Another thing: i dont like the game name. I hope they erase the 2013, it feels Like crap. I thought it was some kind of flash game. Until i saw the trailer.
Dude, give them some time. They said the models and whatnot are only temporary. The video is just alpha gameplay.
Shadowgun doesn't have real-time shadows, but rather 'blob shadows'. Basically it's like a small black circle underneath the player that follows him everywhere, thus it is a fake shadow, not real-time, which is very expensive on mobile devices as of now. DZLS doesn't have blob shadows according to latest screenshots on their Facebook page. We're still in alpha, and we have a lot of work to do. Our main priority is performance; as we believe that expensive visuals won't yield any value if the app keeps on lagging. Once this goal is reached, we will add all the fancy stuff while monitoring performance closely, if it has an impact we'll definately drop it. Thanks to everyone for your feedback, and it is worth to mention that all characters will be upgraded visually. Keep an eye on our facebook page and stay tuned for more updates! Regards, Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
Yes, agreed. I am glad you guys are focusing on performance first and visuals later. That usually works out better in the end. And character upgrades are always nice. Anyway, welcome to Toucharcade! Thanks for filling us in with some info about Infected Wars. Keep up the good work.
Thanks! And definately performance comes first. We're working on this in 'batches', and we started with environments. All environments you see run flawlessly on iPhone 4. Next, the team is going to work on all characters, do whatever is possible without killing our framerates, and so on, until we ensure that the game runs amazingly on all aspects while providing fun gameplay and nice visuals. Regards, Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
That's great to hear. Honestly, if a game had amazing graphics but ran at 15 FPS, then I wouldn't touch it. I think there is a fine balance between performance and graphics, and some experimenting is needed to find it. I'm glad that it is running well on iPhone 4 so far. Looking at the video, I think there were 4 different environments. Are there several different 'levels' spread out across each environment? Sort of like L4D's chapters. Also, the first three seemed to be dark alleys. Some people will complain about that I'm sure, but you guys should take advantage of the darkness and the narrow area and use it to create a more scary, suspenseful atmosphere. You know, kinda make the player constantly wonder what's around the next corner, can I make it to the safe zone. Speaking of suspense, if you guys haven't already, please take a page from L4D's book and have ammo and weapons/med kits placed scarcely through the maps. This forces the player to think about their current condition and it creates some urgency if you are low on ammo or health. That push to get to the weapon stash or the relief when you find a med kit in a cabinet creates a much more immersive (there's a different word but I can't find it) experience than just getting to the checkpoint. I hope you sort of get what I am saying
Looking Fine so far but don`t rush the Game out! If you are still going in for a Fall Release Date you might reconsider that since we will see the next upcoming 3.Months at least ten High-End Third Person Shooter Games on the Mobil Devices that are currently still under heavy Development. I am unsure how long you Guys are already working on it but if i were you i would Release at the Christmas Eve or in January when everyone does have some extra Money if you know what i mean...
Actually, Shadowgun has dynamic lighting and shadows on the character, where it really matters. In other words, the light on the character changes as he makes his way through the environment. Madfinger was able to accomplish this on a mobile device by creating a matrix of light "poles" that were turned on and off depending on the position of the character. There's a nice video in the Unity3D website that explains the process. The montage on your trailer shows the character with exactly the same lighting regardless of the environment. That's probably the main reason (besides the low polys) that it feels so unconvincing. But, as you wrote earlier, you are still working on that aspect of the game, so I expect we'll see plenty of improvements .
Oh wow so many! I know(remember) only few but MC3 is most anticipated Anyway, yeah they should take their time...
What you're referring to is real-time character lighting and character indirect shadows. The Unreal Engine provides a very similar feature and it's called Lighting Environments. We have turned that off at the moment to see what is the best possible performance we could get. This will definately be enabled during the course of development when we get everything optimized as much as possible without sacrificing critical features such as Lighting Environments. Regards, Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
That's what we're doing to be honest. We're targeting iPhone 4 / iPod Touch 4 / iPad 1 / iPad 2. If it happens to run well as per our standard on older devices, we'll definately target them too. Otherwise, we'll just stick to the current generation. Regards, Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
Light Probes is a Unity 3.5 feature and will launch this fall along with lots of other improvements. The Unity guys implemented the feature especially for them. Making it run with a "custom" version of Unity (essentially a sort of pre-beta of Unity 3.5). It's not actual lights - its vertex-ish lighting that's cheaper than "real" lights but with similar results.
This game does look promising,it looks like it would not get boring quickly,focusing on the performance of the game is better than the graphics of a game IMO.
Ops! I missed your reply. Anyways, yes! Oh hell yeah. That's a very good suggestion. We'll probably get that on our list of TODO things. Regards, Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
As mentioned in my previous posts, the equavalent to that on Unreal Engine 3 is called Light Environments. You can check out this page for more information. Hamad Al-Hasan Lead Programmer @ Action Mobile Games
Makes sense that UDK would have a similar feature. It's a great way to make a character feel like it's in the environment and not separate from it (as it looks in pretty much every Gameloft game).
