In essence it is a rotate and thrust third person sci-fi shooter, only you can move around like in a scrolling shooter (sideways as well as forwards), in addition to rotating. It's kind of like a third person shooter, but with a spaceship instead of a guy. Your main armament is a pair of big guns that auto-aim within a small angular range, and you can also fire homing missiles. Currently missions involve blowing everything into tiny pieces, but additions like allied units and more complicated level objectives are planned.
It is currently being coded in Dark Basic Professional (DBP), although it started life in Dark Basic Classic. It currently doesn't really take advantage of all the amazing stuff that DBP can do, and i intend to learn shaders and all that fancy stuff at some point. For now i'm concentrating on other stuff, and the graphics can remain in the 1990s.
Some semi interesting things about this:
* It started off as an asteroids clone, an was intended to be entered into a retrogame competition way back when.
* Using a matrix was an afterthought, and the z-axis is up, so the matrix is really really steep!
KEYBOARD: WASD controls thrust. Left and right arrow keys turn the ship. Both the up arrow and spacebar fire the gun. The down arrow launches missiles.
It seems like PC joypads vary a lot, i have no idea whether or not this will work for other people. I should do a survey on people's joypads at some point.
I have not used analog control because
a) It looks like many PC joypads do not have analog sticks
b) experiments on my controller have shown the output to be extremely nonlinear with movement of the sticks. I have managed to suss out how to correct for this, but I don't know whether other controllers work the same.
c) The range of motion of the sticks is a peculiar shape- again something that may vary between controllers.
d) It doesn't seem right to have a digital system for keyboard and not for joypad.
GUN: Autotargets enemies assuming constant velocity. Prolonged firing leads to overheating. Unlimited ammunition
MISSILES: Home on targets. In event that target is destroyed, missile will search for a new target. Currently the player begins with 16 missiles. Later rearming may be via powerups, or visting a base.
ENEMY UNITS:
SKIMMER GUNSHIP: tend to creep up behind you. Gun rotates independently of body.
MISSILE GUNSHIP: as above, but looks different and fires missiles
ORANGE BALLS: Attracted to the player. Will do other stuff (like explode) later...
GUN TURRET: Powerful gun and heavy armour. Limited turn rate means you can fly rings around these.
MISSILE TURRET: It's a gun turret that fires missiles!
TO DO LIST:
PRIORITY 1:
* Level editor
* Improve explosions and destruction sequences (cosmetic)
* Enemy ground units- have some nice spiderbot code could use for this
* More enemy types
* More types of buildings
PRIORITY 2:
* Scenery (rocks, trees)
* Smoke trails, muzzle flashes
* Allied units
* More terrain tiles, possibly object ground tiles (no matrix)
* Communication between enemy units
* Level objectives (destroy set targets, return to base, collect/rescue etc)
COMPLETED TASKS: (04/10/07)
Changes since V0.2 Demo:
* Rearm/ Rearmour pickups
* kamikaze drone enemy, system for multiple types of flying objects
* buildings are shown on radar screen, draw on map image. image is edited in realtime using memblock commands when buildings are destroyed.
* using .dbo for most objects, reducing loading time
* using memblocks for procedural textures has reduced loading time
* have excluded unnecessary dlls to decrease .exe size
* enemy guns that launch homing missiles
* game runs at desktop resolution (fullscreen windowed) - looks clearer
* aspect resolution selection screen - user chooses undistorted circle. Game runs in 3:2 view (intermediate between 4:3 and 16:10)
* muzzle flash for player
* Rectangular stationary collisions are working
* Fixed oversight that would cause game to run too fast on computers capable of high framerate.
* Interpolation used in screen update has reduced jerkiness considerably.
* Grid system uses linked lists for much lower memory usage, and slight speed improvement.
* Deterministic gameplay and input recorder/player for a watch/demonstration mode.
* More use of instanced objects
* Grid system used for targeting algorithms.
* Splash damage function.
* Logic modes for mobile enemies: will interact with player if close enough, otherwise return to start position
* Another enemy type added: Missile gunship
* More building types
* Warning sound effects and display for low armour
##### V0.2 Demo posted 24/07/07 #####
Changes since last V0.1 Demo:
* Switched missiles to line collision (from point)
* .DDS terrain textures created from .JPG on first time loading to reduce subsequent loading times, without increasing the file size for distribution
* Some code reordering
* Joypad control available
* Terrain shown on radar
* Hearing sounds delayed due to finite speed of sound
* Sound volume falls off with distance
* Volume control works correctly (learned that sound volume is a logarithmic scale)
* now using instanced objects and bespoke culling system, resulting in significant framerate increase
* game now runs at constant speed, regardless of framerate. Constant time game logic steps mean that gameplay mechanics are unaffected.
* improved HUD, no longer using retexturing for status bars
* Levels can be loaded and reloaded via function
* Controls displayed when game paused and via main menu
* Low/critical shield warning displayed
* Main and pause menu, loading screen, level win and game over
##### V 0.1 Demo posted 15/04/07 #####
