- HTC Vive VR Issues - 17 August 2018
This is just a quick notice about the recent VR Update. Some issues have been discovered with VR mode on the HTC Vive and I’m currently looking into these. During development I have only had access to an Oculus Rift for testing SteamVR so I’m hoping to gather as much information related to these issues as possible. If you have a Vive and are experiencing these issues, the best thing you can do to assist me in fixing them is to switch to the “tangerine” beta branch (in the Properties window for the game on Steam) and add -debug to the launch parameters in the first tab of the same Properties window. After running the game and closing it, switch to the third tab in the Properties window and open the game directory on your hard disk. There should be a log.txt file that contains debug information intended to assist me in solving this issue. If you can create a bug report in the Discussions…
- VR Update (v0.5.0) - 15 August 2018
A new version of Freefall is now available for download! The VR Update adds SteamVR support and overhauls the input system to unify support for keyboard/mouse, controllers, and VR controller devices. The VR Update has been a long time in the making, requiring large chunks of Freefall's engine to be rewritten and most importantly demanding a complete overhaul of the previous input system. The engine now uses a powerful actions system, allowing multiple input methods to be bound to the same action to ensure consistency across all our supported input methods. The new actions system also opened the door for VR thumbstick and tracking support, allowing us to do some complex stuff to let you play the game with just the VR headset and controllers. Here's a more comprehensive list of changes: * Add support for SteamVR. Freefall can be launched in VR mode by selecting the appropriate launch opti…
- Progress - 2 December 2017
Hey everyone, I just wanted to give a quick update on the current status of Freefall, as the last update was at the beginning of October and I realize it's been 2 months since then, without any information about what's going on. In short, I made a mistake a few months ago when I planned out my development timeline. I significantly underestimated the amount of work that would be needed for important features like multiplayer. Loads of extra stuff has popped up that I didn't originally think would be necessary. One feature I was excited to work on was Philips Hue color lightbulb integration. I hinted about this a couple of updates ago, and my goal is to allow players to set up their lights to complement the color of the world in Freefall in real-time. This feature has forced me to consider many things, from networking, to user interface design, to designing a better, more robust local con…
- Progress - 2 December 2017
Hey everyone, I just wanted to give a quick update on the current status of Freefall, as the last update was at the beginning of October and I realize it's been 2 months since then, without any information about what's going on. In short, I made a mistake a few months ago when I planned out my development timeline. I significantly underestimated the amount of work that would be needed for important features like multiplayer. Loads of extra stuff has popped up that I didn't originally think would be necessary. One feature I was excited to work on was Philips Hue color lightbulb integration. I hinted about this a couple of updates ago, and my goal is to allow players to set up their lights to complement the color of the world in Freefall in real-time. This feature has forced me to consider many things, from networking, to user interface design, to designing a better, more robust local con…
- Technical Update 3 (v0.4.0) - 2 October 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! Technical Update 3 focuses almost exclusively on the game's underlying engine and build system. Countless changes have been made to these areas - far too many to list here - and you can read about these changes in more detail in the following announcement. http://steamcommunity.com/games/620280/announcements/detail/1477601466712899271 Most of the changes this month are described in the above announcement, but here's a list of the notable changes to the game itself. A realistic lighting model has been added to the game. This is disabled by default, but can be tuned from 0-100% in Options -> Graphics -> Lighting Realism. A new graphics option, Specularity, has been added to accompany Lighting Realism. This option affects how shiny the game world looks, and only takes effect when Lighting Realism is turned on. Very minor performance improvements and a…
- Technical Update 3 (v0.4.0) - 2 October 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! Technical Update 3 focuses almost exclusively on the game's underlying engine and build system. Countless changes have been made to these areas - far too many to list here - and you can read about these changes in more detail in the following announcement. http://steamcommunity.com/games/620280/announcements/detail/1477601466712899271 Most of the changes this month are described in the above announcement, but here's a list of the notable changes to the game itself. A realistic lighting model has been added to the game. This is disabled by default, but can be tuned from 0-100% in Options -> Graphics -> Lighting Realism. A new graphics option, Specularity, has been added to accompany Lighting Realism. This option affects how shiny the game world looks, and only takes effect when Lighting Realism is turned on. Very minor performance improvements and a…
- Upcoming Technical Update 3 - 23 September 2017
I was intending to post this announcement much earlier, but this month's development of the game and its engine have taken a lot more time than I originally anticipated. This is just a quick update to explain a few things about what's changing under-the-hood this month, as there are some significant changes. This month I've been working largely on Freefall's game engine. Several things in the engine have been bothering me for a while, and up until now, it's been too big of a task to try and fix them, but I decided this month to do them all at once. These won't be relevant to you, the player, but it will have a huge impact on future development of Freefall. I started by redoing my entire build system, so instead of managing separate projects for Windows and macOS, I now manage a single, cross-platform, build project, which makes it a lot easier to unify things, keep them tidy, and also b…
- Upcoming Technical Update 3 - 23 September 2017
I was intending to post this announcement much earlier, but this month's development of the game and its engine have taken a lot more time than I originally anticipated. This is just a quick update to explain a few things about what's changing under-the-hood this month, as there are some significant changes. This month I've been working largely on Freefall's game engine. Several things in the engine have been bothering me for a while, and up until now, it's been too big of a task to try and fix them, but I decided this month to do them all at once. These won't be relevant to you, the player, but it will have a huge impact on future development of Freefall. I started by redoing my entire build system, so instead of managing separate projects for Windows and macOS, I now manage a single, cross-platform, build project, which makes it a lot easier to unify things, keep them tidy, and also b…
