Loading of materials

My previous demo had very long loading time (~4 min). There were many big textures there (usually 1024x1024), most of it in tga format.

To fix it, I changed format to dds, pack mips to texture and moved loading of textures to separate thread. Moreover, only near textures (~50 meters - engine parameter) are loaded and during moving, textures outside of that radius will be unloaded. Small versions of texture (64x64 usually) are used instead of full versions on a distance.

Results - 3-4 sec for loading current outdoor level (~800 000 tris), unlimited number of textures on a level, all in separate thread, important for today's multicore CPUs.

Ideas

i broke my brain in search for fresh game idea. It's not so easy, as i think.

There is one stupid idea - a atomic bombing in details. In first part you will be pilot of a bomber, after that - civilian, escaping from town. Burning people, death everywhere. Something about how bad is it. Short game especially for IGF. Kind of interactive movie...

All in real 3D, with details... maybe for IGF in 2D, as they like ))

Great article about indie game PR

http://gillen.cream.org/wordpress_html/?page_id=693

plus http://thegameprodigy.com/zero-budget-indie-marketing-guide/#more-118

Optimization

During tests, my game has average 40 fps on GeForce 9600 with Intel quad core CPU.

That version was sent to IGF.

Several days ago I found, that all shadows on level are drawn every frame. After searching in source I found commented for debugging line of code, which increase speed twice! So fps becomes ~ 80. After switching off grass and NPC sensor system (which do search for enemies 5 times per second) fps becomes 400!.

So first of all I implemented correct instancing for a grass ( and cut off all cards without support of Shader model 3). Next step - faster sensor system for nps.

Now average fps is 160 but there are a lot of ways for improvement.

Little Zombie Susie gameplay

First several minutes of gameplay

i didn't show all gameplay in the trailer, just for a mystique.
But there are many things - puzzles, based on creating ways
for your npc, mines, automatic weapons, fights with humans,
eating cows etc in the game.
I will post pictures and videos here.

New video for IGF

I hope to finish gameplay in near 2 weeks

first screen from my new game - Little Zombie Susie!