I figured that I would put something over here as a preliminary to actually making my own forum.. and web page... cuz all of that is a big pain.. and I only get to work on things rarely anyways.. dont want anyone to get bored...
I have started to get back into working on stuff, You guys saw a quick screen shot of my little space game as it sits...
Basicaly you can fly around and shoot at things..
There are those two other ships to shoot at.. but they dont do anything yet (like fight back!!!)
Right now i have been working on a few little things to move it toward game-hood..
1) Radar screen
( the radar screen will help you track enemy ships that are not on-screen.. it is also a prelude to enemy AI.. because enemy ships should only see whats on thier radar too!)
2) Sound system...
( I am using OpenAL, however there are some minor issues that i have to work out, for instance the 3D sound attenuates too fast (it gets quiet really fast as you move away from sound source))
3) Graphics system
( There are some things that I want to implement from the old SPACE JUNK game that we worked on back in highschool... one of the biggest is chunks of ships blowing off..
I havent figured it out yet.. But when i figure more of the graphics stuff out.. I am sure tarn will help me with the actual break-chunk algorithm)
4) AI
( I have already started to do some modifications so that the enemys can actualy move their ships when they want to... they just dont have any wants yet!!) When Radar is done The will be able to make decisions about who go after and when to shoot...
Thats about it...
Feel free to add any comments and I will try to respond in kind...
If things really get going at any rate.. then I will actually start my own Projects forum... and maybe even put up a web page..
Here is where it becomes up to you! :-)
Inertia -> Space Junk -> Space Reich 3000
What are you going to call the game? I can't stress how important a good name is, especially considering the names of the predecessors :)
Can you land on whatever (planets, space statons, huge ships?) and buy stuff? Are there enormous captal ships with mutiple turrets on them?
What kind of variables are used for ships right now?
In any case... Tarn is working hard on Armok.. and I am going to be working on this space game for a while.
To Demon:
Wow... you know... pretty much all those ideas that you mensioned.. were PLANNED for the origional games (that Tarn mensioned)
(also note.. that those games were made back in our highschool days hehe :-) and Tarn was around here... we lived like 15 minutes apart
and worked on stuff like every weekend... though Tarn did all the coding for those too.. hehe)
Currently there are very few things developed
in terms of the complex stuff you mensioned.. but we can always hope down the road. I certainly hope to have big ships and all sorts of fun stuff for battle :-)
in terms of sound.. I know that in space sound doesnt carry much
BUT
sound adds an awesome effect to the game...
before i got sound working i was getting really bored with it (i made a little asteroids game first) and without sound.. it was just silly..
now I have sound 55% working..
I have put it on the back burner right now.. while i work on radar and such...
but it will ahve to be fixed before i make a release i think..
The main reason it got scuttled was because of some bizarre Direct X/Windows problem that I couldn't figure out back in high school, because I hated Windows too much to think about it :)
In any case, Alanor is doing space stuff now, and I'm working on Armok -- this doesn't represent any kind of change for those that are worried about the focus of Bay 12. It simply means that we have more than one computer now, and I'm not monopolizing it :)
I put some info up.. and people really arnt interested!!!
well.. maybe if i had a demo up....
I got some basic functions like..
basic radar up and running,
I also started into enemy AI a bit..
They can usually kill you if you dont move..
hehe
if you move.. all bets are off..
It will take some time working on AI to improve things
First I need to define things for the AI like:
my current vector (speed and direction)
target current vector (speed and direction)
and
then i can start to write some algorithms based on intercepting the enemy path and such
factors like
maximum acceleration, thrust..
mass of ship, turning speed
should all be taken into account..
but all of this is VERY hard to tackle
I just got a system working in which it is possible to alter the pictures of the ships real time.. this means that we might be able to have BURNING CHUNKS back!!
its very satisfying to blast an enemy ship and see thier wing fly off
hehe
but thats all down the road a bit
hehe
I DO have zooming in this version.. so its a bit better.. you can zoom way out and see a bit larger area of the battle field...
That does help some...
I will also put in an enemy view.. That sounds like a good idea to me.. I will make it a part of the radar HUD...
I dont knwo if i will do it YET.. but it will definetly go on the list of things to do.
Here is a little picture of the game in works..
I have done a lot of work on it in the past week.. though by no means is it ready for anything...
I have a picture showing the midst of a 100 ship battle..
100 ships is really too many.. it makes things really slow.. but I may be able to optimize that as time goes on..
Its not the grahics in this case.. its the actual calculations and comparing everything
100 ships x 5 bullets = 500bullets x100 ships comparasons.. = 50000 comparasons/tick
ouch!!
(and thats only in 1 axis!)
in any case This will improve as I put some speed enhancemetns in for such calculations..
here is the screen shot: http://www.bay12games.com/alan/spacetest.jpg
take a look
I implemented the radar viewer that 3Toe asked for.. and you can also see that the view is zoomed way out to see more of the action in this case...
any comments/questions/thoughs drop me a note!
those are some examples of the game modes that i will probibly have as things move along..
i will need to put in most of those before i even get to release stage..
so when missiles come about...
missile view should be relatively easy
I have also been pretty busy with school and such. (Imagine spending 14 hours on a homework assignment over a week... or even worse. imagine an exam (in Information Theory no less) which took about 14 hours to do.. and we had about 24 hours to do it!!!
(take home)
school can be quite annoying sometimes!
so tell me what you want.. and i will consider doing some screen shots/ or maybe spending a few hours to make a version useable at least...
might be fun to play wiht for half an hour or so.. and if people dogged me a lot maybe i would work on it more..
I'm kinda thinking of working on a similar game in C++, what language is this one in?
And just because you made somethign better that none of us have even seen dosent mean this one in inferior garbage! Look at the curses arcade! :roll: