Sorry about the late update, but I’ve been trying to make the most of my programming time. Here’s a laundry list of updates since my list post: Finished implementing textures for my tiles. You may recall that the new Vertex Array drawing method required my placing all tile textures into one. This now works beautifully. Fixed a timing issue that changed your ship’s speeds based on the frame rate. Now you’ll travel the same distance and turn just as quickly no matter how many FPS you get. Created a camera …

Another day, another long session trying to get something mundane finished. Despite getting decent FPS ( ~300-400 ) I knew that was partially to do with the fact that everything was so simple right now. Once we have more complicated geometry with more entities flying around I expect it will drop like a rock. And so it was with that in mind that I began converting my terrain rendering from Immediate mode OpenGL commands to Vertex Arrays. For those of you who do not know, Immediate mode is where, every frame, I …

Whew. I had every intention of spending the entire night developing a kickass modular entity collision reaction scheme, but sadly I got a late start on that. You see, organizing a project this size is important to do from the beginning. If you have hundreds of classes all laying in the same directory it can become a nightmare to find anything. I wasn’t there yet, but at 39 classes I figured I had better start now rather than later. Thing is… Java is very picky about Class Paths and file locations…. much more …

So after an exhausting day at work I came home and had an exhausting night of programming. At least there is symmetry. The highlight of the night was porting over my basic audio subsystem from the past and implementing LWJGL’s OpenAL implementation, complete with Ogg Vorbis support. What does having OpenAL mean? It means realistic 3D positional sounds, with panning, fading, and a Doppler effect. I would be incredibly excited if I were not completely exhausted. In addition to all that, I also began working on the game launcher. Like all good AAA games, Angular …

After starting this project as a post apocalyptic driving game ala Mad Max last August, all I can say is: What a long, strange trip it’s been. I originally became frustrated trying to simulate car physics and stopped working on the game back in September. I hadn’t picked it up again until two weeks ago when I changed the concept and got some good work done on the engine. A few pertinent facts on where we are and where we’re going: Written in Java ( everyone groans ) Originally fully 2D with pixel …