Happy New Year - Another year older...

I (Richard H) take the opportunity to indulge myself in a little year-end editorial and pick out some of the personal highs and lows of the past twelve months. Warning: may contain rambling, digression and woeful inaccuracies.

Is it over already? What happened this year?

2011 a year where the most wanted man in America was shot (along with 4 other people that nobody seems to remember) by US Navy SEALs. A year where governments attempted to convince themselves they have any kind of control over economies despite the billions spent on technology and infrastructure to remove people out of the loop. I call blasting away mountains to improve packet travel time by mere milliseconds pretty compelling evidence of the forces being thrown into this new hi-tech computer based trading war. When the speed of light is too slow to make money over the competition and shortening your cable by removing hillsides is the difference between profit and loss what chance do governments or people have in this trading scenario? And it's all happening without much talk or opposition.

The 'adventure' in IRAQ was laid to rest with US President Obama announcing US troop withdrawal. The British army was there in the first half of the previous century and didn't fare much better, although the suggestion that using poison gas on rebels in the north was not acted upon, that was one of Winston Churchill's bright ideas curiously. Always seemed ironic that.

Freedom swept across the middle east, starting with Tunisia as despot after despot was felled in popular uprisings. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of Facebook game.


Earthquakes and devestation

Japan moved 20 meters westerly and horrific scenes of coastal devastation were broadcast live as the resulting tsunami from the massive undersea earthquakes swept away generations of familes, homes and soon after any remaining nuclear power comfort zone.

Japan has never been a stranger to holocaust, scenes and stories of annihilation and devastation are popular in Japanese culture, see the opening scene of Akira. This is something they have lived through time and time again. My late father-in-law was a Hiroshima survivor, sponsored by US scientists after the war he became a US citizen and then a notable scientist and Quaker. He told me once of thanking Oppenheimer (at a conference) for ending the war in his country, how awful must things have been when getting nuked and loosing your family was in retrospect the better option? It's something I can't even begin to think about without breaking down in tears.


Game devs want more pie

It was the year every game studio and his dog decided they wanted a slice of the Mincecraft pie without any consideration of what makes it so popular. The phrase "just like Warcraft" was replaced by "just like Minecraft", or if you're an unethical developer, "Just like Farmville".

Unethical is a strong word to use but I'll use it for any type of game that preys on innate human weaknesses to make you play them rather than well designed gameplay. This can be aimed at a lot of games that exist in the social arena. I blame a large part of this down to the adoption of the "Monthly Active User" metric being used as a key performance indicator (KPI) for IP acquisition and exploitation.

Another example of game success passed around developers is "Angry Birds". What they often don't realise is Angry Birds was not an out of the blue success, the creators had built up experience working on around 50 games between them prior to launch. The game mechanics are stupefying simple, any programmer or user of Little Big Planet can put such a game together. It is no more sophisticated than Gorillas (shipped as BASIC source code with MSDOS 5 see wiki), it is a single player artillery game. But everything surrounding the mechanics is a finely tuned presentation based on their collective game experience. It takes experienced designers to make Angry Birds, not programmers.


Indie because we say so

Somehow the meaning of 'indie' became fluid, when news of companies like EA announce the formation of an indie studio to engage social and mobile spaces it has one reaching for my "WTF?" stamp. In what way is this indie? Indie is folks trying to democratise games in a way big studios have been blocking for years, indie is independent thought in the game-space or some pretentious twaddle like that. Indie is not trading on skin deep looks, big bucks advertising budgets but game mechanics and freedom to experiment. Freedom to fail.

Start-ups being handed hundreds of thousands of pounds in government grants could be said to be independent. Certainly this year saw many studios spring forth from magic money with little to show for it, and some priced beyond reason. It smells of the dot com boom bust of the early 2000s. Studios are good at being handed funds (in the words of Lord Stark) 'when it's safe'. Hey investors, how about taking some risks on real projects? We could have done this bloody game in half the time, does that smack of enough bitterness? Yes I'm bitter. OK that's enough, better now. Moving on to some of the personal gaming highs this year.


