Τα τελευταια νεα απο την Reticon απο την σελιδα του DC-Talk.com
1) From Reticon:
Hello everyone at DC-Talk, we have some updates!
The engine's memory leak has been fixed, now we are going through some memory optimization with the engine. Since the Dreamcast does not do any memory management, nor does C code, we are writing our own swapping libraries to read in data and pull it out when it is not needed, to optimize the 16MB of RAM the Dreamcast has, so there's going to be a lot of disc I/O during these games in order for the data being displayed to continue displaying without running into a segfault.
Our next big step is to get shader libraries implemented entirely into the Ionicon Engine so that models may be shaded with different options for different moods in the game play! This will require some tweaking of matrices and normals, much like a texture, it will be applied to the models and environment. It's amazing what you can crank out with just 200MHz if you know how to code it efficiently!
Photos will be coming soon, and again, I would also like to properly present this engine in a video for all of you once it is completely ready to go.
Tomorrow night at 9pm, the entire team is getting together for a massive meeting to share what they have worked on during the five weeks and plan ahead accordingly. Many will meet in person, others will be remoting in into our small studio for the meeting. It will be our first major meeting of 2012. We're looking ahead in 6 months and planning the entire half of the year out, day by day, week by week and month by month. The reason for this is because Reticon has some large plans coming in 6 months that required talks with businessmen, lawyers, book keepers and tax preparers for over two weeks. Can't say what it is just as of yet, we don't want to spoil the surprise but it also many involve talking to SEGA as well
We have someone that will be helping me update our blogger as well. We know it has been neglected, since I am the only one running the Blogger, as well as managing a now HUGE team, as well as doing a lot of the graphical animation and programming, I'm pretty stretched thin as to what I can do and what I need to focus on.
We also have some voice actors as well! Most of the game will have text for dialogue (as of now at least) to save space on the GD-ROM but some scenes will implement voice acting, the hero, main villain and some tertiary characters now have voices!
We're very excited at how the game is starting to come together. It really is like building a pyramid, we started with the base and now it's beginning to construct itself together; chunk by chunk. Once the models are completed, we will have a trailer! and many of the models are midway or finalized now! We have implemented a 12 computer render farm, total CPU count is 48. Since we've come so far using open source software, we will also render our trailer using Blender! We have four modelers ready to go as well as two animators who are working on the models for the game as well as the trailer (high resolution models).
Thank you all for your vigilance and time, in the next few months, this game is going to FINALLY blossom after 3 years of development, can you all believe it's taken so long? Then again, we started with absolutely nothing and worked our way to this point. We did not use 3rd party engines, cut code (meaning spaghetti coding), everything is VERY WELL documented, and we had many months of hardware analysis and research that went into the Dreamcast architecture to completely understand it and create a work flow that is absolutely unique, quick and efficient! We've created a vast story that spans not only a planet, but an entire cosmos to explore, with twists and tuns along the way, deep with its own lore. We've modeled over 100 models thus far! created a unique GUI interface to interact with as well as plan accordingly for Reticon's future! We've done a lot in these 3 years and we'll continue to do so, especially in the next six months!
We've dubbed this stage of our development 'Goal 6', so you may hear us refer to our project time line as 'Goal 6' from here until around August. We cannot divulge much as to what Goal 6 is, but it will involve integration of Tahi and the future of Reticon!
Hold tight, this will be a two part response, I will be sending everyone the second half of our update the following week, after our big meeting! So stay tuned, as for a Q&A with Dobbs, next month is fantastic, just setup a day and time, and we will update the site and blogger as soon as we can!
2)From the desk of Reticon:
As promised, here is the continuation.
The team and I had a long meeting last Saturday discussing something known as 'Goal 6'.
Goal 6 is our team's goal to have over 80% of the game completed by the end of 6 months. This being in August. This is going to be a huge load for us, but in the end, an amazing feat of progress. The entire team agreed on Goal 6 and we have drafted our ENTIRE schedule starting from this Friday until August 30th. The entire team has a bucket list of objectives they must complete, as well as many myself in order to get this game completed and shown as it was meant to be. This will also include the trailer, the website redevelopment, and the demo!
To just explain the scope of how much we must do for Goal 6:
* Our creature creator must create over 100 creatures (front and side views) with attributes and locations
* Our artists must create over 40 main characters for the game, and this does not include the current characters which are in development or already completed and does not include tertiary characters.
* Our writer(s) is drafting multiple versions of the same story in order to fit how the game will be developed, each far more than 300 pages in depth.
* Our composer is ready and has started to produce over 30 songs for the game, which include field music, character themes, menu music and the list goes on.
* My assistant game designers are prepping each stage of the game's development so that the game does not end up being repetitive or boring. We want to MAKE SURE that you're on the end of your seat in every minute you play this game!
* Our modelers are responsible for over 200 models! This one's a big one, they already have begun last week. They will have a jam-packed schedule. Their schedule is much like an assembly line, the end product is taken to me for texturing and continuation of modeling
* Brendan and I will be responsible for most of the coding of this game, we will be producing hundreds of thousands of lines of code for this game, every single night I've been coding this game together. I am also going to be responsible for some of the modeling and most of the animation, as well as overseeing and coordinating the entire project. I will be incredibly busy managing the Tahi project.
The entire team toasted in the end of the meeting for Goal 6! We're prepped up and ready to go! In the light of Goal 6, I have created a machine solely for the purpose of Dreamcast development running multiple backups both on site and remotely to ensure that our code never get gets lost or damaged. We're taking extra precautions to make sure that our code is not damaged, or changed in an unauthorized manner.
We mean business!
Wish us the best of luck. We have our eyes set on the goal. In this case, Goal 6!
Thank you all for the support!
Reticon
3)One thing this last update also shows, Reticon says: This could be the first time that a discontinued system would have a new game backed by the same company that manufactured the console.
It could be history in the making.
GD-ROM και επισημη υποστηριξη; Μαλλον εκει στην SEGA αρχισανε να πεινανε! LOL
Όπως συμβαίνει και με το Sturmwind. Όπως και να έχει είναι συγκινητικά ευχάριστο να βλέπουμε ακόμα παιχνίδια για το DC μας. Getta ξηλώσου ρε φίλε να μου τα κάνεις δώρο. Άσε πια το psp 