what am I doing now?

[scary_pigeon 0]

oh cool - people read this page :)

 

lately we've been jolly pleased with the damage model for aircraft.

 

http://www.thunder-works.com/anims_a4b.rar

 

in this archive is a small movie that shows our moving parts.

 

we want now to do the same trick with warships. And at the moment this is what I'm working on.

 

When we have the next version of the warship c++ classes ready we will then try to set up carrier demo.

 

the milestone we work towards at the moment is a complete example of a mission against the british fleet in the skyhawk.

 

the fleet will be defended by sea harriers and other ship defences.

 

We need to be able to damage the ships selectively - to knock out AAA and SAM, radar and other things.

 

 

btw

personally I dont rate the exocet at all. a crappy easily jammed, easily shot down even, subsonic missile in very short supply. I think iron bombs are the main threat to the fleet. The skyhawk has a reputation for being a tough airframe too.

 

also, we have to improve our FM. Our goal of course is maximun realism with compromises only optional.

Edited September 15, 2004 by scary_pigeon

[PG_Raptor 0]

Wow, it's great that you guys are so far along already. You must be busy ;) Cant wait to see it!

[Phlerp 0]

No updates for some time. Is nothing new happening or have you just got tired of reporting it <_<

[+Dante-JT 6]

Probably Steve recently forgot to write in his diary or is too busy to do so :)

On my side, I'm very busy getting the carriers ready for battle, starting with the HMS Hermes:

 

And will be followed by the argentine carrier 25 De Mayo. Then, it'll be HMS Invincible time. And after, the Atlantic Conveyor (well, not exactly a carrier, but, you get the idea :))

[MBot 0]

Splendit view :)

 

Just wanted to say that I keep checking the forum every day that I love you guys :)

[Phlerp 0]

That's good enough for me ;)

[MBot 0]

Wow :ph34r:

 

If you don't know what I am talking about, check out the Jet Thunder homepage...

[scary_pigeon 0]

an update?

 

why not..

 

..not a great deal to say except the last couple of weeks or so have been absolutel awful and demoralising.

 

the FM works but I can never quite get it how I want it to be. problem is, i've probably become obsessed with the FM. Sometimes when working on something u get obsessed with one tiny fragment. and every day its been like, oh my god i hate this. fiddling with numbers inputted into the fm and then seeing what happens, is spin behaviour right and believable? whys the nose bobbing up and down still, stuff like that.

 

i must resolve to put a freeze on working on this as the plan is to get other people to do the FM at some point between now and beta. I am not an aerodynamics expert. I've got good general physics so things seem about right but not perfect. Its like the difference between pretty good: - Strikefighters and feeling spot on: - IL2. right now in someways we are between the two though still the flight behaviour is generic - the current target aircraft -the skyhawk only loosly accurate.

 

Next stage is..

 

..a gigantic multiple choice. I could code more weopon system stuff perhaps of warships and aircraft. Or now with our fancy carrier objects make sure stuff is landing and taking off correctly.

[SDirickson 0]

We don't care what you work on so long as everything is coming along smoothly.

 

And as for being satisfied with a 'pretty good' flight model... definately go for the best. We'll take a lot of slack in regards to visuals if the gameplay is right on.

[Mothman 0]

Keep up the great job. No matter the flight model, the gameplay, the graphics, this game is one that i will buy no matter what. Hey! At least you got 50 bucks assured.

 

For what i've seen in the 3D models and movies, i know i'll like this sim a lot. :yes:

 

Btw, the Hermes looks awesome! I like the texturing.

[scary_pigeon 0]

I've been doing too little coding recently, i have to confess.

 

This has been for two reasons - i've doubled my hours at my dumb job and another is that when I get home from my dumb job at Walmart, I find an irresistable desire to play Rome: Total War.

 

codewise though, we've moved on a little, we're happy somewhat with the FM for now and the coding now centers on collision detection -which was perfect - but only worked for one solid object - with our objects now split up into damagable parts the routine has to be reworked a little.

 

Then there will be a few more things from that on how that affects the FM.

 

so depending on weather I can break my addiction on Rome Total War or not, hopefully by end of this week we'll be at a point were we're landing on carriers and stuff like that.

 

---

 

my playing of rome total war highlights a problem with my computer. I wonder if anybody here has any suggestions.

 

On this PC and another many games crash. The screen just goes black and it reboots at some apparantly random point in the game.

 

I have this problem in IL2, IL2FB, Doom3, and Rome Total War.

 

both PC's they crash on, its weird. the only thing that they have in common is that their motherboards are both got VIA corp stuff in. the problem occurs on all the different gfx cards I have used (3 nvidia models now an fx5900xt)

 

its most distressing.

