Well, It looks like I'm up to write the next update. So before we begin I'd like to just introduce myself. I am Branden the Chief Technical Lead (Hey if you get to pick your title go big.). In simple terms I handle everything on the programming and technical side. Since we're playing catch up with the blog I'm going to be spending most of this post talking about what we've been up to these last few months. But before I get any farther we'd like to invite you to check out our latest build of the game here. Later down the road we'll have a list of multiple builds on that page so you can view our progress over time.

The first thing we tackled right out of the box was our unique camera system. If you play the latest build you will notice that as you move to and from each room or area the camera will shift and change. Visually this adds a lot of control as the artists can be ensured that their work will only be viewed at a certain angle. Cutting out the worry of  making everything look good from all angles and instead time can be spent finely tuning lighting, materials, and geometry to a specific angle. Technically however, camera control; which is traditionally handled purely in code is now a content issue. So to tackle this we developed a way using minimal content to define where and when the camera changes and how it behaves.

To do this we started with the base definition of a 'room'. Now a room is nothing more than a container with unique name. Inside of a room are definitions for trigger volumes that signal to the camera that the player have entered the room, as well as one to four points which define camera position and behavior. Currently we have three camera behaviors with a few more in the design document. These are a single pivot, a pan, and a leash follow. The single pivot is a stationary camera that continuously rotates to keep the player in view. The pan is a camera on a track, and the leash follow is a camera which will attempt to always stay under a maximum distance of the player.

My next post will hopefully cover our character controller and the current state of the dialogue system.
Thanks for reading!