Fixed one of the many camera bugs. The camera no longer shakes when looking up. Its also closer to the character as there have been complaints that while playing you would feel more disconnected with the camera further away. Also locked the rotation of the mini map, regardless of the cool effect of the 3d mini map and looking up and down, it would glitch the mini map most the time.

Added ALOT of graphics options into the menu. I'm building to make sure it runs on any thing from my laptop as the lowest build at 30fps lowest settings (which is not even as good as my phone) and all the way up to my pc at max settings 50fps (which is worse than a class pc). I have a feeling that when all the objects and textures and AI is in the game I will be getting around 30fps max settings on my pc... So If you have anything over a 550ti, 4gb of ram and a quad core, you should be rolling around with the max settings. I think its a good target and that its very scalable.

Over the next 3 weeks I will finish the map with buildings added in (no other props) cars to drive, bikes to ride, civilian and cop AI to fool around with and the main character with weapons and animations... That's all I will make for the first public build that will go on show at the expo in 3 weeks. It seems like an achievable goal at this point. Maybe I can squeeze more in with in that time, but I have to take into account bug fixing etc.

Build progress - Added in depth options/pause menu that can be easily obtained on unity.wiki and added more indepth graphics options, its safe to say that it runs quite well on everything Ive tried it... Though the map isn't finished (working on that from now till its completed)

also fixed a bug where the camera would move while the game was paused.

Uploading a video to show off the GUI improvements I've made, I still need to make it look pretty and make waypoints on the mini map, but other than that its functional enough for Pre-Alpha.

I'm now on the task of placing in my own character with animations and weapons as well as enemy AI and civilian AI... Just to get into fights with, as well as hover cars, the flying motorbike and lastly, polishing JUST the roads, buildings and main map assets (not props) into a state that I'm happy with.

I'm hoping these things will take no longer than 3-4 weeks as then My ideal Pre-Alpha will be on show at the just make games expo.

http://youtu.be/uYs8k7xgGs4

So, I've been fighting against the clock here to complete, texture, rig, skin, animate and import my main character into unity for the video I was going to upload today with gameplay, but alas, because of life and family drama, I've not been able to meet todays dead line... But no worries, I will be done by Monday earliest and Tuesday latest, I will upload a pre-alpha video then with some gameplay.

Its no use showing the pre-alpha now as its not representative at all of the feel of the gameplay, but Im going strong and Ill upload a screen or two to show my current progress.

As you can probably see, I've made good progress on getting the functions behind the hud working to the point where I just need to replace the text with gui sprites, and I even have an aimer in there somewhere... And the character is coming along well.

I keep feeling anxious about poly counts, but then I look at this page, and feel ok again on the inside.
http://beyond3d.com/showthread.php?t=43975

Been hard at work on my alpha city... Ill put up a pic for all you people that want to see it. Other than that, I've been thinking about my main character, I'll do a quick 3D mock up in mudbox this week, maybe I'll even rig it and get it into the alpha.

I also want to make sure I get the gameplay done... At the moment I have a character that can run, jump and orbital cam... So I need to add the shooting/strafing/cover/FLYING controls to finish up the alpha... But the progress is good and I'm going strong... Or at least I think so...

Ran into some alignment problems with the sidewalks... Fixed them now. Also changed the shader on the sidewalks so they stand out a little ore till I put on textures and normals.

I got a little concerned about the poly count, regardless of the Occlusion Culling it seems like it may get a little high.

So I looked into old open world games like GTA:3 and saw that their poly count is far higher than mine is. So I'm not worried... In fact, I'll probably make higher poly assets than GTA:3 as GTA:3 is quite old... but that's quite the relief... Obviously I'm not aiming for textures, shadows or normal maps equal to GTA:3 hahaha.