AAAAAA 'Splosions!

AAAAAAZone is proceeding nicely. The first project milestone is due tomorrow and what's left to do is implementing enemy AI, which is fun, and force feedback on the gamepad.

I'm currently using JigLibX to provide physics and collision detection in the game. This is working quite well right now though the lack of documentation is rather irritating. The biggest issue currently is the amount of jittering that occurs with the tank's suspension. That's going to be a pain to work out but that's for later... What's more important is EXPLOSIONS!

Yes, EXPLOSIONS! the staple of Michael Bay. They're really simple too. What I do is apply a force to any object within a certain distance of the EXPLOSION!'s position. The force gets weaker as the distance from the EXPLOSION! increases. This is great for sending tanks flying around when shooting them.

The other trick is applying blast damage. If an EXPLOSION! force is applied to a tank then the tank will take damage. The more force the more damage. Once enough damage is done all of the tank's parts, wheels, axels, guns and such, are detached from eachother.

Another Project

I haven't decided how much I'll talk about this one but it is fun. For our Game Development course in my program (Software Engineering at Conestoga College) we have to make a clone of Battlezone using XNA.

The prof has given a decent amount of leeway in the project to have some fun with it. So, finally I have a chance to try out a physics engine without trying to shoehorn it into a partially completed project.

I'll probably just update in shorter posts like this one for Battlezone (for now titled AAAAAA Zone due to a naming theme I've been using for the other projects in the Gamedev course)

Cheers!

Another Nasty Bites the Dust

As I mentioned in previous blog entries. This development cycle has been far more involved than the first. Mostly due to the fact that it involves a great deal of interdependent parts which all have to be developed at roughtly the same time. In this case I'm getting controls shared across multiple objects, object relationships and physics all working at once to support movement by simulating thrust.

I've figured out most of the math for the physics but it took several hours of effort to learn the basic math enough to even start. It was a few hours ago that I realized I'm starting to seriously diverge from what I want to be working on. What I'm trying to do is make the game look believable. I didn't originally intend to make the game accurate. *forehead slap* Out goes the physics, back to the drawing board.

My new method of simulating thrust is essentially a cheat. I'll just have thrusters appear to turn on and off in relation to the controls. Instead of simulating the behavior I'm simulating the appearance of the thrusters. This is far easier to build saving probably a day or more of work implementing it plus who know how long in getting it to be fun.