I had some RL issues last weeks. I'm back to TCO/RD/DC development for good since I no longer have studies (for a year), so I can work in the evenings on mods rather then learn irrelevant stuff I forgot after exams anyway

This looks pretty damn cool.

Christmas present?

Yup it does. 8)

Still in relatively steady development, or are you taking a break from it?

Pretty close. It's gotten somewhat bigger than what was intended for the contest. There will be an update soon with some new pix. A few features from RD will make an appearance, including subleveling. If you read the RN website's latest news (check my sig) you'll also see DC is going to be the first RN project planned for a dual platform release also (Unreal 277 and UT), so that requires some extra testing.

huh,i thought RD would be dual platform,means we dont get RD on unreal well atleast we got DC on unreal then

Yeah, what? Dead Cell is closer to completion than RD, thus...it will be out first.

Both RD and DC will be compatible with 227 (I really love U1 and a patch ). DC will come out first, RD second. I have plan to make RD and it's codebase (shaders and stuff) cool cross-platform add-on but we'll see as progress goes on.

I'm really happy about 227 DC because I do think that new patch needs new mods .

Yeah. Even though I primarily use UT, I find many of the things in 227 to be useful depending on my purposes. If anything, 227 could use better cutscene actors since the only ones I consider good are the non-buggy viewspot actors used in a lot of the better mods, and their only for UT. If Unreal's movie system was updated at all, I'd at least want it to be a port of the viewspot.

The Non-Buggy Viewspot is really something we used because we didn't have alternatives, and because I had to deal with the damned things for three SP releases (Xidia, Skytown Redux, 7B) I can say with relief that I'm glad to be rid of all ties to UsAaR's ONP-era code bases. As good a tool they were, the NBV was very restricting in terms of perfecting cinematics (binding them to attachmovers in order to make them mobile and being limited to use within the zones the player is was present in for audio to work, the latter of which took a lot of hack setups with sound actors to get right). Dead Cell will be using some UMS (Unreal Movie Maker) for intro/extro movies, but generally what I like about this release is that it will be completely free of ingame cutscenes (something I always felt a little rotten about in 7B, by jumping them on players). Because RD is so much more story orientated, we're trying to figure out ways to keep cinematics between game sequences worthwhile without actually intruding onto gameplay like we've done in the past, but that's going to be a harder project.

Really though, there's a kind of freedom about starting from scratch again. Cutting oldskool and old ways of coding out of the equation and what not. I'd say that 227 certainly has the merit of providing an alternate stable platform for SP developers, at long last. But's it's always going to be the projects, the mods, the packs that prove it. Time will tell.

I wanted to ask about the streaming that's being developed and released with DC. Generally, I'm curious about how it works, how you set it up, how easy it is to set up, and the restrictions it has at the moment, similar to how things "pop" into existence in newer engines like UE3, where streaming becomes harder if you want to make a large environment where the player will see another level from where they are at in the present level and not notice the change, or if this has been developed to be really "seamless" in regards to large open levels. Also, what situations are preferable when using the streaming system, such as the one mentioned above with large environments, or situations like half-life where portals to other levels would be set up in corridors to hide these pops from the player?

That's not really how it has to work. Granted, if one is using this system and wants to incorporate a little of the next level by the "exits", they can do so the old fashioned way by including a little mapping just beyond the cutoff point (like Half Life I suppose). I suppose you could do the same on a grander scale using open terrain maps as well. Really, the burden is on the mapper to flesh out the "beyond point," but generally speaking the placement of the player is defined by a starting/exit actor. The real seamless sense of this is that the player can go forward or backward and everything will be exactly as they left it.