date_range 11/02/2011 13:48

I just came back today from my orientation at QANTM, which is an institute that I’ve applied for to do a Bachelor of Interactive Entertainment with a major in Programming. I’ve been accepted and lessons start next Monday. I believe this is going to be great experience and allow me to learn a vast library of knowledge. QANTM is a college that actually provides university-level degrees in a faster timespan (2 years rather than 3). This is not due to any course trimming, it’s due to its Trimester system with very few holidays, giving the courses I undertake more relevance...

date_range 10/02/2011 16:54

The Bismarck and a merchant ship fire on some fighter planes. DoF was off so the bullets could be seen better in a still-frame, unfortunately this deteriorated the horizon blending. All ships now have the ability to open fire on planes that don’t belong to their own faction, therefore the player now has to be careful when to use his reinforcements (or to use them at all if they’re up for a challenge). I fixed a huge performance issue that was caused by me creating very large spherical triggers around both fighter planes and ships to detect other units, and...

date_range 09/02/2011 17:23

A nice rotating radar effect as well as countdown marks the finish of the support plane interface. The interface as well as the programming of the support planes is done. All that’s left in the category of these planes is to have them killed off again by boats. To do this I’m going to add points on all the ships that supposed ‘AA’ fire will come from. This will add some of the difficulty back in and assures that the player can’t just complete the missions from reinforcements as for every plane destroyed, one less will return (which fortunately resets...

date_range 08/02/2011 13:59

The worthy screenshot where the P-38 gets its very first kill. Yep, the hardest support aircraft of them all, the fighter planes are somewhat working. As pictured above, the P-38 kills a BF109G. There is absolutely no posing or aid involved here besides creeping up close in a custom pause mode to take this screenshot. It’s actually quite interesting to program proper artificial intelligence into one of these planes to take down something else for me, where my own AI is actually making life easier for me. Right now the fighter planes target a couple of meters in front of...

date_range 07/02/2011 22:26

I made an attempt to do quite a bit of work today which unfortunately didn’t entirely end up working as planned, although I did get quite a bit done anyway. After some rather strenuous work figuring out at least partially how to get Quaternions and Euler angles working only to end up not using either mathematical functions to make planes turn more realistically I got it working to some extent. Although there is still the issue of planes occasionally crashing into the rocks, island or doing its own stunts, they turn. The method I’ve used isn’t exactly the right way,...

date_range 06/02/2011 17:53

I managed to go crazy and finish all the required models for the support aircraft yesterday, with some needing a bit more work, but this saves me a lot of work later on. There are four development stages that I am focusing on with these aircraft. Bombers Torpedo Bombers Fighter Planes Enemy Retaliation Why there was a huge explosion in the background is beyond me, but it looks nice anyway. The bombers are done, so that’s good news. It was fairly easy to program, simply using the enemy bombers and giving them some different values and different bombs. Ground units...

date_range 05/02/2011 16:28

Alright, so I want to make progress, and will put some effort into getting the last few things done. I’ve now done 2 out of the 5 things I’ve put in a list before, although there’s two extra things bugging me. Let me just revise that list: Scoring Death Support Aircraft Upgraded weapons Plane banking Howitzer bug Map(?) The support aircraft are my next priority, and they are the following aircraft that I managed to find in the original game’s folder: Avenger (torpedo bomber) B-17 (bomber) B-29 (bomber) Dauntless (torpedo bomber) P-38 (air support) P-40 (air support) P-51 (air support)...

date_range 04/02/2011 19:46

Three bombers with slightly souped up bombs are finally let free after promising not to shoot them down. Although I can imagine most games are developed with their simple features done first, namely score and the ability to lose, I seem to have veered way off course and ended up doing everything else before the very basics that make the game (or most games anyway). So I let loose a couple of He111 bombers with slightly-more-nuclear-than-the-usual-0% bombs and surprise, surprise, I died. It’s extremely simple in this particular game as the only thing that really happens is a dramatic tear-inducing...

date_range 03/02/2011 14:55

Since I lined up the boats for editing, I figured I might as well take a screenshot of all the units in one image, excluding tanks/soldiers. The black dots are waypoints that happened to be in the scene. Although there isn’t a great number of ships in the game, each ship does have on average about 16 guns or so, so although adding additional lighting as well as the sinking effect I added to the Hipper not long ago isn’t that significant, it did take a while to apply to all the other ships. Progress is still going nicely, and...

date_range 02/02/2011 15:19

Destroyed cannon fire as well as explosions still need some lighting added. After the Hipper in the above screenshot happily volunteered to be blown to bits after it was helplessly dragged from my impressive selection of ships to choose from into the water, I started working on the state of ships as they were sinking. They sink and all, but in the original game there was often an audible orchestra of explosions and groans here and there as you created somewhat of a ‘Pearl Harbor ‘effect around you. This appears to be working very well, with the occasional random explosion occurring around the ship...