what am I doing now?

[scary_pigeon 0]

I continue to develop boring ungraphical code things. we took a decision to move to script approach for ai and physics and generally end all the hard coding for things like placement of cannons, calliber of wepons and things like that.

 

So i've scripted cannons that can have their own texture, their own caliber, fire rate, etc, etc. and be selected individually for firing from the AI script.

 

So in test now we have a harrier and a skyhawk that take off, turn on each other, fire missiles then use cannons.

 

Recently a new guy has become involved in helping us. another wanabe games programmer like me. He has been making some interesting changes to the fm lua script.

 

So thats how things are now.

 

all this ai combat and such is occuring on the developing server. I will next be writing a client to view this.

[FIghtinghawk 0]

any one knows the minimum requirements of de computer for the game?

[Yyrd 0]

Wow i got mentioned. I'm the new guy thata been helping.

I fact im realy theer coding slave, they got my coding to the wee hours of the morning locked inj some cold basement and ill get is some rice and beans as payment..

 

Ok just kidding. Ive been working on the harrier FM, ( flight model) adding some more reliastic features to it. trying to get it to react as real as the plane did in this year. It;s realy a easy job with this outstanding phyics system steve layed out for me.

i'll write a autobiograhy so yall know who i am. I'll keep it less then 600 pges.

 

 

Burp~!

[PG_Raptor 0]

Glad you're on the team Yyrd! Hope you can help keep these guys in line ;)

[+Dante-JT 6]

any one knows the minimum requirements of de computer for the game?

 

 

If the programmers don't manage to ruin too much the code we have now I guess the system requirements will be the same league of the IL2 sim series, except that at the moment we don't have any Shaders 3.0 water like in Pacific Fighters.

[Yyrd 0]

If the programmers don't manage to ruin too much the code we have now

 

back to the drawing baord.....

[Mothman 0]

Show them the way, Yvrd!

 

Hehe. Have fun.

[+Dante-JT 6]

back to the drawing baord.....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

heheheh. Seriously, I'm quite pleased with the performance of JT in my humble computer at home (Athlon XP 1600, 512mb, GF3!) it's always at more than 50 fps, and 1) there is no object's LOD system active at the moment (but we did the LOD versions of the planes) and 2) the terrain system just has a very simple LOD system 'by terrain chunks' (i.e. the terrain chunk far away is a simpler mesh while the terrain chunk directly ahead of the player is a more dense mesh, it's not dynamic like a ROAM system but seems to work and could do well for now) - this means we have a lot of room for improving performance in the 3D engine, but all this comes later - first, I wanna do a few missions in the game, like attacking the Stanley airfield or some Hermes CAP. ;)

[FIghtinghawk 0]

If the programmers don't manage to ruin too much the code we have now    I guess the system requirements will be the same league of the IL2 sim series, except that at the moment we don't have any Shaders 3.0 water like in Pacific Fighters.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

thanks

[+Dante-JT 6]

While Steve is fighting against the network code and Yyrd is fine-tuning the FM, I'm dedicating a bit of time to the nature present in-game scenario we have now, adding content such as coastal cliffs/sea rocks and enhancing a bit our clouds:

 

Soon, expect to see native birds fauna over the sea cliffs above. ;)

[Phlerp 0]

Are you planning to incorporate AG radar in any planes? If so I have some ideas about how it could be done with a level of realism I don't think any sim has atempted yet. I don't know if it is 100% feasible. But if you're interested give me a private mess and I'll explain what I have in mind.

[scary_pigeon 0]

Are you planning to incorporate AG radar in any planes? If so I have some ideas about how it could be done with a level of realism I don't think any sim has atempted yet. I don't know if it is 100% feasible. But if you're interested give me a private mess and I'll explain what I have in mind.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

yes. i forgot to reply to your pm phlerp.

 

we are planning on having AG radar since important aircraft we're modelling had them. what are your ideas?

[+Dante-JT 6]

This day, May 1st, back in 1982...Sea Harriers attacked the Port Stanley airfield with cluster bombs and cannon fire:

 

shame about the pic above, the cockpit isn't already the Sea Harrier one as the cockpit testshell and the flyable executables aren't merged yet.

[scary_pigeon 0]

at the moment im continuing to do the netcode.

 

the overall approach is to kill two birds with one stone. the netcode is also the server code - the player bubble cleverness - that lets you have a multitude of objects at reasonable speed is on the server. the client has a bubble which it sees from that.

 

before this can happen some basic netcode needs doing over and above whats been done in the project before.

 

simple things like spawn points. about this time last year me and dante were flying over the net - a sort of learning experience that was - now we do it right and complete.

 

the idea of doing it this way is that neither campaign nor netcode ends up as some sort of tacked on at the end half done thing that doesnt work properly.

[MBot 0]

Hey, I just wanted to pop in and tell you that I am still watching the progress you make very closely. Like many others do without doubt. I am very excited to see your sim taking shape.

