Welcome back chasers! Our development team has been hard at work over the last few weeks and we’re making some significant progress with scenario integration, networking and with world building! We’re also just now wrapping up our month-long contest to name a convenience store chain in OUTBRK! The results were too close to call - literally! With the final vote count for each name tallying to 261 votes each! A complete tie! Our community team will be sure to keep tabs on all the great ideas for bringing both Mesomart and Weed Trimmer’s to life in the game! [img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E04lelHWUAczro1?format=jpg&name=large[/img] While scenario development and integration has been a main focus, our networking team has made great strides as well. Our dedicated servers are ready for chaser convergence and now that our internal testing team can enter the world of OUTBRK together, we’ll be addressing some minor networking components to make sure everything is fluid and reliable. [b]LIGHTNING DEVELOPMENT:[/b] Our lightning system is split up into 3 main categories: Targeted Strikes (including cloud to ground + positive strikes and cloud-to-cloud strikes), intra-cloud flashes, and anvil crawlers. Integrating them in the scenario meant telling the system what should go where and when it should happen, depending on the conditions but also on the storm's attributes. The generation of lightning strikes uses lightning probability to dictate which emitters out of thousands will strike at each frame and when it's happening between 2 frames. Our lightning system is so detailed, that depending on the conditions in the environment lightning strikes will have different colors. Lightning in a dry or dusty environment will look different than lightning within a thunderstorm. [img]https://i.imgur.com/BFn4RV6.png[/img] The realism doesn’t stop there. Our in-game lightning is simulated very similar to how it happens in real life - with invisible “ions” connecting the strike to the ground or object that the main bolt will strike. [b]Lightning In Slow Motion: [/b] [previewyoutube=qQKhIK4pvYo;full][/previewyoutube] [b]TORNADO SYSTEMS:[/b] In order to assure OUTBRK is playable on as many machines as possible, our in-game model data is limited in resolution so there is a bit of a manual component to our tornado simulation. Tornadoes in OUTBRK are generated separately from the overall convection in-game - to do so otherwise, would require significantly more computing power. We’ve been hard at work tweaking tornado rendering and are very excited to be able to show off our work in the coming weeks - stay tuned! [b]NEXT STEPS:[/b] As we get closer to our first “playable version” of the game, our development team will start turning their attention to overall gameplay components and quality of life improvements. We’ll be designing our in-game economy and we’ll be able to see what it feels like to chase a storm within OUTBRK, at full scale! We’ll be taking our time to tweak gameplay systems before beginning community play-tests! Stay tuned for more details on when/who/how. [u][b]We are “weeks” away from this, not “months”! [/b][/u] [img]https://i.imgur.com/eqXeAqv.png[/img] Our team has made great progress over the last couple months, and we’re excited to be able to show off our work - so keep your eyes out for sneak peeks and previews over the weeks. We don’t have an exact timeline for release quite yet, but rest assured development is moving along well! Rest up chasers, OUTBRK is coming! [b]Social Links:[/b] [url=https://www.facebook.com/outbrkgame] Facebook[/url] [url=https://twitter.com/OutbrkGame]Twitter[/url] [url=https://discord.com/invite/tuTKTf8QNj]Discord[/url] [url=https://www.instagram.com/outbrkgame/]Instagram[/url]