programming updates

[scary_pigeon 0]

I'm fed up of working part time of Jet Thunder, so I'm going to quit my job and work on JT full time to make sure it gets done in reasonable time.

 

currently refactoring code to aid the development of AI and Physics.

 

Jet Thunders code currently mixes the graphics objects with physics data. By separating the aircraft physics into a separate static library I believe jet thunders game code will become more agnostic of whatever physics engine we use (currently Newton)

 

I like Newton in many ways. Despite being the work of apparently one man - It doesn't fall over. Is well documented compared to Bullet, but not the fastest. For a number of reasons it would be nice to switch to PhysX. with this code refactoring, this becomes a possibility. And with the physics at last decoupled from the graphics objects, then driving the physics on a separate thread should be more straightforward. Our framerate is pretty good - but its always nice to have more. we remain, mainly single core at the moment.

 

 

some important fix recently. JT is now far more likely to run on other peoples PC's than just ours - as developers we have PC's with dev software on - but because we're not a studio, we don't really have naked test PC's. Dante discovered on some PC's at his work place that JT wasn't running and I was able to replicate the error and fix. This demonstrates the necessity of open beta testing at the end of the project to catch these dumb errors.

 

But one wonders: the publisher and investor types we showed JT in the past, probably didn't have dev software installed on their PC. It perhaps made us look poor if our game just crashed without comment. At least this shouldn't happen now.

Edited September 6, 2010 by scary_pigeon

[jeanba 1,920]

Thank you for telling us.

And good luck for all

[+Old Diego 66]

It takes a pair of stones to just put it all on the line and go for it. I applaud you for it. I'm sure that this will all sort itself.

Thanks for keeping your anxious future customers in the loop.

[scary_pigeon 0]

updating the flight model - its long needed some love. Hopefully in a few hours I will enjoy flying the skyhawk in the physics test shell.

 

previously, the flight model was using complex equations. Now we're going to make better use of interpolation and pull the flight model back into C++ rather than lua script. This will give us code efficiency boost. Especially with lots of aircraft present in the battlespace.