the Project Zomboid guys), but that’s still work-in-progress, which is why I’m not showing it in this video. I’ll put some screenshots up when it’s worth showing.

And then there’s the big elephant in the room: AI. It’s quite a daunting task, since so much of the game will be about manipulating NPCs, and I’ve only briefly jotted down some ideas. I recently finished Batman: Arkham Asylum (can’t wait to get my hands on Arkham City!), and the reactions of the NPCs in that game is somewhat of an inspiration – especially how the thugs would freak out the more of them you picked off. But I’ll probably write a separate blog post on AI at some point, so I won’t go more into that now.

Watch it in HD!

New stuff in this video:

• Finished the in-game interface
• Almost finished the menus
• Tied player actions to noise and suspicion generation
• Particle effects to show characters growing suspicious
• Added pauses to character dialogue
• Resolution can now be changed in-game
• Added small thumbnail images for saved games

I’ve also almost finished work on doubling the directions for the male aiming and shooting animations (from 8 to 16 directions). After that, I’ll make the missing sprites for female characters (aiming, shooting, hit, and fall/die). There’s also still a bunch of minor things, bug fixes, optimizations and tune-ups.

When all that’s done, I think I’ll begin working on the AI, since that’s the biggest component missing before I can really start playing around with actual gameplay — and not just building the surrounding framework. I’m really looking forward to create a simple mission where you have to sneak past patrolling guards or get in a firefight. That’s when all this stuff will hopefully come together and be an actual game! After that, a release of the first pre-alpha version shouldn’t be far behind. Stay tuned!

Even though it’s a bit too early in the development cycle to worry about them, I’ve been working on the game’s menus. When I get fed up with a particular part of the game that’s hard to figure out, instead of taking a break completely from the game, I just shift to something easier and more rewarding, which will eventually energize me to continue work on the original part. So that’s what caused me to make the menus, as they’re quite easy to program.

Here’s the main menu screen:

The smoke is animated, which you’ll see in the next development video I plan on releasing in a few days, and when I’ve scripted out the game’s story and universe in more detail, there will be fiction related stuff (newspaper clippings and photos) fading in and out where the logo currently is.

And this is what the load/save game menu looks like:

I always loved the little thumbnail images that each savegame had in Fallout, so I’ve borrowed that for Hostile Takeover. I’m currently working on the options menu (mostly screen resolution settings, fullscreen/window mode, toggling some visual effects off on older computers) and then I’ll return to the main game itself.

Anyway, I hope you all had a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The past year saw excellent forward momentum on the development of Hostile Takeover and that will continue in the new year with the first playable pre-alpha demo being released sometime in 2012, preferably in the first half of the year.

I redid the stats bars in the upper right display to better fit with the overall style. And I’ve redone the combat mode border to fit the new interface elements. Finally, I made the blood splatters that will appear on the equipped item boxes when your arms are damaged (1-5 blood splatters on each to indicate amount of damage), as well as the splatters on the walk and run buttons when those selections are unavailable due to leg damage. The blood splatters shown here don’t actually match the damage to the player in the screenshot — it’s just to show what they look like.

So I’m now locking the look of the interface, except for any future features that may creep in. The minimap is quite buggy at the moment when the map is rotated and you can’t drag the minimap to examine the game world yet. So that’s next for me to do.

Starting in the upper left corner and going around clockwise, we first have the minimap with a simple outline of buildings and areas color coded green, yellow or red to show how restricted they are. There’s also buttons for rotating the map (and game world view) as well as for toggling on/off whether or not to keep the view centered on the player. You’ll also be able to drag the minimap around to examine the game world.

Next is the combat mode button and then the stats display. From top to button the stats are: Noise, Health and Suspicion. There are two noise bars; one showing the environment/background noise and one showing the noise you’re generating. If your noise level is below the environment’s, NPCs won’t hear you. The health bar is pretty self-explanatory with the character outline showing damage to specific body parts. Finally, the suspicion bar goes from 0 to 100 percent and shows how much attention you’ve drawn to yourself during a mission. That percentage will be deducted from your payout for completing the mission, so 50% suspicion raised during a mission means you’ll only get half pay.

We then have the movement buttons, which from top to bottom are: Kneel, Sneak, Walk and Run. Again, pretty self-explanatory, but damage to your legs will render movement options unselectable. I’m thinking 33% damage will remove run and 66% walk, or something to that effect.

I’m playing around with blood splatters on the buttons to show when an option cannot be selected because of damage. This will also work with damage to your arms. There’ll be blood splatters on the equipped item boxes, aiming will be more difficult and melee attacks will fail more often when your arms are damaged. I’ll slap up a screenshot when I have these blood splatters working properly.

Watch it in HD!

New stuff in this video:

• Added a bunch of environment assets
• Added action icons to show interaction options
• Changed color of Combat Mode border from red to green
• Added z-layers and multiple floors in buildings
• Added elevators to move between layers

There are still some minor bug fixes and optimizations I need to do before I’ll consider the rendering engine done for now. Two of those bugs actually show up in the video — I didn’t notice them until I’d started editing the video.

I’ll be working on making more environment assets next to fill in those empty floors of the building. I’ll probably also be working some more on new GUI elements, such as a minimap in the upper left corner showing the various area types and the location of your target. For now, I’ve got three area types in mind that will be indicated with green, yellow and red and affect how suspicious characters will be when spotting you. Green areas are public areas where other characters’ suspicion level is just the default. Yellow areas are non-public, but also not restricted areas, for example the lobby of an office building. The suspicion level here will be double. Finally, red areas are restricted areas that you’re not supposed to have access to, so the suspicion level of other characters here will be 4x the default.

The point of most missions in the game is to be as stealthy as possible. Your stealth rating for a mission will decrease when characters spot you, or you otherwise draw attention to yourself. So I’ll also be making a Stealth bar for the GUI that shows your current Stealth level, as well as a Health bar and a Noise bar. The latter shows the level of noise you’re generating as well as the environment noise — so that you can set off environment noise such as fire alarms and car alarms to drown out your own noise.

In other news, I’ve been making some cursor icons while finishing up the optimization stuff. These are the ones I’ve got so far that cover the player actions currently planned for the game:

I’m pleased with most of them, but I’m not sure if the middle one is clear enough. Can you tell what it is? And can you guess what action it signifies?

The image on the left is with wall shadows, the image on the right is without:

On one hand, I think the wall shadows make the structures pop a bit more and make everything feel less flat. On the other, I can’t shake the feeling that the wall shadows make it seem as if the walls are floating ever so slightly above the ground. So I can’t decide if I should keep them in or discard them. What do you think?

By the way, the shadow for the “Hensley International” sign is also missing in the right-hand image. That’s just because I completely disabled environment shadows for this test. Stuff like that sign will have shadows – that much I’ve decided on. Of course, it might just be weird if walls don’t have shadows when everything else does…