I want to update the menu screens to feature new background visuals. I have a really cool idea for the new design; drawing inspiration from the "dynamic" background in BO3 zombies. The current one featured one of the buildings I created in blender that has since been retired.
I'm aware of at least 3 systems that have small issues or incomplete features that need to be addressed before I can release the demo. For example, there is no way to quickly consume food or drink items, which will be very frustrating if you have to do it mid-combat.
Until now, placeholder animations have been used throughout the game. It's time to replace them with real animations. I'm planning to gather some friends and make it a fun day of shooting animations and then using the Unreal Mocap plugin to convert them to usable in-game animations.
I wanted to do one thorough optimization pass to improve the game's performance. Before this update, I was sitting at around 50fps indoors and 40fps outdoors. After the pass, I am now getting around 120fps indoors and around 80fps outdoors (looking out over the entire map) on max quality settings.
I successfully migrated the inventory system to C++, which should improve performance and stability. It was a significant task, but it is much better than working in Blueprints. For larger systems with complexity, I find it easier to manage the code in C++ directly.
I had a prototype mining system implemented in BPs, but I realised that I would have significant performance issues as I basically had one mesh (uninstanced) for every single resource; for example each tree was a new blueprint actor in the world. I decided to implement a "subsystem" (using Lyra as my reference) to handle all mining-related logic by using listeners and centralized management.
This meant I could easily just fire a mining event and have the subsystem handle it appropriately. The implication was that I could now use the Foliage Meshes again for resources, which greatly reduced the number of uninstanced actors in the world.
I'll be updating this roadmap with upcoming features and improvements. Please join the discord community for faster updates.