Hi everyone,

I hope you've had good holidays and New Years.

I don't post here as often as I should - probably a good thing, unlikely to change for 2020.

However, let's talk shop. I'll break the two things into their own posts, feel free to reply to the appropriate one.

1) PRESENT SERVER ISSUES

We have been having sporadic issues with the server, it intermittently crashes. It has been a bit steadier during the holidays, but that isn't good enough for me personally.

I will be taking the server down and upgrading it to the latest version of Windows Server. We are running some arcane version of it that Microsoft is about to stop supporting.

My hope is that upgrading it will alleviate some of the issues. Our hosting provider gives us free upgrades from time to time - more disk space, RAM, etc. OS upgrades are free as far as I can tell. We have been fortunate/lucky in this regard.

The upgrade should, I hope, take less than a day. I will most likely do it one of these days/evenings.

Pray for my soul.

2) INFANTRY ONLINE SEQUEL

I have been working on a sequel for the past 4 or so years. You will have to forgive me for working on it for so long - a full time job, side hustles and whatnot means I only worked on it when the inspiration strikes (it doesn't always strike at 9am sharp, unfortunately).

In truth, I've probably spent 4-6 months on this tops. I have done a lot in that amount of time however.

High Level

It won't be called Infantry Online 2 because that is already taken, regardless of what the USPTO website may tell you. Trademark and Copyright aren't the same thing.

It's in "Full 3D" (tm). The camera is still pointed down but you can specify the angles in the editor, per-zone. Predefined "Infantry" and "Subspace" configs are provided.

Written from scratch - foolishly not using Unity or Unreal Engine because I thought I could spend less time tailoring the code to do exactly what I want it to do. For the most part, succeeded. Atrocious waste of time.

Suite of easy-to-use editor tools right out the door. You can host your own zone from your computer and register it with the directory list, without us having to do anything special on our end. My goal has always been around the community aspect of things, because I value the work and results that zone devs have put in over the years. We wouldn't be here today without them.

You can import assets from Unity and UE4 Store - they moved from proprietary file formats to FBX, which is what I used all along (success!)

Evolved chat system. You don't have to be in a zone at all to chat with people, you can chat from the website if you want to, or in-game. Log in, select your alias, done.

Vertical Aiming is not supported yet. My ambition here is to have two zone types: "Classic" and "Contemporary"; Classic will follow Infantry as much as possible, Contemporary can have vertical aiming, crouching and other nonsense.

Nowhere near completed. UI looks nice, but the 3D content is missing. "Boxes and Spheres" is all I have at the moment. And some space backdrops I made.

By hook or by crook, will get shipped.

Prototype

I've had some very dull, low-level testing done with a small group of people. I would like more people to join in, however, especially for in-game net code testing and projectile spams.

The first round of testing will be done in a zone very much like Trench Wars from Subspace. Two teams, randomly spawned on the map, have to take possession of a flag in a fortress and defend it for 60 seconds to win the match. One ship, one gun.

It won't be fun at first, it will probably crash on you, we'll have to test things over and over again. And the first zone won't even be Infantry. But this is how it begins (see: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/445682 - they took 6 years to ship).

This won't be for everyone, but if you are interested, jump into the Discord and send me, Abbath, or Realm a PM.

2 Things Jovan.

Release date for Infantry 2.0 or just testing?

Do you log into subspace continuum often cause you mention trench wars.

Release Date - the way I am planning on doing this is to effectively release what I have in increments to the public, you'll have a download link on the site. I'm not putting anything on Steam at the moment, it's just for our community to play around with. You guys are the "Core Audience". The world outside doesn't exist.

I've segmented my releases into "Technical Releases", the first one is already out the door (can log in, can chat, can see zone list). The first was integrating the account server/directory listing and zone server in with a client, having nice looking UI and clean text rendering (harder than it look), and a path to further develop all the modules involved.

The second release is going to be the prototype trench wars. At the end of it once the bugs are fixed and things are working as expected, I might as well put it out there. I want to have the website be public sooner rather than later anyway to get some SEO traction going for people looking for Infantry, so they know this thing exists.

This release will include the map editor (comes with vehicle, item, projectile editors included in one big editor called, at the moment, "Infantry Studio"). You will be able to download the zone server*, plug your map in*, and either play it locally or connect to our directory server so others can play.*

* This is the work I've already done. There's more to a project like this than it seems, because the way I attacked this is to begin with the end in mind to some degree. I went with having a tooling pipeline early on, everything wired in. I wrote the server before I wrote the game.

Each of these "Technical Releases" marks the road to parity with Infantry features. Things like gravity and friction, wall/floor grenade bounce counts, multi-person tanks, turrets, inventory stations, and so on.

I have chunked them up into zones for sake of having a good chunk of things to work on for each one, so TW->TD/TDM/SK->Mech Skirm->Eol is a high level road map of how I will be tackling the features to be implemented.

Continuum - Not that often anymore, but I used to play it. I sometimes hop in when I am bored and I want to pew pew because it's a lighthearted game that kicks ass. Beautifully done.

keep us updated. This game is on the verge of cremation so whatever is welcome.

Isn't the phoenix supposed to rise from the ashes?

pompeii had no phoenix

What are the system requirements?
:D

Windoze 95.

Windows 3.0

My dev machine is quite old - an i7 from 8 years ago, a GeForce 660, and so on. It's a miracle I can run modern-day shit at all, but there you have it.

The two main drivers behind certain hardware requirements are, usually:

1) The rendering. I am not going to go crazy here because I want to keep the game visually simple and clear for the sake of combat. Think Halo: Spartan Strike/Spartan Assault or Torchlight. So I just have to make sure I am not doing anything stupid to cause perf drops.

2) The physics. This is a hard one to manage, but luckily the full simulation happens on the server; clients only simulate things within their area of interest. Regardless, this one will take the most time to iron out and not screw up.

Jovan i had no idea you were a god

Server upgrade was a success. We are now rolling with Windows Server 2019. We were using 2008 R2 previously so quite a big leap.

Thanks to Realm for his help in this as well. I'll hopefully bring the database and zone servers back up in short order.

Done https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY

Good job Jovan.

Hit me up if I can help anywhere. Software Engineer mostly in Java but I can code in C# as well and some C++. Server side and client side, API development, sockets, and various other things.

My name Jeff

You want a job xavier? Where are you located?

You want a nasa built computer Jovan?

You want a unicorn that shits gold coins Jovan?