As I tune things up I've successfully corrected the majority of issues involving collisions. Its still not 100% perfect, but you now slide along walls instead of stopping completely when you face them at odd angles.

A new concept came to me, actually its something that Doom used in its texturing process. Overlaying one texture over another to create a differently detailed texture. Basiclly if you have a stone brick wall you can overlay wood lining or other decoration.

I made this little graphic for my notes comparing the lowest and highest compiling rate. I need to come up with an idea on how I'll incorporate the differing map details in the final product. Compiling a map from its raw form(a text file with strings of numeric digits) can take anywhere from 30 seconds to several minutes depending on how big a level actually is. The file sizes in the image represent the compiled maps' size. This particular map is just a box, camera in the for end corner.

With the concept of overlaying textures I decided to split differing textured tiles with shading like I do edges and corners, making them stand out more. Also each tile is randomly raised in its center to make things look less flat. Its also a step towards height mapping, as I still need to figure out the best way to implement it into my editor and compiling system.

Despite GM6's limitation in the realm of 3d, I'm pretty happy with the results I've been getting when comparing visuals to FPS on a variety of systems I have access to. Its very useful to be able to use old systems, new systems and high end systems when gauging how well a game will work.

For example, I've got an old 500mhz clunker of a system that can barely run my game past 22fps on the low detail system, and do to its ancient ATI video card it has some issues with transparency in water. It shoots the frame rate down a good 5-10 points when its enabled.

Aside from that the few comments I've gotten give me a vague idea on how well it handles on other systems. My home system, a 1.5 ghz(I think) amd with a 256 video card can easily run at medium detail with little loss in frame rate. I'm guessing what I have at home is probably pretty standard these days for those who don't have much for a computer budget, but alas I'm pretty much in the dark if you rule out those assumptions.

Anyways, I'm pretty happy with what I've gotten out of the engine thus far and will resume work on my editor so I can get things rolling.