Video game highlights of 2011

Shogun 2 - Creative Assembly
Magika - Arrowhead Game Studios
Assassins Creed Revelations - Ubisoft

Most of the games I had time to play this year (and that's not many) were a mixed bag. To be fair even Assassins Creed was a face-roll fest (not much skill required) but managed to keep one going through sheer story and production value. At the opposite end is Shogun 2, Creative Assembly's triumph combining many elements they've tinkered with in previous games and spades of neat game elements into their two tier strategy game packed with historical facts.

Magika is a hilarious indie action game where blowing yourself up in interesting ways seems par for the course. It came out of nowhere and fair to describe the tone of the game as something you'd get if you threw Reservoir Dogs, Lord of the Rings and Monty Python into a blender. Thanks guys for the laughs.

Honorary mentions: Battlefield 3, Portal 2. and Kerbal Space Program. That latter being great fun if you're into building your own monstrous launch systems and killing space crews in spectacular fireballs.


Video game disappointments of 2011

I bought 'em, played 'em, felt gutted.

Test Drive 2 Unlimted - Eden Games

Wow, after the brilliant but only slightly flawed first game they didn't need to do very much to make the second game a winner. It was like the anticipation of a new Star Wars film (The Phantom Menace), in the words of Harry Plinkett, how hard is it to screw up? It's like mashed potato, just add water. Well they managed it IN SPADES by populating the game entirely with really awful people. I don't want to play these characters, I don't want to interact with these characters. One forum poster dubbed it "Douche-bag simulator".

Skyrim

An honorary arrow in the knee because Oblivion with a face-lift seemed cool at first, erm how much was spent on this? Disappointment still ringing from the hours I put into Oblivion only to find the openness of character development can result in halting any progression after xxx hours. They filmed this live action trailer which could be for anything, my step-son suggested that it could work as a dandruff commercial, see for yourself...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1AenlOEXao

Let me know if you hit the same wall in Skyrim.


Batman Arkham City

I finished the first Batman game a total of FIVE times. I can't think when I've ever bothered to do that with any other console game. Finishing ONCE is a rare thing.

Arkham City lost me after a weekend of play. Too much freedom and visual clutter spoiling an otherwise masterfully visualised city environment. Riddler on the Roof, he's painted dayglow green crap everywhere to solve his collection meta-quest.  And worse, there's really no logic to some of the puzzles, (the rooftop chicken run with the magnetic ball for one), I can absorb bullets but I can't rip open a chicken run to grab the ball and stick it in the hole? Put me in the game like you did with Arkham Asylum please, but ill-considered content like this kept taking me out. Sometimes less is more. The artwork is amazing and the laser effects best I've ever seen, a real visual treat with jarring game elements that kill pacing.



Combat-Helo

I had to mention this. Still not out yet and my internal build seems so close yet needs more cowbell. I was really looking forward to seeing a beta released around now and spending my time apologising in public forums and working on improvements. What happened is a series of poor choices on my part which I wouldn't choose to do again. Problem that a normal team could rally around is too much for one programmer to deal with (such as the much needed engine occlusion bug which broke a key avionics sub-system). Another mistake was getting pressured into announce a release period which was just setting myself up for disappointing people when problems arose. I broke my own rule and paid the price. While I still feel bad about that I love the team even though they probably hate some of the choices I made, I can't disagree. Will the release meet expectations? Probably not. Will it fly? You bet. Besides my wife said she'll cut off my bollocks if I don't release it soon or get a decent paying job. Can't argue with that either.


Video and film highlights of 2011

Everything is a Remix

If there was ever a documentary that shows how ridiculous, damaging and outdated modern day copyright and patent laws are, Everything is a Remix is an entertaining documentary series in 4 parts. Everything around us is a remix of some tool, idea and material. Without the freedom to copy, transform and combine existing ideas and technologies creativity is stifled and with it western economies. How different our world would be today if the same level of litigation was around at the time of the industrial revolution.


