Julius {l Wrote}:I am currently tinkering with the idea of using the LoS engine for some modding (mainly because I suck at coding and many features are already there and it has LUA scripting).
Sadly development is currently stalled it seems, however I read somewhere that it should continue sometimes this year when the real-life commitments of the main developer are sorted out?
Most of the more work intensive university courses should end in March, so that should be when I'll start to have enough time to be able to develop properly again. However, I have started to work on some design stuff already, so the project isn't technically fully stalled anymore; it's just moving at a snail's pace.
As a word of warning, you shouldn't expect a stable modding experience yet. We will likely drop several planned and existing features soon in order to limit the scope of the game to something feasible to develop. The most likely scenario seems to be that we'll drop all the plot and dialogue elements, as well as various other things, and limit our focus on combat, crafting and procedural maps.
Julius {l Wrote}:Oh and what kind of animation features for characters does the engine support? Fully blendable skeletal animations with physics constraints? Physics based cloth props like capes etc. would be great too.
Currently, there are just relatively simple blendable skeletal animations that can be either created in Blender or scripted using Lua. Physics-based bone control might be added in the distant future, but it's not a priority. There are currently no plans to implement softbody, cloth simulation or other complex animation features.
Julius {l Wrote}:Also, are there plans to allow for paged geometry to render vegetation on large outdoor areas?
There has been a new terrain engine in the works that will work a bit better for outdoor scenes, but it won't really be comparable to a traditional static terrain engine. Things like animated grass might be implemented in the distant future, but for now I'll be happy enough if the view distance will increase enough to make outdoor scenes mostly playable.
Julius {l Wrote}:Anyways, looking forward to see this cool game/engine progressing soon!
Thanks. Slowly but steadily, hopefully with clearer goals and more focus on the essential.