GREAT list of news in announcments...

[JB73]

sounds great. check it out.

http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136388

[Tarmac]

Thanks HTC.  Great to hear where things stand, as well as where they're going.

[Arlo]

I'm not a big eye candy guy but ...

"He’s got a new fire effects in place, water splashing off of the PT boat, vehicles kicking up dust trails, guns making smoke puffs when you fire them, tank turrets getting blown off, spent cartridge casings coming out of the ejection chutes on a plane or kicking out the ejection port on a manual position, smoke coming out the exhaust stack when you start up, a lot of stuff like that."

Kinda got my attention. If it doesn;t make my game unplayble (low FR) - then I'm all for it. If it requires me to lower my graphic detail to where I don;t see it. I'd rather have new toys to play with.

But that's just my personal likes.

I think the amount of work being put into this game is incredible.

[streetstang]

The biggest advancement in 2.02 will be graphics. With the new terrain stuff in place, you’ll see improvements in that area and 2.02 will add a new and expanded library of graphic effects. Sudz has been working on this and he’s already produced a lot of cool stuff. He’s got a new fire effects in place, water splashing off of the PT boat, vehicles kicking up dust trails, guns making smoke puffs when you fire them, tank turrets getting blown off, spent cartridge casings coming out of the ejection chutes on a plane or kicking out the ejection port on a manual position, smoke coming out the exhaust stack when you start up, a lot of stuff like that. As a whole, his work will add a tremendous amount to the immersion factor as we’ve been getting by with some pretty dated effects and lots of missing ones.

holly bajeezuz this will be sick!

[Octavius]

I've got eye candy, yaaaaay.

[StarOfAfrica2]

Originally posted by Arlo
I'm not a big eye candy guy but ...

"He’s got a new fire effects in place, water splashing off of the PT boat, vehicles kicking up dust trails, guns making smoke puffs when you fire them, tank turrets getting blown off, spent cartridge casings coming out of the ejection chutes on a plane or kicking out the ejection port on a manual position, smoke coming out the exhaust stack when you start up, a lot of stuff like that."

Kinda got my attention. If it doesn;t make my game unplayble (low FR) - then I'm all for it. If it requires me to lower my graphic detail to where I don;t see it. I'd rather have new toys to play with.

But that's just my personal likes.

I think the amount of work being put into this game is incredible.

Whiner!  

[Arlo]

Originally posted by StarOfAfrica2
Whiner!  

Bawl baby!

[StarOfAfrica2]

This is the part I'm most interested in:

As I mentioned before, there’s been a lot of work going on in the terrain system and that is close to coming to fruition. The structure of shapes and objects has been stripped down and reorganized. There has been some fixes to the terrain editor and a new version of that will probably ship next week. Shortly after that, we plan to release the new object editor. The object editor allows for the creation of custom terrain cells and object groups. You will be able to texture terrain cells again as well as define the physical features of a terrain cell such as hills and trees. The object editor also allows you to make custom object groups so that you can make up new object groups for airfields, towns, cities, factories, etc. Finally, the object editor will allow custom terrain shapes created with third party software to be imported into AH.

What this says to me is (if I'm reading it right), the terrain objects are going to be different (i.e. the trees everyone has been griping about will have a new "form" and maybe the issues with flying through them will be gone), and custom defining terrain objects might mean the return of killable trees?  Also I saw that the way objects are rendered from a distance is getting a shot in the arm (maybe the invisible ack problem they've been whining ...... errrr, COMPLAINING about will be taken care of) and most important of all, objects that were imperfectly rendered and caused fps hits were fixed.

Better fps, more flexible terrains and objects, restructure of objects people had problems with, and making them easier to see at a distance.  Sounds like a win for everyone.

[Kaz]

Thanks for the news HTC.

Yeah that paragraph got my heart rate up a few. Looking forward to 2.02!

Some other things that caught my eye before that: Destroyed objects. If I read correctly, we'll be seeing burnt out buildings, hangars etc. not just totally gone structures with a flame.

We also have a lot of optimization to do to the terrain shapes when they are viewed from a distance. We’re not very efficient in this area at the moment and that takes up some extra frame-rate. This is something that we’ve wanted to get done for awhile but we’ve had to wait until the shape/object structure was reorganized.

Looking forward to this. Improved frame rates yeah!

Once HT finishes up work on the terrain system, his time will be spent almost entirely on ToD development and we expect that to start progressing very quickly. While that’s happening, work on 2.02 will also be underway. In fact, it’s been underway and is progressing very well.

Great to know.

Finally, the object editor will allow custom terrain shapes created with third party software to be imported into AH.

This'll be huge. I think...

As mentioned before, the P-38 is undergoing renovation. We’re doing a little experiment with this to see if it’s feasible for us to get assistance from the skinning community in updating planes and creating new ones. We’ve been so impressed with the quality and quantity of work put forth by the skinners that we want to see if we can open the door to the skinning community so that their work not only enhances the game, but also allows the pace of development to increase.

Really hope it works out. If it does we should be seeing many more planes up to date in much less time.

[daddog]

I'm not a big eye candy guy but ...

I used to feel the same way Arlo, until I started playing WWIIOL about 8 months ago. It really adds to it for me.  I finally stopped playing WWIIOL for a couple of reasons, but I can always remember going back to fly in AH and being disapointed on how sad the graphics were. AH needs a serious face lift in the graphics department and it is not a moment too soon IMHO.

[EN4CER]

Keep up the Good Work HTC! Good things come in time.