Day 92 : Slow on updates, not on progress

Just a quick note. Easter hasn't been as filled with progress as I had hoped. Thursday and Friday I was sick. Although it helped my relationship with the bathroom, it didn't help the project. Found an interesting bug today in my XML parser. Actually, I discovered something that made me think : "Holy crap that NEVER should've worked". And yet I had made rather good playable demo with it. Strange how sometimes stuff just "happens to work". Anyway it's fixed now.

I'm now working on part II of the playable level and I'm having a hard time making the tanks follow the ground. All these talks about normals and maths are giving me headaches so I'm punching out. The result I have so far is kind of satisfactory. But I'll tweak it some more later.

Also making the turret on the tank follow the player was also hard as the tank's orientation changes based on the terrain. But I got that part right on the money in not too long a time. Hurray for me. Now I need the cannon on the turret to also follow the player. Shouldn't be too hard but I got sidetracked by the XML bug. Will work on it later.

So good progress, but updates are slow because it kind of detracts away from making progress in the game itself. But I'll keep posting. Once in a while.

Day 79 : Milestone achieved

Sunday evening I managed to create the first-ever demo creating what the game will kind-of feel. What does that mean? It means the level started with an in-game cinematic made with the actual mission editor and XML file. It featured camera/dynamic object movements, "talking-head" styled character intervention/briefing and smooth transition to the game. The game itself featured the 40-60 first seconds of the missions. With actual bad-guy behaviours and special effects. Full collision implementation and such. Your own characters couldn't die (and still can't) but it register hits with the intended special effects. Limited sound effects and music were also integrated.

All in all for the first time I had something to show that went beyond tech-demos.

I don't post as much here as I used to. Fact is, I have subversion now to keep track of what I'm doing, so this blog I'll use only to publish milestones and also make deadline predictions. BTW the milestone I talked about, I had predicted I would reach that after Easter. Score one for the optimists.