Reflection is cool.

So another week or so has gone by, and despite the perils of playing too much World Of Warcraft, and being sick for about a week or so, I still managed to get something done. It isn't much however - this week is almost a complete write off :P. I have however managed to implement the Projectile system - marking the first time I made use of reflection in game programming. Gotta say it makes life easier - esp. for the level scripting and garbage collection management.

So now that the game has a working projectile system I can start adding bits and pieces of the AI, as I am the only coder however, progress is going to seem chaotic until near the end of the line as I push out whatever bit of code I feel inspired for that day. Don't worry however - the final product should be seven kinds of cool :)

A pseudo-Christmas offering!

So here we have a scene which is basically a good representation of what the games interface will look like. Also, keeping with the season, I repainted the trees with a chrismas motif - merely for testing, but it amuses me :) . There is still a long way to go - even coding wise, from here however. I have Z-Fighting issue with the shadows and the terrain I need to sort out, the objects still need to change orientation to match the slope of the landscape, the AI needs to be implements... it is however getting there :). Anyway - this is the current state of the game, so merry christmas to any readers I may have and I hope to have some more details on line for you soon :)

Terrain and Physics!

So I finished the games terrain engine - you can see my crappy example terrain in the picture above. My 3D artist is going to help me rig up something a bit more natural looking, but for testing purposes, this will due. Also, although it's not clear, I have a physics simulator written into the game now. It's my own work - not a 3rd part plug in. It works out pretty well, using a divide and conquer approach I managed to push the number of fully simulated objects up to about 400 objects. Collision detection is the one place where I skimped, the type of game I am making doesn't require super advanced collisions, so I am sticking with the simplest way of doing it. If it turns out later that I need something more advanced, I can replace the detection method with something better.

Now to finish working on the games plot - more details on that next week I hope :).

Mount Boob

So I've got the graphics engine up and running. There are a few issues I need to iron out before it's completely ready, but for the moment it does what I need it to do. I've uploaded a simple view of a small mountain that I setup for your amusement - it's been affectionately named "Mount Boob". So, without further Ado, I present Mount Boob and Mount Boob at Night.

Graphics Engine Testing...

So I spent today testing all the primary shader algorithms for the game. The results weren't what I'd hoped for performance wise - I am going to have cut the number of individual lights allowed in the game, but I have a backup plan which might be just as cool - we shall see.

With the number of lights cut down to a reasonable level, everything behaves smoothly on the test cases, including my terrain system. Over the next few days I'll be testing the Water system, then I'll toss some screenshots of the tests (mostly cubes - sorry guys I'm not the artist, just the programmer) and get to work on that physics engine!

Still Working...

So the working name for this iteration is still "The Probe". This may change, but for the moment I still like the name so I think we will keep it. As for the game itself, I don't have any screen shots yet - unfortunately the graphics engine for the previous prototype was insufficient for the ideas in this one so I had to scrap. That's what I have been working on now. It's nearly ready for testing, (with the exception of the particles - but those will work the same way as they did in the previous game) I only have a few more features to finish up before I can test it. If all goes well, then the game will support a much larger playing field before which loads section on the fly, some very pretty water reflections, and nifty tricks of light, and the ability to switch from full view of day into literally pitch blackness where you won't see anything not illuminated by your flash light.

Once the graphics engine is completed and tested, I'll be working on the Physics engine - nothing fancy will be here, just a simple 3D rigid body physics simulation. More on that when the time comes :). Anyway, back to work for me!

Cake.

Ok, in the last couple of days I've pretty much used my copious amounts of free time (thank you day job for paying me ridiculous amounts of money to watch flashy lights all day :) ) to come up with a new game concept and a new design document. Thanks to the beauty that is Object Oriented programming I've even got a reasonable amount of code (all canabalized from the original games source code).

I'm not ready to say exactly what the game is just yet, but I do have another coder and an artist on board - so I'm hoping with more assistance I can put together a better overall product. We shall see.