- Technical Update 2 (v0.3.0) - 27 August 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! Technical Update 2 focuses largely on performance improvements. If you were seeing a low framerate previously, your performance may increase by up to 400%, but this will depend on your hardware. Here's a list of the notable changes. Chromatic aberration can now be enabled in Options -> Graphics. Enabling chromatic aberration may decrease your performance slightly. Menu config options are now available for Master Volume, Music Volume, and Effect Volume. These can be found in Options -> Audio. The UI has been updated to be a little bit cleaner and more consistent. It should also be slightly more efficient now. Text rendering has been rewritten to draw text per character. This vastly improves performance for dynamic text such as the in-game level timer. Assets can now be loaded asynchronously to avoid stalling the game while loading. For example, musi…
- Technical Update 2 (v0.3.0) - 27 August 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! Technical Update 2 focuses largely on performance improvements. If you were seeing a low framerate previously, your performance may increase by up to 400%, but this will depend on your hardware. Here's a list of the notable changes. Chromatic aberration can now be enabled in Options -> Graphics. Enabling chromatic aberration may decrease your performance slightly. Menu config options are now available for Master Volume, Music Volume, and Effect Volume. These can be found in Options -> Audio. The UI has been updated to be a little bit cleaner and more consistent. It should also be slightly more efficient now. Text rendering has been rewritten to draw text per character. This vastly improves performance for dynamic text such as the in-game level timer. Assets can now be loaded asynchronously to avoid stalling the game while loading. For example, musi…
- Technical Update 1 (v0.2.0) - 31 July 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! This update is largely technical in nature; here's a list of the notable changes. Borderless fullscreen support has been added. Fullscreen can be toggled either in Options -> Graphics or by pressing F anywhere. Audio mute can now be toggled by pressing M anywhere. Camera smoothing can now be changed in Options -> Controls. The mouse cursor is now only locked during gameplay, and is unlocked at the menu screen. Various tweaks, optimizations, and bug fixes.
- Technical Update 1 (v0.2.0) - 31 July 2017
A new version of Freefall is now live! This update is largely technical in nature; here's a list of the notable changes. Borderless fullscreen support has been added. Fullscreen can be toggled either in Options -> Graphics or by pressing F anywhere. Audio mute can now be toggled by pressing M anywhere. Camera smoothing can now be changed in Options -> Controls. The mouse cursor is now only locked during gameplay, and is unlocked at the menu screen. Various tweaks, optimizations, and bug fixes.
- Early Access Roadmap - 14 June 2017
In this post, I'm going to give an overview of everything that's currently planned for Freefall during Early Access, as well as a rough timeline of when all of these features are expected to be implemented. Bear in mind, this roadmap is only an estimation of how the development will go, not necessarily a fixed plan, so please take everything with a grain of salt. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be tidying up a lot of the game engine code and fixing the bugs that have been exposed since the Early Access release. It's important that the game has a strong and stable engine that will pave the way for the development of new features. During this time, most of the updates will be highly technical in nature, so don’t expect many/any new features being added. One big thing I want to investigate quite soon, though, is adding support for Steam OS (Linux). I’ve already done some preliminary te…
- Early Access Roadmap - 14 June 2017
In this post, I'm going to give an overview of everything that's currently planned for Freefall during Early Access, as well as a rough timeline of when all of these features are expected to be implemented. Bear in mind, this roadmap is only an estimation of how the development will go, not necessarily a fixed plan, so please take everything with a grain of salt. Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be tidying up a lot of the game engine code and fixing the bugs that have been exposed since the Early Access release. It's important that the game has a strong and stable engine that will pave the way for the development of new features. During this time, most of the updates will be highly technical in nature, so don’t expect many/any new features being added. One big thing I want to investigate quite soon, though, is adding support for Steam OS (Linux). I’ve already done some preliminary te…
- Early Access Release - 1 June 2017
We're finally here! Freefall is now officially released into Early Access! I feel I should begin immediately with an apology. Freefall was originally in development back in 2015 but, due to reasons I won't go into here, I halted work on the game until March this year. I wish the game could have seen the light of day much sooner, but I'm thrilled to have been given that opportunity later than never. Since March, I've been working really hard to get the game up-to-scratch for a release, but I have to admit that the game isn't as far along as I'd hoped it would be by now, partially due to some bugs that took crazy lengths of time to resolve. Nonetheless, I'm not going to delay the release, as all the stuff that didn't make it will still be completed during Early Access. I'm going to be posting a detailed overview of what's currently in the game as well as everything that's planned througho…
- Early Access Release - 1 June 2017
We're finally here! Freefall is now officially released into Early Access! I feel I should begin immediately with an apology. Freefall was originally in development back in 2015 but, due to reasons I won't go into here, I halted work on the game until March this year. I wish the game could have seen the light of day much sooner, but I'm thrilled to have been given that opportunity later than never. Since March, I've been working really hard to get the game up-to-scratch for a release, but I have to admit that the game isn't as far along as I'd hoped it would be by now, partially due to some bugs that took crazy lengths of time to resolve. Nonetheless, I'm not going to delay the release, as all the stuff that didn't make it will still be completed during Early Access. I'm going to be posting a detailed overview of what's currently in the game as well as everything that's planned througho…
