Happy New Year!

Project Shadow's core code has been successfully ported to TGEA 1.7.1. Version 1.8.0 of the game engine has been released quite some time ago, however we felt it to be better to port to 1.7.1 first, and let the bugs get worked out of 1.8.0 before moving to that version. Various issues still exist and some new arose, however quite a bit of bugs have been squashed and a couple new features added.

New screenshots have been uploaded, taken recently since the port to 1.7.1. Remember, function before form. We are putting the majority of our efforts into getting everything functioning at its best in the code before attempting to make anything appear to its potential. Recently, screen space ambient occlusion (SSAO) has been programmed into our codebase, a rendering technique used for efficiently approximating ambient occlusion in real-time. This shader was used for the first time in a video game in the 2007 PC game Crysis. As we all know, it turned out pretty well. You can see some examples of our first efforts in SSAO on the screenshots page.

More updates to come soon.

And so it continues.

As you may have noticed, Ion Productions has gotten a bit of a facelift. The website has been restructured and redesigned to allow for a more robust and organized, clean layout, designed to showcase our projects and information in an aesthetically pleasing, concise manner. A few new (older unpublished) screenshots have been uploaded in the Media section for Project Shadow.

Project Shadow has been moving along, slowly, but considering that it's technically put on a small hiatus as the XM42 project is researched and developed further, things are going just as planned. The Torque Game Engine: Advanced has had a recent major update to its core engine function, which is what Project Shadow is in the middle of being converted to. Quite a hefty amount of critical code has been altered, making the process long and painful. Nevertheless, porting is looking promising. Not to mention the massive amounts of features the new version of the engine has been demonstrated with.

Speaking of new features, Gerhard Botha, a lead developer of a game studio in South Africa has been working on implementing some of the most amazing next-generation shaders and modelling wonders into TGEA. You can check out his latest work on his blog, TGEA Enhancements. Hopefully many or all of his additions will be implemented into the engine sometime soon; GarageGames may be considering utilizing his work in the stock game engine release, which would be wonderful news to all Torque developers looking for a high quality implementation of the latest shader technology with little overhead data calculation.

But we have a lot on our plate at the moment porting the current code and enhancements we've inserted in the engine to the latest version of TGEA. However, once that is complete, things will move as smooth as ever. We've recently acquired our primary player model from a fellow TGEA development team, as this model is essentially exactly what we desired to have our main character and his fellow teammates' appearance to be. It all works out. There's a few kinks in the model, but those will be soon tweaked and fixed up to perfection, all in good time. We've always stood by function before form. We get everything working as expected, then focus in on the graphical artistic side of things. Nonetheless, Project Shadow is looking spectacular, and will even more so once ported to TGEA 1.07 and beyond.

As for the "undisclosed project," developmentally titled the XM42, a great amount of progress has been made in the areas of research, first iteration prototypical development and testing, secondary iteration parts list and overall design validation, now awaiting a few bug fixes and tweaks in some components and sizing. Soon the second iteration of the XM42 will be tested and confirmed as functional, at which time the production housing will be fabricated for its components and further tested in various conditions and situations, along with a continuation of the internal confidential Project Log. This entire amount if information may seem quite cryptic at the moment, but, we assure you, it will all become clear soon enough.

The latest project...

As you may have noticed, progress on Project Shadow has been put on hold, temporarily, in order to focus our efforts on a project to design and manufacture a real world product that is guaranteed for quick production times and quick success. This direction will provide financial aid in the funding of Project Shadow and our other subprojects such as Roo Racers. We are hard at work on pushing our projects through development, and highly anticipate the completion of Project Shadow for a mid-to-late 2009 commercial release.

More information regarding this currently undisclosed project will surface soon.