October 2024 Update - Animations & Optimizations

Hello there protozed fans & friends!

Recently, I noticed some performance hiccups so the past couple of months have been lots of optimizations. I know I know, it's not terribly exciting but the good news is - were back up to 90+ fps. Anyways, here are the updates:

Physics-based animations for zeds are now in place. It's small but it gives a little more life to the animations. You can see what I mean in his arms as the zed is knocked back.

Interaction/looting mechanics SFX and animation

I've added a dedicated “constructed” collision channel. This allows for unreal's PCG framework to properly place foliage types inside/outside of houses.

Also, this further enhances the masking tech I've implemented for reducing draw calls. This was mentioned in the last post but for anyone interested, here is a diagram of how that works. The blue spaces are defined per inside instance custom data. All three wall sections are the same mesh and material :

Other:

• Up until recently, the damage value from melee and projectiles has been static. Now, this can be dynamically driven by weapon attributes

• WIP - automated dirt/gunk mask placement on constructed surfaces

• refactored for loot generation to be completely driven by lua

What's next?

• Many of the loot tables and items are already in place. Tags/Name assignments to world objects are required to properly generate the loot. This will be a primary focus over the next couple of months.

• Loot generation for zed corpses

• I like how the zeds react to being hit. It feels right but player animations are a bit lacking.

As always, thank you for your continued support!