Development Blog: Sprint #26 - Shadows of Glory

Sprint #26 has come to an end and sprint #27 has begun. This sprint we mainly focused on continuing set dressing Rome and backend user framework for saving player data. Moving into the next sprint we will continue our push of set dressing Rome, gladiator armor and completing backend tasks in preparation for beginning work on our matchmaking system.

Code

Removed Virtual Render Targets from the landscape material since we switched to landscape painting methods for roads
Improved the visual quality for snow and snow trails
Added landscape layer to remove grass in specific areas while maintaining our slope-blending of textures
Begun to benchmark latency and processing times when communicating with the database
Improved backend methods, focused on ensuring robust encoding and decoding of any/all data types for fast and reliable data storage
Various bug fixes with the weather system and Rome

Art

Completed our backlog of technical and performance cleanup for Rome
Completed our foliage pass for trees, shrubs, debris and weeds
Implemented the weather system for all assets which includes gladiators, animals, terrain, props, foliage, weapons, armor and decals (blood, graffiti, decorative, mosaic)
Implemented snow trails and water puddle disturbance with footsteps for gladiators and horses (companion support next)
Implemented Bloom
Implemented Depth of Field for a focused view at a radius of around 50 feet from the player camera with a slight blur in the distance for a more cinematic look
Continued set dressing Rome with rock walls, foliage, structures and props
- Mamertine Prison
- Guard Outpost
- Lake Area #1
- Horse Stable Area #1
- Blacksmith House
- Market
- Tavern
- Prayer Shrine #1
Resolved the majority visual bugs on Rome