Jun 1, 2017
Community Announcements - Pastorazzi
GEM2 is dead, long live GEM2.
Come closer to the fire, my friends. I'll tell you a story. A story of struggle, death and rebirth of one brave game engine. In the comments, you can often read that you can’t look onto the annoying second GEM and suffering from the need to see the third one, and, preferably, better soon that sorrow. For how long will you release and remake these things on this engine when you can potentially work on something else. Stop using the dead GEM2. For how long will we need to wait! We need to do something! It's time to take a stand!
Friends, do not rush to take protest posters in your hands. Most likely it's a banal misunderstanding. This whole thing with the engines is not as simple as it seems. Some people think that the engine is something that "renders great models with cool shaders and so on." Others that it completely determines what kind of game will be. The third ones think that GEM3 is better than GEM2 because ? you know… It’s obvious! The third is always better.
Apparently some moments need to be clarified. Wikipedia tells us that "A game engine is a software framework designed for the creation and development of video games. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine..." So the main part here is “core” one. And this core can be quite flexible. This is easy to understand if you just compare the games that developed using the same engine. Hardly anyone would say that Lineage II and Star Wars: Republic Commando are very similar. Tyranny and Fallout Shelter can’t be called twins too. And even now Men of War…
… differs from Soldiers:Arena.
GEM2 is alive!
The engine determines the basic rules, and greatly simplifies the work on creating the game, because you do not need to do everything from scratch. But do not forget that this is a tool and quite changeable tool in skilled hands. Most of what we write about in the diaries is the editing of the engine. All these trenches, medics, fortifications, interface, the new gamemodes and so on - that what had to be added. By the number of changes that we made, it has long ceased to be the GEM2 that you remember. A year ago we talked about version 2.3 and even then it was rather conditional label. Since then, it has changed many times and will change more to match the goals set for Soldiers: Arena and it is not so important what number you can add after the name. If it helps you get the answers you need, you can call it even GEM42.
And we talked mainly about the gameplay functionality earlier. In addition, there is a huge piece of work, which is not so interesting to read (and write, too btw). Partly because such topics are very difficult to normally describe in an understandable language, without using a mass of terms and abbreviations. Yes, yes, jokes about the "programmer's answer" here would be ok. And these invisible, but important works go on constantly. GEM2 learned a lot.
- Carefully support partial and complete localization. At the moment almost everything except right-to-left languages.
- To inform the player about his success in the session, ratings, available commanders and their experience.
- To work with memory according to C ++ 11 standards. The selection, release, counting of the number of references to objects now passes better using the new stuff.
- Improved the system of quantizing units. And what has we say earlier? Terms in da house. This makes it possible to set a more realistic rate of fire for machine guns, cannons etc. And AI began to think faster.
- To recognize a highly detailed map of heights in the right places. Specially made this one to make possible to shoot an apple from the infantryman's head sitting in the trench using your Pak40.
- To understand Rim shading, Ambient bounced, HDR, LUT, gamma-correction and stuff.
- Gathered the tools to create games against bots, both single and multiplayer.
- Learned to be tolerant to different platforms. At the last test, our coders finally managed to play in the general session using the Linux and no longer feel hurt.
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