Worklog for Glenny-boy
Galaxy At War
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| Well, here it is, my first worklog ever on BlitzBasic.com. Galaxy At War is a free-roaming space/trading shooter. It was originally to be written in DarkBASIC, and a playable demo of the engine exists in that form, but I made the hard decision to switch to Blitz3D and start from scratch. That move has paid off in spades. The past fortnight has seen a lot of additions to the game, and development is speeding up now that most of the hard stuff is behind me: -AI. The biggie. Ships can now be given goals and will happily go about them. They still get confused when their destination is almost directly above or below, but they figure it out eventually. They can also take turns to dock with stations, and fly to the jumpgate without any difficulty. It's quite satisfying to see the universe populated by other ships at last. -Effects. I'm adamant that this game isn't going to look as ugly as it did, so texture layers and spherical reflection maps are all in operation on the ships. This also allows for ships of different colours, although at the moment this tends to produce bad looking purple and bright green ships, as well as less garish results. My main points of focus over the next week will be: -Completing basic textures for the ships that are currently in-game. -Working on the "unseenships" database. This basically entails the game "remembering" a ship when it docks or hyperspaces, so that it can launch later or be seen in another system if it hyperspaced ahead of the player. Eventually, this kind of persistance will be used in missions, so the player can follow other ships for assassination or spying purposes. -Expanding the AI and setting up proper routines for generating ships. I want other ships to attack the player and each other, as well as ships being aware of each other's presence and being able to avoid crashing into each other. That's all, folks. Screenshots soon, with a bit of luck. |