Developer Updates: Developer Blog #4 (20th of March)

We are currently working on a large update for Novus AEterno. As of now we are on schedule with everything we would like done for the update. In some areas we are actually slightly ahead of schedule.

This update will be going live by the end of this month. I am not going to throw a date on this as there are many things still being worked on, and something might take a bit longer than expected. At the moment the various teams are working on pretty much everything they can get their hands on.

Client Team

As of now the client team is working on changes we are implementing to the sector server. This is going really well and plan to have it done within the next few days. They are also fixing as many bugs as humanly possible.

Other areas of work include many different components of the capital ship bridge. The main focus being the transition between space and galaxy view.

The development of the interfaces for both Tactics and Alliances are still on schedule and should be completed within a few days.

Server Team

Today we have managed to integrate the interface for the future physics engine which will run within Novus AEterno.

We want to give players the opportunity to interact with the Novus AEterno universe a bit more. As of now, the universe is merely a backdrop to the war being waged. The implementation of a physics engine will open the doors so that players will be able to mine resources in space and interact with the different anomalies found within the game. This will also allow us to introduce things such as corrosive gas fields which eat away at the hulls of your ships, wormholes which players can use to travel from one part of the universe to another or even black holes that will rip apart everything that ventures too close.

As Novus AEterno takes place within the vast emptiness of space, we do not require an extremely complex physics engine; as there isn’t really much for it to do. We do however need a physics engine which will allow ships and other objects to interact with each other when they collide.

The implementation of the physics interface has significantly cut down on development time, and it is all thanks to Tom who took it upon himself to do this for us within his own time.

Everyone buy Tom pizza!

Art Team

The art team is still hard at work getting everything ready for the interior of the bridge. They have also completed the new explosions; which will be placed into the game within the next update. They are a lot better than the ones we have now and are actual particle effects.

There is also continued tweaking and changes being done to the HUDs and UIs which will be completed within the next few days.

That is basically what we will be getting up to this week. Here are some pictures to keep everyone busy till next week’s Devblog.

We call him: “The Dude”

 

New UI style guide

 

Azendi architecture silhouette concepts

 

New troop drop pod

New fighter models.