Two and a half weeks...
by Tony Richards · 09/23/2006 (6:45 pm) · 2 comments
I've gotten quite a bit more done these past two or so weeks than what I had expected. I'm very happy with my progress.
Today was a bit of a bummer because of a hard drive crash on my main machine, but luckily I've learned my lessons from those before... all of my source code was checked into SVN, which is hosted off-site, plus all of my original artwork was backed up onto an external hard drive... no harm done other than the amount of time it took to reinstall everything.
The good news is my replacement hard drive was in stock locally and I also grabbed some extra memory, so I'm sitting at 2GB now... yay, no more swapping! :P
This week was still productive, though, thanks to some work I finished earlier in the week.
Turrets / AI Turrets are now in-game, including one (mostly) finished model. I'm still having a couple of problems with the turrets... at a certain distance they turn black, and also sometimes they don't fire at approaching enemy vehicles. Not sure what the problem is yet but I'm sure it's something easy to fix.
My one building that's in-game got more polishing, with the self-illuminating "lights" plus the rotating radar dish. It still doesn't look quite right, though... it needs to be darker underneath. Most of the lighting in the mission I'm using is ambient... it's right at sunset. The building is already in a shadow and the ground beneath the building is also in the shadow, but I think it needs to be darker than the rest of the ground... I need a "negative" light or something... dunno.
I started working on some additional animations for the one vehicle that's already in-game. The new animations will cause the flight controls to move in a natural way instead of simply being rigid. Ailerons and elevators mostly (there's not really a rudder) are what I'm working on.
I also started working on the engine particle emitters, but I didn't get very far with that yet.
I gave the GUI a facelift by introducing a new PNG that matches my current color scheme (mostly grays). I figured I could start with everything being gray, then when I pick a final color scheme it'll be easy to Photoshop the existing artwork and add some color to it. Who knows? Maybe I'll even stick with the gray because it looks pretty nice.
I introduced two new C++ console objects to use as base classes for GameType and GameMode. The C++ code doesn't really do much except override the onAdd to do the correct namespace linking.
Game Types will do most of the grunt work for deciding when a player can respawn, keeping track of points, determining when the game is over, etc.
Game Mode will do the work for mission startup / shutdown and a bit of work to handle player connects, etc.
Example game types might be Capture the Flag, Football, Defend and Destroy, etc. Game Modes could be things like Free Play, Tournament, Pickup, Scrimmage, etc. Those aren't exactly what I have in mind for my game types and modes, but you get the idea, right? :P
Anyways, as I said, quite a bit done this week, despite some setbacks... just remember... always back everything up. :P
Today was a bit of a bummer because of a hard drive crash on my main machine, but luckily I've learned my lessons from those before... all of my source code was checked into SVN, which is hosted off-site, plus all of my original artwork was backed up onto an external hard drive... no harm done other than the amount of time it took to reinstall everything.
The good news is my replacement hard drive was in stock locally and I also grabbed some extra memory, so I'm sitting at 2GB now... yay, no more swapping! :P
This week was still productive, though, thanks to some work I finished earlier in the week.
Turrets / AI Turrets are now in-game, including one (mostly) finished model. I'm still having a couple of problems with the turrets... at a certain distance they turn black, and also sometimes they don't fire at approaching enemy vehicles. Not sure what the problem is yet but I'm sure it's something easy to fix.
My one building that's in-game got more polishing, with the self-illuminating "lights" plus the rotating radar dish. It still doesn't look quite right, though... it needs to be darker underneath. Most of the lighting in the mission I'm using is ambient... it's right at sunset. The building is already in a shadow and the ground beneath the building is also in the shadow, but I think it needs to be darker than the rest of the ground... I need a "negative" light or something... dunno.
I started working on some additional animations for the one vehicle that's already in-game. The new animations will cause the flight controls to move in a natural way instead of simply being rigid. Ailerons and elevators mostly (there's not really a rudder) are what I'm working on.
I also started working on the engine particle emitters, but I didn't get very far with that yet.
I gave the GUI a facelift by introducing a new PNG that matches my current color scheme (mostly grays). I figured I could start with everything being gray, then when I pick a final color scheme it'll be easy to Photoshop the existing artwork and add some color to it. Who knows? Maybe I'll even stick with the gray because it looks pretty nice.
I introduced two new C++ console objects to use as base classes for GameType and GameMode. The C++ code doesn't really do much except override the onAdd to do the correct namespace linking.
Game Types will do most of the grunt work for deciding when a player can respawn, keeping track of points, determining when the game is over, etc.
Game Mode will do the work for mission startup / shutdown and a bit of work to handle player connects, etc.
Example game types might be Capture the Flag, Football, Defend and Destroy, etc. Game Modes could be things like Free Play, Tournament, Pickup, Scrimmage, etc. Those aren't exactly what I have in mind for my game types and modes, but you get the idea, right? :P
Anyways, as I said, quite a bit done this week, despite some setbacks... just remember... always back everything up. :P
About the author
I am the founder of IndieZen.org, a website dedicated to the Indie 2.0 Revolution where a number of Indie game development studios and individuals collaborate and share a suite of custom built open source game development tools and middleware.
#2
09/28/2006 (1:45 pm)
Tony, it's your big sis. You can run, but you can't hide! Even in NYC?!?!!? (Pace Picante, eh?) Anyway, I'm glad to see you're back on this. I'm very excited for you and it's kinda nice knowing a little bit about what's going on in your life these days, since you don't stay in contact very well. = ) Anyway, keep up the good work, big sis is very proud of you and misses you very much!! 
Associate Kyle Carter