Hey all, quick update.

First few days of summer down here and we’re in shoulder deep into our graphics upgrade.
The current version of the engine we’re using is the final update for PS3 – meaning
specifically, we can’t add any newer updates to our engine beyond what we are upgrading
to now. So for the legacy PS3 platform, whatever new visuals we achieve with this version
will be it, but for other versions there will be more. What’s interesting for us so far
is that the lighting is far more complex than previous versions, which will allow us a lot
more latitude for realism in our lighting setup. To date we have been limited to just 3
basic lights. But at the moment we’re in this odd sort of no-man’s land stage, where we
port classes of code across while attempting to get them to work, and at the same time
trying to experiment with the new features of the graphics engine as we go. It’s a bit
like getting into a brand new sports car and not knowing how fast the thing will drive or
what its features are really capable of doing – except at this point we don’t quite have
the time to spend messing around with everything. So this means we’re also going to need
to figure out where the deficiencies are within the engine in order to achieve the
visuals that we need. We’ve also managed to get a lot of the audio across using a new
system, which is good. The new audio system we’re using is far less complicated than our
previous PS3 specific audio setup and hopefully a fair bit less buggy.
In summary, at this point of the upgrade patience truly is a virture because there’s not
much to actually see just yet, aside from the exciting little glimpses here and there. Good progress in a spreadsheet sense, but not wholly inspiring if you are looking for bells and whistles! This part of any development is always a bit tedious, but it’s par for the course and you have to go through it. On the upside, so far it doesn’t feel anywhere near as taxing as
the gameplay and physics demands we’ve experienced in the past, so we’re glad that the
lessons learned there have been, well, learned. We’ll plow on and see how we go…