Graphics & animations
Most of you have noticed that the graphics were somewhat crappy. It was mainly because those were made in the beginning of the project, just to show stuff on the screen. There was nothing fancy, just polygons & textures. During the last month, it seemed like a good idea to make a first set of improvements for the graphics. You can find some new screenshots from the main page. The game looks a bit better now, but there's still more to come. We have alot more graphics tricks in our pockets, we'll just need some time to get them all in ;)
Shadows
- First draft of soft shadows
- Shadow projection improvements
- Multiple light sources
3D Models
- Goalie mask model
- Goalie model
- Player model
- New seats, with better detail level
Surfaces & materials
- New field, plastic instead of hardwood
- More detailed player textures
- Rink advertisements
- New mapping techniques used to achieve reflections, bumpiness etc.
Animations
- Improvements for basic animations, still needs work for smoother gameplay
- Ball controlling based on animations (ball follows the stick blade)
- Smooth transition blends from one animation to another
Postprocessing effects
- More realistic camera view, by using DOF (depth of field) effect
- Bloom filter for highlights
Motion capture
- New tools for smarter animation editing
- Misc improvements (file IO system etc..)
AI development
Division of the match in to various playing situations, and applying strategies during them
- Man-to-man defence
- Zone-based defence
- Forechecking
- Low triangle attack
- Starting an attack
- Behaviour for going to bench to carry out line changing or to serve a penalty
- Improved ball carrying keeping out of reach and avoiding walls
- Improved behaviour during a free-hit
Gameplay
Line changing
- Players can be changed on-fly (4 lines)
- Own button for jumping to the bench
Penalties
- Penalty reasons and severities have been implemented
- Players know how to walk to the penalty bench
- Overlay is shown for the penalty containing information who got the penalty and why
Scoreboard
- Goals are counted
- Game time is running
What next?
- Improving penalties, powerplay & penalty killing formations
- Free-hit (+formations)
- Penalty shot
- Periods and breaks between them
- End of the match
- Adjusting period time to match the real time