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Welcome to 2015

Characters, Customization, Gameplay, Level Design, Programming, Website

If you are still with us, and why wouldn’t you be…. welcome to 2015 with BlackFoot Studios! We have a feeling its going to be a really great year around here so we hope you keep hanging on and enjoy the ride. It’s going to start  gaining some speed here soon. 😉

John starting working on the official Ground Branch Steam store page today! That is actually a pretty important milestone as it signals the start of moving into more of a public phase for Ground Branch. On that note, we are looking for some professional (either actual experience or work quality) to help out on the graphics side of things for the page. It’s going to be important to start off with a professional appearance so I’d like to do it right. If you think you would be able to help for reduced rates or even barter a bit, let us know as soon as you can.

We have also got around to setting up a public bug tracker so people can help out by submitting bugs once the demos are available. That is getting tested out by a private group as I type this.

On the game side of things Kris has been busting ass with getting things stable and features more completely implemented. He has also got the first pass of character and weapon configurations in and working. This includes the in game UI and saving/loading out actual constructed configs.

On the art side the existing training maps have received one more pass for visuals and some more detailing work. John has also started working on the main demo map that will be used to show off various gameplay features to get people interested in the upcoming Early Access. Sort of a ‘try before you buy’ for the Early Access. It’s a reworked version of the warehouse map that was shown in the UE3 screenshots and videos. We will use this map as a “proving ground” for gameplay types and features throughout development.

So we hope everyone had a great holiday and safe New Year. It’s time to get back to work!

John & Kris

New look!

Uncategorized

As you can see we have overhauled the site to be a little more streamlined. As we start to move into the next phase of the life of Ground Branch we thought it appropriate to give everything a “fresh coat of paint”. We will begin to update the content in the near future as well.

We would like to thank our contributor Zoog for all his hard work!

– John & Kris

Have we done this before?

Programming

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.

Test map definition and map mission.
Test map definition and map mission.

It requires more work to automatically include child game modes with their parents and other such trickery, but its a good start.

Thanks

A big thank you to everyone who continues to follow, support and encourage us.

And to those who have been testing out the upcoming tech build for us – hugs and kisses on all your pink bits!

dev_ui_dirtyhack

Somethings coming and here is a preview

Level Design

So we are getting pretty close to releasing something public….. No really!

We plan to release a sort of tech demo in the next few weeks to serve a couple of purposes. First is to allow us to figure out the “packaging” process for a public release and to make sure we can deliver a public build that works. UE4 is a lot different than UE3 in many ways so there is a lot of learning on our part still. Secondly is to get an idea of performance characteristics with various performance settings and to see how an area with specific design characteristics works on various machines.

To be clear, this is not Ground Branch the game. There is no “game” in this release. It is a small purpose built area that shows off the density of map design, foliage density, lighting setups and various effects. You can walk around and shoot a weapon, but there is no purpose or “mission”.

Here is a screen from the editor of part of the area:

 

Preview_01

We really want to have solid and playable releases for Ground Branch. This is the first step in getting there and an actual playable build….. and that isn’t to far away. 🙂

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This Steam Early Access game is currently not a finished game and may or may not change significantly over the course of development. To learn more about Steam Early Access, please visit http://store.steampowered.com/earlyaccessfaq/

GROUND BRANCH, the GROUND BRANCH logo, BlackFoot Studios, and the BlackFoot Studios logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of BlackFoot Studios LLC.
GROUND BRANCH uses Unreal Engine 4 © 1998–2024 Epic Games, Inc. All rights reserved. Unreal is a trademark or registered trademark of Epic Games, Inc. in the United States of America and elsewhere.
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GROUND BRANCH is published by MicroProse. MicroProse and the MICROPROSE logo are trademarks of MicroProse Software Pty Ltd in Australia and elsewhere.