The new engine, changes involved.

Now thankfully I got a good taste of what Evaldraw, the new engine for Black Shadow, can do with my early work with The Crawl.  With that project, the entire world was generated by voxel models, draw was handled by ray casting for objects(much faster) so there wouldn't be any over draw.

With wall, floor and ceiling tiles along be 64x64x? in voxel size, there was a lot of voxels put on the screen, and the performance was good on various systems.

Now combining a Build engine map, constructed of polygons for real unlike the Duke3d original engine(polymost and polymer for eduke32 are polygon based), and a faster voxel rendering, I can do a lot more, and handle higher quality models.

So lower resolution models are most likely going to be replaced with ones converted from actual 3d models I'll be creating in sculptris.

Also I'm going to have to create a new "engine" that behaves somewhat like the original build, with Evaldraw.  Thankfully Ken was kind enough to provide me with a script that contains all the basics I need to get started, I just need to invent additional sprite and sector effects for what I need.  Some things should be easy, others might not be.

I'm also considering upsizing enemy models, and I will also be adding additional frames of animation for them.

Currently the average enemy is 80 voxels high, I may double this, or just increase it an additional 50% for better detail.  Some monsters would benefit greatly from a higher resolution.

 Current progress on the new engine, I completed a rough method of entering water.  It needs some polish, but its true water entering unlike Duke3d where you are teleported to a different sector.  This is pulled off using Evaldraws ability to handle true rooms over rooms and using a dividing sector that is but a pixel thick.  Anything thicker and you start falling out of the map...

Lets start over, new engine.

This is a sample video of a new version of the first map I've started for the Evaldraw engine.  After some playing around I've decided to make the switch do to a number of factors.  One of them is no limits on sectors, walls or sprites, something that posed a threat to some of my levels in the Eduke32 version.

That and the engine supports radial and spot lights, better voxel model rendering, and shadows.

The only thing I need to do is recreate the AI handling system, or at make something similar.  I'll still be using CON scripts from the Eduke32 as reference to develope the system and the monster's behavior.  Hopefully I can still retain Deeperthoughts assistance despite me no longer needing CON coding to work on the project.  Testing AI in eduke32 and attempting to match it in Evaldraw is going to be a challange.

Also maps are being redone for two reasons. 

1) Lighting effects negate all the shading methods I performed in the first several maps.  Shading will now be dependant on actual lighting.

2) True room's over rooms, meaning a lot of things I couldn't do I now can.  Meaning my vision of the maps has changed.