Upcoming April Update Announcement
Hello everyone! Just a development progress update for you all! If you have been following our discord (https://discord.gg/G59T4rMrcJ) you know a lot of things have been moving behind the scenes the last few months. I've taken the time to update the entire project to Unity 2021 which is the latest Unity engine. We have been running on Unity 2018 for most of the project. This task took me a few weeks to plow through all of the bugs and game breaking issues that arose because of the upgrade. While it was time consuming there are several benefits to the update.
1. Build times in the editor went from 6-8 hours to only 15-30 minutes meaning that we are able to patch issues and fix bugs much much faster and save a ton of time that we used to have to wait for Unity to build out the game.
2. With the new engine we have access to tons of new features, optimizations, assets, and a more much more efficient work flow.
3. The editor overall works much quicker meaning I can spend more time working and getting things done then waiting for things to load.
An update to all branches will be arriving within the next 2 weeks with all updates, fixes and changes including the Engine upgrade, sound improvements, optimizations and UI Redesign. The Personnel AI will NOT be included in this update as it is still heavily a work in progress. For previews view the linked youtube videos below
Below I am going to be posting all the small development progress updates that have been posted on discord since the last update here along with the dates they were posted in case you may have missed them. I avoid posting smaller dev updates on here to prevent crowding the big announcements. If you want to stay fully up to date with everything going on behind the scenes, be sure to join our discord and check the development progress channel.
You can also follow our trello which is updated with every task here: https://trello.com/b/WjeqOEsL/emergenyc-development-map
03/15
Hey @everyone , today I've got some gameplay clips to show you guys, specifically in regards to some changes to units and siren/horn sounds. First thing to mention is 234 has received a 2021 rig to match their real life counter part, of course the o
lder rigs are still available to use. Ladder 123 and 132 and Squad 252 have been updated to have chrome rims like their real life counter parts. On the sound side of things, With the doppler effect coming in this update, you can hear a difference in the sounds of the sirens and horns as the rig speeds up and hear how it echos and bounces off walls and streets. This is something that can be heard in real life, mostly from within the rig and is noticeable in game when in the orbit camera or interior views and responding at a fast speed. When outside of the rig though you will get the doppler effect we showed in the AI video in December. I've been working on ironing out issues and getting the game playable again within the updated engine. I spent some time today also trying to fix the editor infinite loading issue i've been having with no luck. I'm going to reach out to Unity about it and hopefully gain some insight on the cause. In the meantime I hope you guys enjoy the clips, they don't show much but I have to keep them short otherwise Discord won't let me upload it. Keep in mind these sound changes are toggleable settings incase you prefer the old style.
https://youtu.be/O7uhcx-4Bgw
https://youtu.be/kB5L57XvxDc
03/9
the UI redesign is almost complete, in the preview you can see the new health air and stamina bars as well as the inventory ui has been redone completely. The main menu also now has a fire station background inspired by the Into the Flames home screen. You can now see the quality setting changes in real time to see what your settings will look like in game. I had some major issues arise that broke a lot of mechanics after the initial UI changes and was able to fix them after many hours of figuring out the cause, trying to fix it, and figuring out a work around to get around the issue. Now that the game is presentable and playable again I can begin to show more gameplay with all of the new features and redesigns. The main issue I have is I am unable to test the game within the editor since the upgrade. The editor will infinitely load play mode when I go to test, as soon as I can resolve that I am able to really move quickly with things but its one of the last quirks I need to figure out before the Unity Engine upgrade is 100% completed. In the mean time I have been having to make a build every time I want to test anything even the simplest of fixes which is why it has taken me so long to do a lot of these tasks. However builds used to take 5-6 hours before the Unity update and now only take 30 minutes to an hour to build. However its a major speedbump in my work flow and I need to sort the issue before I can really proceed full sail with development in the new & Updated engine. I appreciate your patience through the process. While the upgrade has been easier than I thought it would be, it still has proven to be pretty time consuming and troublesome but were almost at the end of the tunnel and things are looking and working really well!
