Gen2 – Development Update (21st January 2017)

It has been a while since the last blog post with none stop work and late nights to get the second generation of Skyline bugs fixed  before the Christmas holidays.

Since Skyline Generation 2 went into private alpha and there have been many bug sessions and most of them have been worked out and we are getting very positive feedback from our commercial indie users.

Here are the highlights of what has been going on behind the scene:

Second generation of Skyline Game Engine

We have been overwhelmed with the positive feedback form our commercial indie users, the features of the PBR (Physically Based Rendering system) and with other features the 2nd generation brings to the table.

With the second generation of Skyline comes a new logo for the game engine and more.

Terrain System

We looked at many of the terrain systems out there on the internet and none of them had the features that we wish to bring into the Skyline development platform so the decision was made to make our own, this allows us to expand on the system if required at a later date and have features that where not available in the other systems of which we looked at.

The system boasts 20km x 20km maps that can be made with just a few click of a button and the usual features that are in Gen1 such as editing height smoothing, painting, paths and roads.

This system is not ready for release into private alpha yet but it will be in the coming months.

Script Editor

The script editor has had some long awaited love and now boasts features like intelisense, Cleaner folding of functions, multi-line editing and a new font making it a cleaner & easier system to work with.

New Object system and level design tools

Level design and game mechanics have been reworked as the community is asking the same questions like "How do I do .. " So we have created a new high level system to focus all assets and level design into one area. This is not to lose the current workflow, its to make it faster. This new game object system will have the new level design tools for speedy indoor construction.

Customer Service

This section should be really called connecting with the community but also falls within the bounds of customer relations/services.

We are currently testing out how the discord communications platform will fit into our workflow, it has proven to be a great system for connecting with our community and for supporting the community as problems arise.

We have a few users using the system at the moment but we are expecting it his to grow as the Skyline Game Engine grows and evolves.

Steam GreenLight

We have been working on the steam GreenLight page to build a profile that you can be proud of, we originally had a deadline of the beginning of March to publish the steam GreenLight page but we have recently pushed this back as we want the 2nd generation of Skyline to be as close to fault free as possible (Skyline is still in Beta)  for when our community grows and we want to provide a seamless workflow and a feature rich development platform.

http://www.forum.aurasoft-skyline.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=1687

API Server

The API server has had a update to include all of the missing API commands, this is just one of the first passes for work on the API server and is due to be finished before the next release.

Documentation

The documentation server is having a overhaul with new guides, quick starts, manuals and videos to support these new documentation features, these are to be easily read and understandable by the newest of users to game design and development, this update to the documentation is a huge undertaking and is aimed to be complete before the steam GreenLight page is published.