Orcs vs. Martians November update

I'm shocked at the InstantAction announcement that was just posted. I almost didn't want to post this Orcs vs. Martians update, since the IA news is so much bigger, but I guess I'll go ahead...

Had some great OvM improvements this past month, most notability in the case camera and in speed optimization. Here're the main things I've gotten done:

Chase Camera

• This is now looking pretty good. I solved the chase cam's last substantial problem: trees blocking the view. Now, when the cam gets too close to a tree, the game turns the tree transparent. The transparency comes on gradually as the cam approaches a tree. This fixes a significant annoyance that has plagued the chase cam since its inception. (unfortunately, the video below was taken before I implemented this feature.)
• The chase cam now automatically looks up/down slopes while following units around, and automatically swings around to see attacks.
• The chase cam's acceleration is now lower than the normal cam, so its movement is smoother.
• The user can now manually pan left & right up to 90 degrees around the units being chased.

Optimization

• Big success here--I found & fixed a significant performance issue. I was using TGE's distance fog (TSShapeInstance::setupFog) in a way that it wasn't really intended to be used, and that caused a performance hit in certain situations (I was using it to blend distance fog together with fog-of-war fog). This performance hit was significant and has existed for quite a while, and I've just now uncovered it. But it's now fixed! w00t!
• The game now gets 40+ fps on my system about 80-90% of the time. My original goal was 20+ fps 98% of the time, so I think I've probably already passed that. And the frame rate should get even better once all the 3-D assets are optimized.

Usability

• when the player hovers over a unit with the mouse, the unit now temporarily scales up larger. This is meant to make it easier for the player to see see & differentiate between the units. There's several places in the video you can see this scaling. It was an experimental idea, and I think it came out well. The amount of mouse-over scaling can be adjusted in the game options, or turned off if the player doesn't like it.
• when the player hovers over a unit that's behind a tree, the tree temporarily turns translucent, so that the unit is easier to see. (this is in addition to the mouse-over scaling feature)

Terrain Rendering

• This is not exactly development progress, but I discovered that the TGE terrain blender code eats a fair bit of cpu time when the player pans the camera quickly back & forth across the map. It's not a huge deal, but I'm wondering if there's a way to reduce that performance hit.

Gfx Effects

• made the upgraded human towers fire cannonballs instead of arrows.
• started experimenting with tracer effects / smoke trails behind projectiles.
• made the upgraded martian towers, with two barrels, fire two laser beams.
• made the embers that fall when Martian laser towers fire be dynamic light sources. so as they hit the ground, they light up the terrain, and the base of the tower.
• beautified the units' health bars.

Sounds

• revamped Martians' pain/death sounds and fixed a borken human spawn sound
• added cannonball sounds (shotgun sounds work great for these :)

...plus lots of other fixes and game blancing tweaks.



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I hope everything works out for the folks in Instant Action & in Torque Powered.

geom