02/19
@everyone Some new UI Previews. I've resolved issue #2 in the last dev progress post, and am in the proccess of addressing issue #1. Since most of the UI has become broken or obsolete in the latest update to Unity, I've gone ahead and rebuilt it with the goals of making the interface sleeker, more minimalist, less cluttered, more organized, and user friendly. I added tool tips to most of the buttons to explain what each button does for new players and removed buttons from the screen that don't need to be there. Ill be showing the player UI next (tool equip keys, health bar, etc) next. I want the UI to be less intrusive and in the way and also simpler and easy to understand especially with the dozens of new AI commands that have been added. Any feedback and suggestions are welcome. I may make the mini map smaller and a circle shape but I want the box numbers and street names to still be legible by the players.
02/15
Good morning @everyone just an update where the upgrade to the latest Unity version is at. There are 3 major issues I have to fix before I can really show anything. 1) Most text is missing from the UI due to Unity using an updated version of Text Mesh Pro which isnt compatible with the new Unity 2) Many of the firefighter models are missing due to Unity having raised the limit to vertex count and causing a lot of the meshes we were using before the be obsolete and forcing me to manually export from the old project and reassign it in the new engine. 3) Me and LC tried testing Multiplayer in this version and there is an issue preventing clients from connecting that i’ve tracked down and need to fix. Once I fix these things last gamebreaking the engine upgrade will be complete for the most part and I can pick up where I left off in the Unity 2018 version. I appreciate everyone’s patience! once these issues are fixed and the game is presentable again I will make a dev update video showing some new gameplay and things i’ve been working
02/3
Just a progress report on the upgrade to Unity 2021, the hardest part is completed which is getting everything updated and fixing errors in outdated code, The game is up and running in Unity 2021. There are some major glitches that I need to fix with the UI and text but the core mechanics are intact with a few hiccups here and there. Compiling takes a fraction of the time it took before and builds now only take 1-2 hours instead of 5-6 hours. This is gonna really change the speed at which I can produce and deliver. The main issue I am having right now is the editor infinitely loops when I press play most of the time which I am in the process of tracking down. So far the improvement is very noticeable and worth the upgrade so far (In terms of editor speed and efficiency). I am still fixing the main gameplay issues and making a list of all the things that were broken in the upgrade to fix them and address them. As for the patch I mentioned last post, I may be able to squeeze this 2021 update into a patch instead of the upcoming patch being still based on the 2018 game engine. Ill keep you all posted with how things move along, so far what I thought would take weeks has only taken me a day or two thankfully. So we are ahead of my projected schedule
01/31
Hey @everyone hope everyone has had a great start to year so far! I know many of you have been frustrated with the lack of progress updates from me so I figured I'd go ahead and give you all an update of where I'm at with things. At the end of the year I decided one of my New Years Resolutions was to really make EmergeNYC reach its full potential and fix the major issues that have been holding the game back. I knew the first step needed to be essentially a rebuild of the project in the latest stable version of Unity (2021) which we are running a Unity version that is 4 years old at this point. A lot has been advanced with the game engine since then and in order to really be able to achieve the best performance, graphics, and most stable game as well as have a streamlined work ethic, upgrading to the latest Unity version is a massive undertaking that can't really be overlooked anymore. Before I decided to begin the process of updating the project which will probably be the most time consuming task I've had to do I spent some time dabbling in the latest version of Unity working on abstract ideas and experimenting with all of the new features and improvements to find out if updating EmergeNYC to Unity 2022 is something that is 1) possible, and 2) worth the amount of time and effort that its going to take to do it. I decided I'm going to take the time to Organize the project as well and remove all the clutter of unused files and assets which will make working on the project much faster which means getting updates out to you guys a lot faster. The main thing that holds me back from providing you guys with speedy updates and fixes is how slow Unity is running the project. Builds take 5 hours to make when they should take only 30 minutes to an hour max. So I've decided I'm going to be taking the time to upgrade the project, while also keeping an intact copy of the 2018 version of the project so I can patch some of the current game breaking issues and push the optimization fixes I've done since the last update. I'm planning on getting this bug/performance patch out to you guys sometime in the next 1-2 weeks. This patch will NOT include the new AI features since they're still really WIP but will include all the other things I've mentioned and shown to be in the upcoming patch. Hope this provides you guys with a better idea of the current progress. I'll continue to update you guys with my progress with the patch and the project upgrade.