End of August Update

Hello,

I'll keep this one fairly brief, as most of you probably saw the short trailer that was posted to youtube a week ago, which contained a better demonstration of a lot of the updated visuals than what could be posted here. If you haven't seen that, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TD-9CMs6_TY

Of course, some more progress has been made since that video went live. As you can see from the attached video, we've been trying to get the water terrain assets working ingame. The new light system works great with the animated water tiles, and definitely adds the potential for more atmosphere. Next month we'll have that more fleshed out with things like animated waves to better bring the marine environments to life, and some of the previously created naval units updated to function within the new rendering system.

We've also added a few little systems, such as this convenient automatic reversing feature for land vehicles.

 
This will function for most land vehicles, and since there will be directional armor (ie: armor is thicker on the front and weaker on the rear), units should be a little smarter about how they position themselves. Plus, this also means unit movement is a little more convenient, as units will generally avoid wasting time rotating to frontally-face their destination.

We also have a unique movement type for hovering vehicles:

 
While there will be very few hover vehicles in the game, this unique logic for how they move does help them stand out a bit, and factors into strategy for controlling and positioning them. Also, if you are thinking the instantaneous movement speed looks a bit strange, we are planning on including some acceleration and deceleration logic for ground vehicles. Note that aircraft currently already have acceleration and deceleration factored into their movement behavior, but since they operate with entirely different movement logic than surface units, it can't just be simply ported over. There's also a few other movement systems that need to be added, too, like units towing other units, and units gaining or losing speed when moving up or down a hill.

That's all for now. Next month we'll try and get more done in regards to base-building and resource gathering, as those features have been somewhat ignored since the big lighting update was completed. And as always, thanks for the continued support.