Vitare Blog

Please note: This is a re-post as the original was removed due to an error.

Hey everyone. Sadly I can not offer as much in the light of updates due to the short period of time since such a large update, however i will try and explain what’s been happening.

Firstly lighting has been started, lighting is a hugely important feature in any game as it allows interesting scene designs and layouts to be possible and creates a realistic image of light entering a room and interacting with the objects in the room.

Secondly i have started the styling feature, that allows any object to have its looks changed, it allows different textures and surface types to be applied to objects and really creates a whole range of possible textures for a single object. This feature is also optional in the custom content system, custom items can have their own style maps that lays out where each texture can go.

Finally i would like to give a huge thanks to the community for supporting us this far, and remember to keep on sending us your input, they are a huge help during the development process, and early on is where they are likely to be implemented!

Until next time,

Matt.

Hello everyone welcome to weekly update number 1 from me, Matt!

Firstly just a brief description of what these updates will contain; in these updates i will write about what’s going on behind the scenes in the Vitare development and maybe even a few screenshots! These updates will also help me get some feedback on what you think about the client so far and the features that i have implemented, so without further ado, lets get into this weeks update!

A lot has been done on the client over the past few weeks, however we have decided to once again go back to our original XNA powered client, and scrap our web-based client, this is because of two reasons: both speed and simplicity. Although the web client was extremely fast, it did not handle well once many thousands of objects were on screen, a simple requirement for a game engine. However do not panic! as we are still using the original game engine so development has not been affected.

Another new feature of the client is our world system which allows us to split the Vitare world through multiple servers that has a massive speed benefit as well as providing the fastest game experience, the transitions between world servers is seamless, and you will not even notice that you have been moved server.

Custom content has also been started, which is a huge feature in Vitare and we want the best possible way to manage and provide custom content, currently AND in-game item can be either edited or fully recreated, so for example you could design your own fridge in a modelling program such as Google sketch-up, 3ds max or Maya and import it directly into Vitare.

That’s it for this weeks update, next week i will be delivering even more juicy news about the client and server!

Many regards,

Matt – Lead developer.