Roadmap to Steam

[SpiderMack]

Hi,

I wonder what is the roadmap to Steam launch ? What team are working on ?

Actually testing Gen 2 most stuff works right expect some minor things.

[SolarPortal]

Basically for release, we have to complete:
* End Game as Stand Alone / Player
* Resource Collection
* Fix any remaining major bugs like navmesh not showing etc...
* documentation
* demos
* templates
* DLC (even though this could be released after the main release.)
* Website work and improvements...

Don't think im missing anything, but thats where we are atm
Then after release, we have marketing, promotion, fixing more bugs. Then we might be able to look into new features and upgrades for the engine.

[SpiderMack]

[SolarPortal]

[SpiderMack]

It looks good

Something in roadmap i have some questions :

1) Skyline VR :
It is compatible with Steam VR out of the box ? How does it runs, is there some specific optimisations , does it allows 90 fps on simple scenes ?

2) 64 bit :
It's on the roadmap , it is planned to disrtibute it ? It should be a huge improvment about memory and levels size limits.

[SolarPortal]

[SpiderMack]

Continuing prototyping, there is indeed some three major components missing in Skyline that i think should be in before any official release :

- Animations callback functions ( later animations blending on character like upper boddy and lower blending)

- Real prefabs (new unique object prefab in scene explorer also with grouping and parenting child objects)

- Anti aliasing (fast FXAA, MSAA) , anti aliasing is part of any renderer


The first two are even more important as they affect your workflow and coding, without them you'll use work arounds and more coding compared to Unity for example where they make it easy and fast.
It looks incomplete not having them and they will be missing for many people coming from other 3D engines.

[SolarPortal]

Those seem valid, however, we are up against our deadline now, so not sure if they will make it into the first steam release. But we could always get them in asap after the release

Anti-aliasing is a must but not a show stopper, we have a few shader bits to do to make it work correctly, but once they are done, it should work fine. The reason we don't use it at the moment is due to the HBAO post fx as it isnt MSAA friendly atm.

Thanks for the tips

[SpiderMack]

I don't think it's a good idea to rush for a release in the next months and let down some essential features like animation callbacks and prefabs. It's perhaps better to include some essentials for a better release with better reviews.

About anti aliasing you can propose cheap alternatives like SSAO and FXAA.

[StarFire]

Dx FXAA does already exists in the player and end game but can not be used in the editor view. So for full screen its available if you are not using ssao.

Callbacks for animation and grouped objects are on the job list for after the release. But we must stick to our schedule, there are other users who want different features who equally can say the same about their fav missing feature, where do you draw the line?
I dont think this will be a problem as we wont be marketing these missing features!

Development on Skyline will continue after release of V1.0 as it does with any other product

[SpiderMack]

[SolarPortal]