BEWARE v007 (Patreon)

Happy holidays everyone! That one roadblock is now gone - here's a WIP version of the new landscape, now 3x bigger than the original.

A few precautions: 

* Best to turn off shadows as they will flicker due to floating point precision issues

* Framerate is sub-optimal now - but still playable

download link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1k1j6dZNTX3X3v0RAY4zMYg3KUStFVt-5/view?usp=sharing

As usual, more info about this update coming soon. Best wishes,

Ondrej

[Edit 29.12.2019] Uploaded a new build which should fix the most blatant bugs: trees in tunnel, missing Supermarket & terrain and tree issues over the new territory.

[Edit 09.01.2020] Happy new year everyone! Time for some information about the last update and plans for the near future.

One of the reasons I extended the map is because I wanted to have longer road segments, so that the thrill of a car chase has more time and room to unfold. I think especially that long straight following the river is perfect for that.

Another reason is because I felt it needs more varied geographical locations for me to properly introduce the story later on. 

And of course I enjoy the driving on its own and felt it was time to expand (more on that below)  but maybe that's just me (and the patrons that wished for new roads :)) - I've heard many people say the demo map is huge already, although it is "only" 4x4km.

Right now, apart from "Panelak City", the landscape is still pretty bland and will be getting more detailed in the coming months. So we'll have the initial 4x4km region which is more recreational, with forests, fields, camping ground and cottage colonies and the new 4x8km region intended to become the rural region where food production took place, covered with factory farming facilities. 

During the past days, I tackled a big technical problem called floating point precision: the farther the player drives from the 3D-space origin, the more everything becomes unstable - camera shakes, physics break, geometry vertices start pulsating. You may have noticed that the shadows start flickering when driving around the new region. Long story short, I have a solution and managed to eliminate the flickering shadows yesterday. Don't want to bore you with this - it's just to say that the map for the full game could be 144km2, that's 3 times the current size, and I'm happy to have found a solution :)

Also spent time trying to figure out how to optimize and get better framerates - I made some good progress on that too.

Last thing before moving on to the roadmap: I have to admit that personally, I've been having much more good/tense times trying to escape from the good old Lada and Dacia type cars. Feels like the Tatra 613 & Aro 4x4 are too overpowered compared to the Skoda 120 - and while it's possible to outrun them on twisty roads, it is kind of no fun when you're on a straight one, and does break the tension somewhat. Maybe those could serve later on in the game, after the player car is sufficiently upgraded.

This is just a very basic roadmap of what's planned in any particular order:

* A story! -  presented through NPC subtitles & environmental storytelling

* A better and fairer vision/detection system - better ability to hide

* Reliable input system - support for driving wheels (gonna have to buy one myself)

* The player's identity in the game

As always, looking forward to read your comments :)

 [Edit 21.02.2020] The upcoming v008 is turning out to be a quite massive update (the biggest to date) - apologies for the delay.