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As promised, here’s the first update on the programming aspects of Project Stealth. Before I start, I would like to mention that this update will be more or less an informative update on the technical side of Project Stealth.
At this very moment, I and other programmers are working on a so-called framework. What is a framework you might wonder? Well, to understand that, let me tell you something about the job of a programmer. As a programmer, we are responsible for everything that happens in-game, the way you can hold W to move forward is done by us. Unreal supports a scripting language called UnrealScript, which gives us literally direct access to the Unreal Engine to do whatever we want. As some of you with PHP/C++/Java knowledge might know, UnrealScript is an OOP-based language (OOP = Object-Orientated-Programming), which means that every piece of functionality (like HUD, movement, game-types) are divided in different files which are all linked together in some way (so, one file wouldn’t work without the other and so on).
As for an Total Conversion (that’s how you call a MOD that completely replaces the game’s original content) we have to start from scratch, which actually means “with nothing”. To still have some kind of structure in our way of programming, we are developing a framework which will make our life easier once we get to the part of implementing PS features. You could see the framework as an collection of those “different divided files” which will eventually get linked to the PS files. The idea of the framework is that it can run a game without actually having any PS functionality in it (a base).
With that explained, I guess we can give you an update on the framework itself as well. For now, we are in the process of getting the framework up-and-running for PS features. We already managed to run it with the minimum amount of code, we can start a menu with it, load any level and spawn in it and just walk around, we even managed to get it to load a custom intro. Some files are still linked to UT3 files, but we will replace that little-by-little with our own files.
Last but not least, we can report some news on the visions. MR.Mic has been working very hard on them and the programming department have been thinking of a way to get them in the game. To get the visions to work, we have to swap some textures when you are playing. Without the swapping, the thermal vision for example won’t show anything hot on your screen. Though, there are some problems making the swapping completely client-side (which means that only you, the one that activates the vision, can see the textures chancing), it will be a big problem if someone would enable his vision and you will see textures change while they shouldn’t. Anyway, the next update will probably go about this issue, since we might have found/receive an answer.
I hope this update was clear and satisfying enough! Up till the next update! For comments or feedback, please sign up and leave them. Eventually, you can also go to the forum and leave your comments there (link).
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2007 Project Stealth