Hey guys, our video finally finished uploading to Youtube. All the relevant details about changes are in the last post, so without further ado, here’s the video:
These are Not the Updates We’re Looking For
In our last post I spoke of all the mundane behind the scenes changes I was about to do. Umm, yeah… I only did one. I fixed one minor bug here or there and before I knew it the entire terrain rendering codebase had been overhauled. Here’s a list of changes in no particular order: New Tile types: Resources Iron and Carbon, Decorative Rocks Tweaked perlin noise generators that created the terrain. Introduced terrain height variance. Where previously the whole map fit neatly with right angles, now the terrain shows variations in …
It’s Alive!
Hello everyone. We’re back in the saddle after a two month hiatus. A lot of other obligations came rushing at me at once and unfortunately Angular Velocity just had to take a back seat. While I have made a number of changes, none of them are particularly sexy. Here’s a breakdown of what I’ve done since we last spoke: Major changes to the sound system. Angular Velocity runs on top of lwjgl which provides OpenAL support. Unfortunately the code I had written to interface with this ( Foley ) was buggy and inefficient. …
We Have Destructible Terrain
Aww yeah! Finally pushed myself to work on some important code for the game. By refining the sections regarding multiple weapons per vessle ( which has been fully tested and vetted now ) I created a “Mining” class of weapon that shoots straight down and damages the terrain below you. Oh yeah, I also now assigned health to terrain. 🙂 So each different type of terrain will take different levels of dedication to break. All this means it’s now possible for you to destroy terrain. Next up is to grant …
Radar Revolution!
Hey gang, got a few more cool improvements done the last few days: Audio resources have traditional been loaded dynamically as needed. While this has made resource management easier, it meant that there was a huge pause of a few seconds when a large file, like a song, was loaded. I’ve moved all that into another thread now, which means loading a song will not pause the game anymore. It also means that the first time a sound effect is played, like an explosion, it is delayed. This effect however …
Full Stop
Just a few quickie updates today: Of the few people who have helped play test our pre-Alpha version, ~50% said they wished there was an option to perform a full stop. In some ways this feels like cheating because you don’t have to learn and work to counteract the physics system. On the other hand, having that option would help lower the barrier to play-ability. Plus, it’s hard to argue that any kind of spaceship technology wouldn’t have the capability of a computer controlled burn to stabilize motion. So I added …
Now, I Am Become Death
Nothing makes me feel better than to work on tangible parts of the game, by which I mean graphics, sounds, etc. Today’s update is chock full of exactly that. Finally, I feel like the player can actually do something. You can kill other ships. Oh, I’ve already had that? Well did it include a full on explosion with dynamic particles and sound? Because now it does. Boo-ya! Each explosion has a random number of particles, some of which are Fireballs ( bigger, slower, fire texture ) and some of which are tracers ( …
Debugging Makes Baby Jesus Cry
Seriously. I’ve known about a bug in my collision detection routine for some time now. Once in a while, for no particular reason, instead of bouncing off of a tower, the ship will get stuck. It didn’t happen all the time. In fact it only came up maybe one out of every 50 collisions. But it was there. And I knew I had to tackle it. I will spare you all the boring details of every single tiny little thing that I tested. Really… they make me want to pull …
Balancing Realism and Fun
Well I’ve finally got a working EntityForce. This entity can either act as a gravity well, or as the force of an explosion. It’s uses in the game will be many and I’m happy to have this part finished. Originally I intended to make the physics of Angular Velocity as realistic as possible. But the further I’ve gone along, and especially after creating the EntityForce, I realize that there is a limit to realisim in games. Sometimes it’s more fun to be unrealistic. In this particular case, I was trying …
The Nitty Gritty
( Stick through until the end, it will be worth it ) Hey gang, I decided to take a day off. ( Shocking I know ) but that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some news. I’ve been working on two areas of the game since my last update. The first is what I call the EntityForce. This little baby will be responsible for anything that influences other entities like ships and bullets. An example of an EntityForce would be an explosion. Not only would it have to display a fireball …