 

The screenshots of the coastline and Stanley airport look very good. I am impressed how well you managed to capture that cold, "south atlantic" look. Both tumbs up !

 

One little thing tough. Are the A-4 and Sea Harrier cockpits still placeholders or are they the level you aim at ? Because frankly their textures look a little low-res. Sorry, I guess I am a bit spoiled by LOMAC :) The Pucara WIP screens show extremly nice front panel textures.

And try to spend extra care and ultra high details on the gunsight/HUD/canopy framing area, as you usualy look very close at these parts while zooming in the view to shoot. But now I shut up and don't tell you how to do your job :)

 

Keep up the good work !

[+Dante-JT 6]

One little thing tough. Are the A-4 and Sea Harrier cockpits still placeholders or are they the level you aim at ? Because frankly their textures look a little low-res. Sorry, I guess I am a bit spoiled by LOMAC  The Pucara WIP screens show extremly nice front panel textures.

 

That A-4 cockpit is placeholder, I took a detailed photo session of the A-4 on display at the Malvinas Museum in Argentina as I've took of the Pucara as well - yes the level we're aiming is the Pucara quality, but they're still at 'raw' state, needing many artistical retouchings over the base-photos to achieve that polished Lomac look - a thing that needs time and patience - that's one of the reasons flight sims take so long to develop ;)

Edited May 8, 2005 by Dante-JT

[scary_pigeon 0]

:)

Edited May 8, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[MBot 0]

Great to hear :)

[+Dante-JT 6]

I am busy now implementing a clever way to create a map-accurate coastline contour. Previously, we avoided screenshots showing the islands coastline (it was completely straight and squarey). Now the coastline have map-accuracy.

 

The screenshots below are taken from a chunk of 10km X 10km around the Port Stanley airfield, based in an accurate mesh of the islands that we have, the textures are just placeholders and yes, I will cover the entire coastline with those sea cliffs and wave splashes (using the clever pivot triangle reference for position of these objects):

 

The approach of using an alpha-channel mask cutout for coastlines is used in Targetware as well.

 

This is our alpha-channel/transparency texture layer for the region in the screenshots, notice that I've cut the airfield's boundaries as well to have a completely z-fight free scene:

Edited May 9, 2005 by Dante-JT

[Aerny 0]

Great job!

 

About cliffs:

Once, some time ago I found this great tutorial on how to conveniently create cliffs.

 

 

Hopelfully it can give you some inspiration.

 

Aerny

 

[+Dante-JT 6]

About cliffs:

Once, some time ago I found this great tutorial    on how to conveniently create cliffs.

Hopelfully it can give you some inspiration.

 

 

This is exactly the kind of visual I'm aiming for, hilly with rocky cliffs.

 

We got the Falklands mesh at a very good resolution. This means that we don't need a bitmap heightmap greyscale thing anymore, because the terrain mesh is already generated and ready. In the past we used a terrain generated using a heightmap greyscale bitmap thing, but it was low res and the resulting terrain was too squarey. There was also an attempt at OpenSceneGraphics but it wasn't integrated in the game and so was dropped.

 

Steve gave me yesterday the green light to start this new approach of terrain building, manually crafted by the artist (myself) so instead of trusting in a poor heightmap that will generate a low res sterile and boring terrain, we have now the chance to manually adjust the heights in each terrain block and add 'detail layers' (coastlines, roads, cliffs) all manually placed so there will be no trouble of the odd road ending in the sea and things like that found in more procedural/uncontrolled approaches.

 

This is the kind of terrain mesh resolution we're getting with this new manually-crafted method, looks very hilly and rounded, extremely accurate resolution (it's the hilly San Carlos area there) its missing now the detail textures and also the coastline wave splash effects, but these will be added soon:

[scary_pigeon 0]

most of the server net code is now complete and tested. some things remain. then its case of make a graphical client - rather than the debugclient.

 

once that is done, the demo to be released soon becomes days away. or to closed beta types anyway. :P

 

the screenshots dante shows are WIP experiments - they lack stuff that makes it look good, proper non place holder textures, detail textures. What is technically good is the undulating terrain that match satalite height data, you dont really get any better than this. - this is different than the more usual heightmap approach were terrain heights are at a rather corse(sp?) resolution of 256 levels.

Edited May 13, 2005 by scary_pigeon

[uteboy 0]

Man guys this looks better and better every time I look at it. Keep up the good work.

[scary_pigeon 0]

Man guys this looks better and better every time I look at it.  Keep up the good work.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

cheers, and welcome to the forum.

[Guest |d13m0b]

Hi there Steven, long time no see eh? :) I must say I'm pretty astonished by the progress you've made with this game since we talked last time. I've been visiting this page from time to time and I'm equally thrilled every time I see you posting new screenshots!

 

Keep up the great work!

 

Sincerly

Kenneth