Dawn of the Geeks

Bunnies! finally has a new release. Since the last release bilinear filtering has been added which smooths over pixelated graphics, lighting effects have been improved and bump/depth mapping support has been added to wall textures.

Outside of rendering improvements Exits are now part of the game. Previously the user determined the level order. Now they only determine which level they want to start on. The map designer creates the exits which take the user to the next map.

One of the big issues with lighting was the shadows cast by walls. The lights would wrap around the walls in some cases. The fix was a change in algorithm. Now our friend the vector is used to check the dot product of the wall vector and the light vector. No more light wrap around. There was also an issue with the light intensity calculation which resulted in the colors of objects being distorted.

I think the next step is to add in a messaging system. There needs to be a console mode which will allow the user to enter in text messages and send them. The network protocol already exists. It’s just not yet used in the game. And then from there it’s time to have the server start passing messages between users.

And that of course is the beginning of actual multiplayer.