[joejoe 0]

possibly a power supply problem, maybe your hdd is shutting down for a split second. try unplugging your cdrom drives and other unessecary things and see what happens. maybe you should upgrade your powersupply? or at least all the connections are tight.

[SDirickson 0]

Kinda sounds like a problem I used to have with my ram, though I'm no expert.

[PG_Raptor 0]

That could be any number of things. It may be your power supply, as joe said. It may also be some bad components, like SDirickson said. The first thing that came to my mind is that you may be overheating your CPU. I've never had any expereince doing that though, so I'm not sure what all the symptoms are of that. Try downloading Motherboard Monitor and see what has to say, you should not be going above 60 C on your components.

[scary_pigeon 0]

I've had two power packs in the system though both were perhaps underpowered?

 

sometimes even in jet thunder my system suffers that savage crash that the others do.

 

what happens is normally the system is over extended on resources - liek ive had loads of browser windows up and the comps been on for over 10 hours - then i try to compile and run and it freezes after trying to put lots of stuff I presume into virtual memory. Then it goes blank and crashes just like IL2, rome and so on.

[franceschi 0]

2 recomendations:

 

1) Regarding your PC problem: if you can afford it, try 2GB RAM and disable the SWAP file...Welcome to Flight Sim paradise...SWAP=Crashes!!!

 

2) Regarding FM: have you been checking LOMAC v1.1 add on videos? The new FM for the Su-25T leaves IL-2 way behind...I think it will become the best FM ever...perhaps until Jet Thunder...

[scary_pigeon 0]

well latest thing is that we've finally got bits falling off the aircraft - not just spawned debris - but bits of wings and stuff like that.

[+Dante-JT 6]

I've successfully integrated the HMS Hermes in the JT's 3d engine, although it lacks functionality, I'm basically testing it for textures weight and polycounts and everything seems fine so far, no impact in frame rates:

 

Also I've received updates from Ariel Cancio who is modelling the HMS Invincible:

 

The bottom line is that soon the Sea Harriers will have two nice floating homes to attempt VTOL in.

[Drakkhen 0]

Will the elevators be fonctionnal?

And, more important, will the ships be submited to ocean moods?

[scary_pigeon 0]

ships should sway like ships not islands that is for sure.

 

the elevators - do they work? like twiddle and stuff like that? yes.

[Drakkhen 0]

So I assume you know what elevators and swaying both means when thinking about collisions and all this kinda stuff. You make me in such a hurry to discover that!

[Mothman 0]

Someone posted some months ago about having people on the deck. It would improve the overall realism and athmosphere of the game, don't you think?

 

Btw, those screenies look good!

[Bard 0]

I've been doing too little coding recently, i have to confess.

 

This has been for two reasons - i've doubled my hours at my dumb job and another is that when I get home from my dumb job at Walmart, I find an irresistable desire to play Rome: Total War.

 

codewise though, we've moved on a little, we're happy somewhat with the FM for now and the coding now centers on collision detection -which was perfect - but only worked for one solid object - with our objects now split up into damagable parts the routine has to be reworked a little.

 

Then there will be a few more things from that on how that affects the FM.

 

so depending on weather I can break my addiction on Rome Total War or not, hopefully by end of this week we'll be at a point were we're landing on carriers and stuff like that.

 

---

 

my playing of rome total war highlights a problem with my computer. I wonder if anybody here has any suggestions.

 

On this PC and another many games crash. The screen just goes black and it reboots at some apparantly random point in the game.

 

I have this problem in IL2, IL2FB, Doom3, and Rome Total War.

 

both PC's they crash on, its weird. the only thing that they have in common is that their motherboards are both got VIA corp stuff in. the problem occurs on all the different gfx cards I have used (3 nvidia models now an fx5900xt)

 

its most distressing.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

download memtest from here

 

http://www.memtest86.com/

 

sounds like either memory, power or video card.

 

check memory first, run the test overnight.

 

the power is relatively easy to test, so test that one next with some motherboard monitoring software, and let it run in the background while you play for a short period of time, then drop out and check the power graph. usually i use 3dmark for this.

[Bard 0]

Someone posted some months ago about having people on the deck. It would improve the overall realism and athmosphere of the game, don't you think?

 

Btw, those screenies look good!

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

people on the deck would definitely make it more realistic, plus gives a better sense of scale.

[SDirickson 0]

In regards to moving elevators, he might have meant on the carriers. It would be pretty awesome having to taxi from the hanger deck out to an elevator and up to the cat. But it would need deck hands.