Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Talk about anything related to Unvanquished.
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kharnov
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Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by kharnov »

In this article, I'll be going over what we've been up to lately. Read on for what's new.*

Hey everyone. From now on, I've decided that Sunday will be my blog day. Every Sunday night, you can expect to have a new post up, detailing what we've been doing, what's planned for the future, and other things. The Sunday prior to each release will be a post of expected features, and, of course, each release is also on a Sunday. Thus, there will be an article every week, and possibly an article during the week if something especially notable happens and I can barely wait to tell you all on the following Sunday.

Before we get to the project itself, I think it would be cool to list off a few statistics from Google Analytics, which has been collecting anonymous data since April 1st, when we first set it up on the site. Ever since, we've had 33,285 unique visitors, contributing a total of 338,636 pageviews. We're evenly split between new and returning visitors, with each visitor viewing roughly 5 pages per visit, and the average visitor duration is 4 minutes, 44 seconds. 50% of our visitors use Windows, 40% use Linux, 7.5% use Macintosh, and the remaining visits are on mobile devices. For our first analyzed month in April, we had 2,326 unique visitors. In October, that number has risen to 7,867, a 238% increase. Go Unvanquished!

*

ImageHe comes!*

On the modeling front, we've been up to a variety of things. Quite a few concept artists have been joining us, and as a result, we've been producing some interesting artwork that I'll show you in a few weeks, once they're done. The overmind is nearing completion, and with luck, we'll be animating it over the month of December. You can see a glimpse of it above, and when it's ready to be animated, I'll have a larger, higher-resolution picture of the whole model to show you. Stannum has also been going through his old weapons, retouching them with higher resolution textures, as well as adding in the new human hands in first-person view. He's also been working on artwork for a new painsaw, and after that, he'll do the chaingun. It won't take long before we've replaced all of the Tremulous weapons with our own. Lastly, gavlig is back from his vacation, and you can expect to see updates on the human animations soon.

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ImageIn-progress shot of the new blaster work, with the old one for comparison*

Besides artwork, we've also been putting in some effort on sounds. I've recruited an abundance of sound effect designers, and we've organized them with a shared Dropbox account. So far, we've been producing some replacements for the old ambient sounds, but we've also been doing work on weapons as well. Once they reach a ready state, they'll be added to the game. If something has a new model, you can expect to see a set of replacement sounds for it over the next few months. Some might even be done by the next release, possibly for the rifle or shotgun. Unlike Tremulous, we'll also have reload sounds for the weapons that come with clips.

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ImageA shot of a new map, Yocto*

Mapping efforts have been strong over the last few months, as we've shown in recent releases. This month, you'll very likely be seeing two map updates. The first will be a whole new map by*Pevel, Yocto. Additionally, you can also expect to see a new beta version of Parpax, which will likely be the last beta before Viech upgrades the map with fancy texture work, including bump mapping. Jack has been taking a short rest after finishing the alpha version of Thunder, but you can expect to see updates from him in our January release. We may also have more to show you by Zack soon, as he's been working on his unnamed medical facility map.

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ImageA new area in Parpax*

Our coding effort has also been highly active. Fuma has been doing some more work on his bots, fixing up some of the navigation issues that have been pointed out on our forums. In addition, he's also been working on making both of our renderers more resource-efficient, which you can see in some of his recent commits to our Git repository. `Ishq has been looking into the possibility of using libRocket for our UI system, although we don't have anything concrete yet, as it's in the planning stage. We've also all been involved in serious discussion on gameplay, led by Norfenstein, who has been guiding us through the process of writing what he calls a vision statement. When it's finished, it will be made public on the blog, forums, and Wiki. Around the same time, I'll try to finish up and post a final draft of the game's storyline.

See you all next week, when I'll make my post on what you can expect in our tenth alpha release, which will be made on December 2nd.

Click here to read this article on the main site!

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StalKermit
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by StalKermit »

Page views, google analytics...

How many people play Unvanquished?

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kharnov
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by kharnov »

There's no way of reliably knowing until we start taking server statistics and analyzing them.

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kharnov
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by kharnov »

Note: the formatting is kind of wacky on the forum cross-post plugin. For best results, view news on the main site until we fix the plugin.

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ViruS
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by ViruS »

Got a few things to say:
OM: Eyes too big? Also, they don't match the eyes like you/someoneelse said they would to other aliens/structures. I also don't like the design but this is just my opinion.
Blaster: If the top one is the "old model" the "new model" looks identical to the one we already have in first person, only with two [new] hands on it. I noticed because the current one has two sight sticks at the front and one at the back, with yellow indicators but only has one hand and the old hand model.

Also about updates every sunday: Honestly... Isn't that a bit... too frequent to guarantee? I think it might put some stress on you guys eventually, for example at christmas time or when the game's nearing its goal when its almost done, and most fixes by then would be code related..

ImageImageYou[TubeImage

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icaro440
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by icaro440 »

ViruS wrote:

Got a few things to say:
OM: Eyes too big?

and the most important question: where is the om penis uh? will OM continue having penis? an om without penis its not a true om, you know its true. :D

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kharnov
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by kharnov »

The overmind eyes are intentionally different. Also, the blaster model is identical, but the texture is much higher resolution and doesn't look as washed out as the old one. Also, yes, I'll be sticking to weekly updates on Sundays.

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StalKermit
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by StalKermit »

kharnov wrote:

Also, the blaster model is identical

The sight on the front has changed.

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Theyain
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by Theyain »

The texture is most certainly higher resolution. I, personally, do not like the OM model. It just looks weird.

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JOURNEYMAN
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Re: Weekly update: Nov. 18th

Post by JOURNEYMAN »

What's that spike sticking out of the blaster's side?

Grab reality by the balls and squeeeeze!

Image

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