Bay 12 Games Forum

well demon.
i suppose i could toss up some screen shots or something..
i have been trying to track down some annoying bugs with sound and stuff like that..
i suppose that the space shooter isnt in that bad shape..
but it doesnt even come close to the classics that we had a long time ago (sr2000)
so like Tarn said... i really dont want to release any sort of inferior garbage..

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..

Hey Everyone...

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!

See what i mean?

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

So... basicaly Demon has been yelling at me to get to work and produce something...

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! :-)

Hey all...

I thought I would start putting up some notes on some of the projects I plan to be working on...

The battle game (as it sits)
will be a battle field type sim game..

lots of little guys will run around and slaughter each other..

There will of course be magic and lots of fun races to have battle each other

The game was actualy on its way.. having terrain started and having creatures started..
however problems with views came up.. and now that the 3D stuff is coming online wiht OPENGL.. I will be learning some GL so that I can make the terrain 3D..
once i get that done.. i will be back to making little (hobbits) run around and do aweful thigns to each other..

Feel free to drop me any notes on ideas that you would like included here..

It would also be nice if there was a 'medic' sub-role.  If we could give someone a job of running a hospital... making bandages and salves... stuff like that..

Also a good addition for our current more military direction.

It occured to me lately that it might not be too hard to develop a standard ATK type database which held a DF world....

It would then be possible to store such a DF database on a server somewhere and make it so that you could access those DF worlds remotely... and then download the pertinent information to start a fortress or adventure... which would of course be saved back to the database on a seasonal basis.

This could allow for some very interesting scenarios in terms of playing the same world by many people.  It would up the level of world sharing and historical depth.

This would of course require some more serious thought than I have included here (for instance how does time pass for the world in relationship to 5 different individual locations that are being played simultaneously?)....

Still just a thought at this point..