Lucage
08-01-2006, 11:15
Not posted any updates for awhile as I've been busy myself.
Wheeeell... ok, hasnt been a huge time since the last update, so whats new?
1) Another dev has joined the Ace team.. He'll be handling all of the backend systems. His name is Thomas Lund and he's from Denmark, but lives in sweden right now. Me and Thomas go back a good number of years and Thomas has an absolute buttload of experience on designing and delivering scalable back-end services. I mean SERIOUS stuff, not piddly little game-server stuff
So Thomas will tackle most of the backend stuff, auth-admin-update to make it a lot more secure and stable.
Thomas also has brought some assets from his own game "steel sentinals" which is a ww2 fleet battle game, which kind of stalled for reasons not worth discussing. So he's offered to allow them to be used in Air Ace for special events and missions. Lets just say that Air Ace will have some pretty fun features to keep the gameplay interesting after we go live.
Another interesting thing this week is that KO (Kristen Overmeyer, the guy behind the Tango physics engine we're using) send me a mail saying that he thinks the bug I sent him recently that was stopping us testing multiplayer again might actually be a configuration issue (a misconfigured script file). I plan on testing that out tommorow. If all goes well, we can start back into testing things, especially the new physics feel for the plane!
I've also got a little surprise coming in the art front. Which should help set the scene for the game. Suffice to say that I'm having fun just dreaming up stupid ideas
I've been working on some AI code for the Torque engine (which is the engine we're basing Air Ace on, the shader engine version) which will sell to the engine community sometime soon. But thats going to be rolled into Air Ace to support any budding game-editor-scenario creators out there to be able to build thier own missions. We're going for a very visual editor concept, so things will hopefully be pretty simple so even sooty can handle it!
Ah! on the techy front, I almost forgot. But I've arranged with another dev team to get thier technology for dynamic shadowing (thats unless the engine guys update the tech before we ship), so that everything will feel a lot more stuck on the terrain.
On the subject of terrain. I dont know if Ive said this before... but the terrain isnt just a simple heightfield. Whats a heightfield? its like a blanket which you place down, it only has "height above some datum" as parameters. Oh no... this is a full on 3D paged system. What does that mean?
How about this? :D
http://static.flickr.com/34/71678519_f08a01e293.jpg
Yep, the terrain will be able to incorporate all sorts of weird structures. Flying through caverns and just about anything you can imagine.
Eventually we'll have a fully dynamic day/night system, proper dynamic shadowing (ala Doom3 and the rest) and other fancies. But its the gameplay that counts right?
Anyway, thanks for the great support guys. New screenies will come along soon in the new year. Including the first shots of the final mustang and the zero.
And some gerry germans
Did I mention some tanks? no.. perhaps better not.
Wheeeell... ok, hasnt been a huge time since the last update, so whats new?
1) Another dev has joined the Ace team.. He'll be handling all of the backend systems. His name is Thomas Lund and he's from Denmark, but lives in sweden right now. Me and Thomas go back a good number of years and Thomas has an absolute buttload of experience on designing and delivering scalable back-end services. I mean SERIOUS stuff, not piddly little game-server stuff
So Thomas will tackle most of the backend stuff, auth-admin-update to make it a lot more secure and stable.
Thomas also has brought some assets from his own game "steel sentinals" which is a ww2 fleet battle game, which kind of stalled for reasons not worth discussing. So he's offered to allow them to be used in Air Ace for special events and missions. Lets just say that Air Ace will have some pretty fun features to keep the gameplay interesting after we go live.
Another interesting thing this week is that KO (Kristen Overmeyer, the guy behind the Tango physics engine we're using) send me a mail saying that he thinks the bug I sent him recently that was stopping us testing multiplayer again might actually be a configuration issue (a misconfigured script file). I plan on testing that out tommorow. If all goes well, we can start back into testing things, especially the new physics feel for the plane!
I've also got a little surprise coming in the art front. Which should help set the scene for the game. Suffice to say that I'm having fun just dreaming up stupid ideas
I've been working on some AI code for the Torque engine (which is the engine we're basing Air Ace on, the shader engine version) which will sell to the engine community sometime soon. But thats going to be rolled into Air Ace to support any budding game-editor-scenario creators out there to be able to build thier own missions. We're going for a very visual editor concept, so things will hopefully be pretty simple so even sooty can handle it!
Ah! on the techy front, I almost forgot. But I've arranged with another dev team to get thier technology for dynamic shadowing (thats unless the engine guys update the tech before we ship), so that everything will feel a lot more stuck on the terrain.
On the subject of terrain. I dont know if Ive said this before... but the terrain isnt just a simple heightfield. Whats a heightfield? its like a blanket which you place down, it only has "height above some datum" as parameters. Oh no... this is a full on 3D paged system. What does that mean?
How about this? :D
http://static.flickr.com/34/71678519_f08a01e293.jpg
Yep, the terrain will be able to incorporate all sorts of weird structures. Flying through caverns and just about anything you can imagine.
Eventually we'll have a fully dynamic day/night system, proper dynamic shadowing (ala Doom3 and the rest) and other fancies. But its the gameplay that counts right?
Anyway, thanks for the great support guys. New screenies will come along soon in the new year. Including the first shots of the final mustang and the zero.
And some gerry germans
Did I mention some tanks? no.. perhaps better not.