The first Dead Matter Development Diary, posted on the official Dead Matter Forums on September 1st, 2017.
In this entry we take a look at weather effects and three different revolvers that will be in the game and some of their customization options.
Author Note: This post was made early in the Dead Matter development and some of the information provided may be outdated at the time of reading.
Wetness Effects & Surface Porosity
Any modern game, especially open-world games, have some kind of weather system to be more realistic and immersive. It just makes the world more believable and interesting. In survival games the weather should also have an impact on the player. For example, in DayZ I would never go without a rain coat in my inventory anymore. When it's really pouring down, and you are not prepared, you sometimes just have to wait it out. Or risk hypothermia from being drenched in the cold winds of Chernarus.
Making you feel a virtual weather is no easy task, the two important things that come together to accomplish this are sounds and visuals. You need good sound effects, hearing wind, rain and the occasional thunder will go a long way to make you feel the weather. And the second part, which we are looking at here, are the visuals. When it rains, the world should look the part. There is not just the rain drops themselves but surfaces should look wet and puddles should form.
This is exactly what
Yad has been working on, wetness effects on surfaces. And it looks great. But the water will not just cover everything in the same way, different surfaces, based on their material, will have different levels of wetness to them, and puddles should only form where it makes sense.
This is what he had say about his work:
I've been hard at work at integrating a physically-based porosity and wetness system into the world's master material, for those stormy nights and rainy days.
Each material in Dead Matter contains baked-in information about the material's height, ambient occlusion, and roughness. Utilizing this information, we can best approximate where puddles are likely to form on the material's surface when it takes on water. We use this information in every material to determine the material's appearance when wet, which is ultimately unique for each material we author for Dead Matter. Through the roughness map, we derive qualities about how 'porous' the overall surface is and transform this information into what is called a 'Porosity map'.
Yad / Dead Matter Forums
I'm very glad to see this level of detail, it will help create a believable and immersive Gameworld.
Revolvers & Customization
Dusty, lead weapons designer for Dead Matter, is showing us three different revolvers here, the Sam & Winston Huntsman, Sheriff and McGregor.
Sam & Winston being the fictitious counterpart to weapon manufacturer Smith & Wesson. The weapon models and textures look very good. We were not able to find out on which weapon models exactly they are based, if you know, feel free let us know in the comments below.
With these
Dusty also laid the groundwork for the weapon customization system in Dead Matter. You can switch out barrels, grips, sights, attachments, rails and unique weapon mods on-the-fly. As you can see, all three revolvers use the same base.
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This is exactly what Yad has been working on, wetness effects on surfaces. And it looks great. But the water will not just cover everything in the same way, different surfaces, based on their material, will have different levels of wetness to them, and puddles should only form where it makes sense.
This is what he had say about his work:
With these Dusty also laid the groundwork for the weapon customization system in Dead Matter. You can switch out barrels, grips, sights, attachments, rails and unique weapon mods on-the-fly. As you can see, all three revolvers use the same base.
