PSO Remake Promo Demo

[Glader]

Hi guys, Glader here.

Awhile back I made a post about a project that I was about to start. Well, another developer on the team convinced me we should go off on a tangent and produce a non-networked promotional demo to sort of show as a proof-of-concept and show that 'Hey, this is actually possible.' Well, we've finally released it and you can check it out here on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comment...motional_demo/

This reddit post was when we announced our efforts to produce a promo demo. It contains a bit of information about the project itself and our goals: https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comment...online_remake/

If you'd like to read the original PSOW thread you can check it here. None of the posts are relevant in it anymore so I felt a new thread was justified: http://www.pso-world.com/forums/showthread.php?t=225038

I can't wait to get back to dedicating time to this PSO project and picking back up where I left off with the networking and serverside many moons ago.

It's not what we had hoped to have produced but it had soaked up too much time already so we decided to release it. It's better out there than sitting dormant on my PC in a folder.

If you have any questions about the horrible code, development, team or project feel free to ask.

[Glader]

Figured I'd post a teaser that was hidden in an IndieDB post that nobody probably read.

Since the promo's release I've recreated 6 of the 7 rooms from Caves 1 and will work on Hallways today. One of the rooms is a bit difficult to remake but hopefully we can pull it off.

You can see the first room remade here: https://embed.gyazo.com/b5dc1b889c92...8099a4d730.mp4

This room relies on point lights to simulate the emission from the rocks. In a lot of other rooms the emission of the lava can handle lighting the room via Global Illumination.

I've learned from my mistakes in Forest and have worked to keep the tris and draw call count of Caves down while keeping the quality as high as I can. You'll see more of Caves 1 later this week hopefully. While Caves 1 looks crazier it actually preforms better than Forest 1 did. All rooms under 200 draw calls and 500k tris at the moment. While, at the top end, Forest was pushing 2k draw calls and 1m+ tris.

RoadMap

July 24th Caves 1 analytics build planned for release. This build will allow players to explore Caves 1 and voluntarily submit a log file it generates so that we can optimize low performance sections you encountered while playing. This analytics tool will be written later this week and will be able to playback frame data gathered from testers.

August 7th The first networked test build will be released. This is to test GladNet, a networking library I wrote, in the wild and to find any issues with our serverside before more important deployments. The test will include logging in, selecting a ship and customizing and creating your character.

[Stealthcmc1974]

Well holy hell, color me surprised. I had forgotten about this. Downloading that build now.

EDIT: After going through it, I have some words.

First off, it looks pretty. Like, I really like it. Ragol is as I remembered but with a breath of fresh air. The HUD is clean and is very similar to the old one. Again, I like the new one.
Networked Beta 2017... Son of a bitch, keeping me waiting huh?
The Boomas were faithful, but man was attacking not the easiest thing. Of course its just a promotional demo, but I found myself abusing the energy gate for some cheap kills. I also tried many times to break the boxes, but to no avail (again, I assume its just because its a promo).

The only thing that stood out to me was the way the character looks. Compared to the rest of the environment, he stood out like a sore thumb. I'm, thinking due to a lack of shaders? Also, his running animation seemed too fast for the pace he was going at, but that's just me.

I realize most of this code won't be used anyway, but I must say I like the updated way that Ragol looks, as well as the HUD. I look forward to seeing what else comes.

Networked Beta 2017... Son of a Bitch, keeping me waiting huh?

[Glader]

Well holy hell, color me surprised. I had forgotten about this. Downloading that build now.

EDIT: After going through it, I have some words.

First off, it looks pretty. Like, I really like it. Ragol is as I remembered but with a breath of fresh air. The HUD is clean and is very similar to the old one. Again, I like the new one.
Networked Beta 2017... Son of a bitch, keeping me waiting huh?
The Boomas were faithful, but man was attacking not the easiest thing. Of course its just a promotional demo, but I found myself abusing the energy gate for some cheap kills. I also tried many times to break the boxes, but to no avail (again, I assume its just because its a promo).

The only thing that stood out to me was the way the character looks. Compared to the rest of the environment, he stood out like a sore thumb. I'm, thinking due to a lack of shaders? Also, his running animation seemed too fast for the pace he was going at, but that's just me.

I realize most of this code won't be used anyway, but I must say I like the updated way that Ragol looks, as well as the HUD. I look forward to seeing what else comes.

Networked Beta 2017... Son of a Bitch, keeping me waiting huh?

Thank you for the kind words. The character does seem out of place. It is going to be replaced around the 30th assuming Sega stays on schedule. We're hoping in future builds he won't look out of place. The animation isn't really proper for the speed he is going at but it is what we had to work on. Kion is working on unpacking player animations currently, we'll use those if we can.

Yea, we are going to put out a networked build for character creation and customization next month but I can't promise much. The latest you can expect a fully playable game is in 2017. It's going to be awhile sorry =(.

