date_range 10/01/2011 21:10

All guns now have their own associated little muzzle flash. This may not be entirely realistic for some units, but it forms a nice ‘heat glow’ in the distance, so that larger non-muzzle-flash-emitting weapons such as these still look fairly realistic. It’ll be interesting to see what it looks like when I swap the daylight around for some night effects. Although I haven’t done particularly much today except add on to some visuals to the current in-game vehicles, it does bring it a bit closer to a ‘finishing’ look. Planes make sense, boats make sense, etc. I am pretty close...

date_range 10/01/2011 17:29

I figured I would be getting things done quicker if I finished up everything I had done now rather than making new stuff and haven’t to apply changes to them later. So I decided to get propellors working, as previously they weren’t really doing much on planes. It’s difficult to show in a picture, but I think you get the idea. This currently applies to the Stuka as well and the half-added BF109 (those faster yellow planes from the original game). Next up is probably some muzzle flashes and light coming from the guns. I can guess now that the...

date_range 09/01/2011 21:23

Another unit done! This time it’s the Z.31 Class Destroyer. A lot of the boats and planes aren’t exact replicas of the original models as I’m having a hard time finding the exact same 3D model resources, blueprints, etc. but I’m at least giving them the same properties. They require the same amount of hits, they have the same amount of guns and they serve the same purpose. Here is the Z.31 Class Destroyer after I plucked off its four guns one by one with the Howitzer, and then finished it off with three consecutive shots. Each fire trail is...

date_range 09/01/2011 14:16

Patrol boats, landing crafts and planes circle the island. A cargo ship using the chaos of battle as cover while planes and tanks do their thing. Unfortunately I also caught a landing craft glitching through the terrain. It looks like the battles are really coming to life at this stage. I’m getting quite a few impressive shots no matter where I look at it from. Unfortunately the landing crafts still need a little bit more tweaking for the steering. You may notice the terrain is rather low detail at a distance, although this is on purpose for performance optimization since...

date_range 08/01/2011 17:18

Tanks are now rolling out, and that almost completes the task of getting land units working. The tanks themselves are nearly working as they should and randomly stroll around on the island right now, occasionally crashing into each other or running over soldiers, but they work. Getting the tanks to blow up should be easy, right after I add the rocket launcher. That pretty much completes the first few missions with all units included. Next up is the destroyer, a new plane, and a bomber! After some further revising of the Depth of Field effect, I may leave the final...

date_range 07/01/2011 19:06

Fierce cubes marching to battle. Today I worked on the soldiers and integrating them with the landing craft, which all works well. The soldiers are placed within the craft as sub-objects therefore following all its movements and rotation until the ship is ready to unload. Then the soldiers are replaced with individual soldiers at their original positions and start marching onto the island. There’s 8 soldiers – 6 infantrymen and 2 mortar soldiers. They strafe, they shoot, and everything works. I still have to add firing delays and some slight work to the mortar crew for their final look, as...

date_range 07/01/2011 01:20

Well, I got the bugs, at the least ones that I know of, sorted so far. So I decided to work on a new unit. I wasn’t sure what to add next, although most likely the ‘destroyer’ class ship, a slightly larger ship compared to the torpedo boat. However, I knew there were still two boats, complete with their fair share of contents that came before the ‘destroyer’ in the storyline. Both of these being transport ships. The landing craft has landed, and its 'test' passenger creepily approaches me. So I’ve got the first boat done, tweaking the path finding...

date_range 06/01/2011 15:24

Familiar boats and planes in a decreasingly-worrying normal environment. Well, like I mentioned in my last post, I was going to fix up some little issues first before working on new features. Turns out I’ve got most of that sorted out now and everything is falling into place. Boats avoid blasting their guns at helpless scenery, patrol boats wait their turn instead of roaring right through other ships, planes break like they’re supposed to, even better than before and Stukas no longer attain suicidal characteristics after dropping their payload on me (surprise bug?). I’ve just got to make sure the...

date_range 05/01/2011 09:52

New graphics options screen complete with debugging coordinates in bottom left of game. Although screenshots of menus aren’t the most exciting features to look forward to, I figured it would suit the post since it’s what I worked on most for the past two days, including a large chunk of this morning since I couldn’t sleep. Besides, what better way to wake up than stress my brain out with programming code and bright burning white-background monitor light? Anyway, back on topic, I’ve got most of the menu system completely finished. I’m actually surprised what I was able to produce rather...

date_range 03/01/2011 20:05

Just like the original menu, it slowly spins around the island and as an addition, I’ve added a graphics settings screen which updates the scene in real-time very smoothly. Although a menu is probably not the most exciting feature to hear about, it really adds a sense of completion to the game and it allows it to make some sense. The only actual menus working right now are the main one shown above, the options menu (with General, Graphics and Sound sub-menus) and the graphics menu. The multiplayer button is likely to remain inactive for quite a while until the...