#15 Shadows and Storyboarding

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DigiMastered Works LLC

Office of Development

DMW107IB1015

Date 10/04/2022 02:00 PM

THIS IS FINALIZED INTELLIGENCE

 

To: The People

From: Tanner Fry

Subject: Shadows and Storyboarding

 

A Dynamic World

    Bringing life into the game requires mimicking nature. That could mean adding grass, trees swaying, wind, storms, and even specific sunlight in different scenes. Over the last month small amounts of development has taken place. Mostly with storyboarding but a large accomplishment can be attributed to integrating shadows. Cue the showcase:

Shadow Timelapse

Shadow Day/Night Showcase

Shadow Performance

    At first the FPS was extremely poor when integrating shadows. I had verts between 50-100k, which doesn't seem like much until you factor in changing the shadow for every object each frame. The system also performs an intense amount of updates every second with shadows as I wanted them to be as accurate to the time of day as possible. So, the FPS was about 7-10 but through additional optimizations, I was able to get it back up to par.

    To preface, all shadows across the entire map were updated and rendered every frame before any optimizations took place. This definitely caused issues. To combat consumption of valuable processing power, some conditions were put in place to only render and update shadows within the player's view as well as only at a certain distance. Below will be able to see all shadows disappearing and reappearing based on your distance from the objects. 

Shadow Optimization

Artificial Intelligence

    Implementation of AI has arrived. To help solidify some of the ideas I have across the game, I started creating a few mind maps to tie a lot of the components and mechanics together. Here are two of them I'm willing to release for others to use and build on in their games, if they'd like. 

A WIP Mind Map of the AI Manager

A WIP Mind Map of AI Personalities

    Just looking at it, I feel a sense of being overwhelmed. It's a lot, and even more so for just one person. Still, tackling this piece of the game is important for the vision. I have a few ideas on how I could accomplish the AI in a robust way. There are a few good articles out there that are worth a read such as this paper, that article, or some other post. The two models I'm leaning towards are finite state machines or behavior trees. My research has pushed me towards behavior trees but I still need to do a bit more research of what exactly I'd like to implement.

Storyboarding

   In the quest for enhancing the theme and backstory for the game, I've recruited the help of software by Midjourney and Pixelator. With a simple subscription to Midjourney, their license grants me the use of images I create for commercial use, thus giving me the freedom to convey great stories and messages through art. However, they also retain sublicensing rights and other terms but nevertheless, I am satisfied and unlikely to be frustrated if others use similar art that I've generated. It's pretty sweet too. If you haven't checked out the capabilities of Midjourney, I'd highly recommend it. I know I've annoyed my fiance and family on the hours I've spent drooling over the impeccable art it can create. So, I can use Midjourney but what's Pixelator for?

    Well, Midjourney is just not there yet with generating pixel art. Even if you supply it with an image of well defined pixel art, it just can't create what's needed. So I've decided to use a third party software that can transform AI generated art from Midjourney into the game's pixel art style. It's a bit more refined then my own art, but I think decoupling the story art from the game's art won't hurt. Many, if not most, games do it already with great success. Without further ado, here are some images I've generated to spark my story telling:

    Below you will see how well Pixelator works. With the use of Pixelator and some applied touch ups by myself, I can create a very compelling array of emotions within a short period of time, thus drastically reducing the time needed for cinematic production.

An American Officer Portrait

An American Officer Portrait Pixelated

    There are some advantages to Pixelator but I need to perform more research and testing to make sure we can downscale and accomplish the proper utilization of time, art resolution, and functionality.

Researching Technologies

Sadly, nothing to report at the moment.

Reshuffling the Roadmap

    I've taken the liberty of moving the roadmap once more. As ambitious as my eyes are, and the desire of polishing and building more components, the deadline grows. I've moved everything down a quarter of the year so that I have October through December to do the following:

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  Build out the AI
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  Complete technology researching
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  Integrate intelligence gathering with the director board
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  Enhance quick actions for players looking to have agent ease of use
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  Enhance character customization
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  Complete backstory
•  
  Integrate global map layers for demographic data
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  Plenty more...

    That's all for September's development update. Thanks for reading and if you have any suggestions on certain topics that you'd like to know more about, then head on over to our forums and let us know. You can also email our support at Support@digimasteredworks.com.

Roadmap

Milestones To Do:

•  
  2022 Q4 - Development of core mechanics and game story
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  2023 Q1 - Internal testing of core mechanics and Alpha testing
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  2023 Q2 - Internal testing continued with review of core engine and mechanics
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  2023 Q3 - Expansion of core features and Beta Testing
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  2023 Q4 - Add enhancements from Beta Testing
•  
  2024 Q1 - TBA

Milestones Completed:

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  2021 Q1 - Initial designs and planning
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  2021 Q2 - Initial designs and planning
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  2021 Q3 - Initial designs and planning
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  2021 Q4 - Development of core engine
•  
  2022 Q1 - Development of core mechanics and game story
•  
  2022 Q2 - Development of core mechanics and game story
•  
  2022 Q3 - Development of core mechanics and game story

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Approved for release: 10/04/22 ID: IB1015

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