You can thank Pol for the HUD/UI, he built it. I really do it like it a lot though I think he says he's going to redo it. The same goes for Forest, I will be rebuilding Forest so that it is more preformant like our current Caves is.

I just abused energy gates in PSOBB moments ago, you can kill things while not even in the room in PSOBB. You can't do so in that promo, nor will you be able to in the finished game. Attacking only considers enemies in your current room so you won't be able to attack things through the gate. However, leaving and re-entering the room was present in the original game so I do not plan to change anything like that.

Glad you liked it, the promo will look nothing like the finished project. Even Forest will be rebuilt. Look out for the Caves build later this week as for the differences in quality and performance you can expect the new Forest to hopefully have.

[A. Zerran]

Perhaps you could use a tester? I've been meaning to try and make my own sequel to PS Blue Burst with a more ambitious take...but I don't know if I would be capable. After seeing your project, you gave me some insight on how "Red Burst" would be like. Though, my idea for a "remake" of PSO2 titled "Red Burst" is, as I said, more ambitious, considering a few factors.

1: I'm aiming for the top engine of game coding, which is Cryengine 3.6. Very far fetched, but would really suit the game.
2: I'm aiming to massively up-heave the combat system to something more akin to Devil May Cry (but with no QTEs).
3: I would be returning features that were stripped from PSO2 that were in previous games that I felt should have been kept (more robust Partner Command system, some extra weapons, some select skills for classes that made them more interesting, ect.).
And 4: Beasts. Why remove them? Last I checked nearly everyone loved 'em. Bring them back. And if it's nonsensical, then that can be fixed...I think. But either way...

I'd like to help you in your project, but would my project ever come to light?

[Glader]

Perhaps you could use a tester? I've been meaning to try and make my own sequel to PS Blue Burst with a more ambitious take...but I don't know if I would be capable. After seeing your project, you gave me some insight on how "Red Burst" would be like. Though, my idea for a "remake" of PSO2 titled "Red Burst" is, as I said, more ambitious, considering a few factors.

1: I'm aiming for the top engine of game coding, which is Cryengine 3.6. Very far fetched, but would really suit the game.
2: I'm aiming to massively up-heave the combat system to something more akin to Devil May Cry (but with no QTEs).
3: I would be returning features that were stripped from PSO2 that were in previous games that I felt should have been kept (more robust Partner Command system, some extra weapons, some select skills for classes that made them more interesting, ect.).
And 4: Beasts. Why remove them? Last I checked nearly everyone loved 'em. Bring them back. And if it's nonsensical, then that can be fixed...I think. But either way...

I'd like to help you in your project, but would my project ever come to light?

Even just a remake of Phantasy Star Online is ambitious. I think all those added feature sets would push it over the top. If you're willing to work on it for years you could potentially achieve it. I've also heard poor things of Cryenegine. I see no reasons to not opt for UE4 or Unity5, Unity5 especially for the productivity of C#. Things look pretty good out-of-the-box and run on decent hardware in both those engines. It really comes down to art, you can have cutting edge white-paper based world first implementation of rendering thesis and etc in your engine and such but when it comes down to quality it all depends on the art really in my opinion.

If you have the dream of those particular features I'd recommend you work independently. I think it's more or less in direct contrast to what this project is aiming to do at the moment.

[Glader]

Just posted the Caves 1 level design analytic build promised for July 24th. More information about it, and why it was late, in this thread https://www.reddit.com/r/PSO/comment...nalytic_build/ .

Feel free to check it out and explore Caves!

[Stealthcmc1974]

For some reason, I can't unpack the new build. My software is refusing to extract the archive, which is weird considering I don't usually have trouble with zip or rar files.

[Glader]

For some reason, I can't unpack the new build. My software is refusing to extract the archive, which is weird considering I don't usually have trouble with zip or rar files.

I'm about to head to bed but I'll investigate when I wake up. This rar was generated on a windows VM. This is using RAR compression which is proprietary to WinRAR. If required I can upload a zip.

The reason this was uploaded as a RAR was there was a bandwidth constraint with this build for uploading, it's a long story, and RAR has a better compression rate. WinRAR should do the trick otherwise I can upload a zip instead later today.

[Stealthcmc1974]

I'm about to head to bed but I'll investigate when I wake up. This rar was generated on a windows VM. This is using RAR compression which is proprietary to WinRAR. If required I can upload a zip.

The reason this was uploaded as a RAR was there was a bandwidth constraint with this build for uploading, it's a long story, and RAR has a better compression rate. WinRAR should do the trick otherwise I can upload a zip instead later today.

Ah I see. I just use 7Zip for everything, even RAR files. but WinRAR worked perfectly here.

As for my impressions... holy cow. Forest looked great, but this was awesome. The attention to detail, from the water dropping from the ceiling to the steam rising, was phenomenal. I'm not gonna harp on other things I noticed as I see others on reddit mentioned em, like enemy textures. But it's looking great. Kudos to you guys!