Alpha Release

Summary

We implemented everything from the Desirable Target as well as most of the High target. Some of the High Target will not be realized (GPU Terraforming), other is yet to come (fancy menu)

Critical Points

Gameplay

Even though the Gameplay works technically, we are still not completely satisfied with it, since it is very complex. We hope that playtesting really solves these issues and plan for broad playtesting.

XBox Portation

We managed to compile the code for the XBox, meaning that we implemented workarounds for all non working features. We could not get it to run on the XBox yet, though...

Major Changes

Terraforming on GPU

We decided to not do the terraforming on the GPU. It works at reasonable speeds on the CPU and so the benefits on doing it on the GPU would not pay off.

Workpackages

Shadows

We include Variance Shadow Maps for the Character only. This allows us to use a very small shadow map. Scene elements apply their shadow directly onto the ground. This shadow also influences the lighting of the character, scene elements and the eball.

Lighting

The character carries an additional light source, depending on the energy he encorporates. This has nice visual effects on the normal mapped terrain.

Scene Elements

A few new scene elements have been added, such as Mushrooms. Even animated fish is now populating our lakes smile

Particle Systems

GPU Particle Systems for all energies have been created. The Systems include: Particles on the character, for drain/release and shooting action. We face some challenges with the amount of systems that can be deployed.

Special Effects

Depth Of Field

Depth of Field has been added to enhance realism. The following images show our depth of field implementation. The focus is set to far, center and near in these images:

Bloom

A version of Bloom is implemented and works. It is very faint though and we might need to enhance it.

Animated Textures

All animated textures have been created. They are mip-mapped in the sense that the animation applies only to close LOD

Audio

The sounds have been created and integrated as 3D sound-sources.