November 7, 2014 – GROUND BRANCH

Have we done this before?

I’ve been having a terrible feeling of déjà vu this week. Spent most of it working on the UI and some of it rigging up a system to keep maps and missions organised properly.

To HTML5 or not HTML5, that is not really a question.

Originally we were using a CEF based system with support for HTML5, CSS and the like. This all changed once we had a go with the UMG in the preview version of Unreal Engine 4.4. The ability to create what we need in-editor and hook it up directly to the scripting won us over.

Now that I’ve had a decent amount of time to learn the system, I am able to come up with functional, if ugly, screens, buttons and other UI elements easily.

dev_ui_20141107a — Work in progress server browser with 100’s of mock server entries.

dev_ui_20141107b — Work in progress create/host game screen.

dev_ui_20141107c — Work in progress Video Options.

There have also been a lot of UI related C++ changes too,
with future developments in mind.
i.e. Operator screens.

Time of Day

Just to make one thing clear: Ground Branch does not have a fully dynamic time of day system. And to be honest, since it has bugger all to do with movement and shooting, it is way down on our list of priorities.

That said, we do have a time of day system of sorts – it just isn’t dynamic.

It’s a bit of throwback from the UE3 version. Maps are split into pieces to keep things organised and allow the same base geometry to be combined with different lighting and other changes to support different times of day, multiple missions etc.

Maps & Missions

For the sake of organisation, we’ve gone with a basic system that defines the basic info about a map in one file and mission info in one or more other files.