The Repopulation December Development Update

Our friends over at Above and Beyond Technologies let us know that they've put together a December development update for The Repopulation, their forthcoming sci-fi, Hero Engine 2.0-powered MMORPG. Or at least it is now:
The biggest news of the month was the launch of Hero Engine 2.0. We spent much of the month getting the game upgraded to take advantage of the new features. Some of the more immediately noticable improvements here are HDR rendering and an upgrade from Speedtree 4 to 6. There were many more subtle changes underneath the hood though such as improved customizable shader support, material instances, and much more. Our focus this month was primarily shuffled between getting everything ported properly to Hero Engine 2.0 and trying to tap into the new features as much as possible.

While Hero Engine 2.0 was big news around here, we also managed to maintain our steady stream of progress. Dens, Vehicles, and Crafting probably received the largest upgrades this month and those changes are detailed below in the build notes below.

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Graphical Improvements

'¢ HDR lighting is now supported. Lighting has been adjusted throughout the world to take advantage of these improvements.
'¢ Sky domes are now supported along with the dynamic skies. We've made several improvements to the skies as a result.
'¢ Glow is much improved over previous incarnations.
'¢ Multi-sample Anti-aliasing is now supported.
'¢ You can now tweak the Level of Detail settings for both Trees and Lights through the Graphics Options window. This allows you to alter how quickly they transition between Levels of Detail, which can be used to boost performance on older systems.
'¢ Added 15 new dance animations.
'¢ Many new speedtree models have been added.
'¢ A large new themed model set has been added. You can see some use of these models in the FPR Training Facility and in the Dead City.
'¢ Added over 100 new furniture and wardrobe models.
'¢ Imported 9 new Lesoo structures and decorations.
'¢ Doubled the texture resolution on the cliffs outside of Plymouth City.
'¢ New special FX were added. Among these are new laser effects.
This is one of those games that I think is primed for Kickstarter funding.