Sons of Guns - Discovery Channel

Once you get past the gratuitous 'gun porn' flag waving aspect what I love about this series is the sheer love and enthusiasm from the employees of Red Jacket Firearms featured in the show. Sure they love to blow shit up and you might question the sanity and choices made (as do the employees from time to time) but the company is not run as a democracy (insert discussion here). Now airing the third season it's perhaps the most popular show on Discovery HD. It had me yelling, "I got a guitar GUN!" Cracks me up every time.

Cowboys and Aliens (imdb)

The film was better than the title. Reminding me a little of an old b-movie Valley of the Gwangi (imdb) it was a reasonably fun and gritty take on the what-if monster genre.

Super-8 (imdb)

A charming revisit of what an 80s Spielberg movie would be if made today....set in the 80s. Yes we wore those clothes in school. And if you have a 5.1 surround system then the train crash scene will terrify your neighbours. Written and Directed by J.J Abrams.


Cool science stuff

Energy from paper, discovery of hundreds of 'earth like' planets around nearby stars, the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson and Mentos in diet coke. Granted the last one is a bit late but is the only practical experiment I actually conducted in the kitchen. I did clean up though.

Here's hoping that next year science will bring us phones and portable computing devices that can keep a charge for more than a few hours.

Oh and the amazing new bulletproof liquid armor from BAE systems would be handy in the field. Currently it requires 10 pints of Newcastle Brown Ale to feel bulletproof and lightweight however field tests show the subject to be less than agile.



HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE
(or I'll hit the UNDO button at midnight and we'll have to try all over again)



Parting quote:


"Goodbye. Goodbye to all the 87 software houses who are no longer with us . . . hello multinationals with your contract lawyers and your cut-price rotten little programs ..." - The Pi-man's end of the year message to fans circa mid 1980s

Bogged Down - Chin Up

 I apologise for lack of updates, long time since the last one (weeks it seems although I have two unpublished ones which are no longer relevant). I've been avoiding online spaces during this time, work has been bogged down with the multitude of tasks not just relating to the Combat Helo game.

I'm working on the flight model again this week so don't expect any updates in a while. I did get started on an updated FAQ and will publish that ASAP. Lots of things happen around this time of year with concerts and church services, when you have a musical family there's a lot of evenings taken up with those.

So I don't know when we'll have something to show for all this work. It'll happen when it happens, there's no budget to finish and I've got huge debts that require me to stop at some point and take time off to do other work.

On the plus side I did get a nice pressie from one of my brothers which is going to buy a nice cheap car (sensible, used K car but importantly has a working HEATER, a nice to have feature for UK winters). Something to be said for being happy just by virtue of being in a car that's warm.


"Do you know what’s killing Western democracy, George? Greed, and constipation. Moral, political, aesthetic. The economic repression of the masses institutionalized." - Bill Haydon from John le Carré's  Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974.

Quick update - optimisations

Last week I identified one issue relating to UserEntityData introduced with the last engine update which prevents consistent update of Enity data due to some change in the hierarchy and no documentation on what was changed.

So I'm faced with having to re-factor (meaning to changing code but same behaviour) core sensor code. It's the sort of thing that is utterly frustrating and makes one want to throw everything out of the window. It's not as if there aren't enough things to do.

There's 4 major issues I'm not happy with:

• Flight Model bridge refinement
• Ground dynamics
• Horizon gapping and other asset problems (licences/legal, audio)
• Events / Triggers

I know I can rush some of these things and end up with something I'm not happy with. And if I'm not happy with it I don't see why anyone else will be happy. The majority of potential customers don't follow this blog, they don't care about how much work or team sizes, finds and lack-of, how or why, and often they don't care about the word "beta". To do what's right in the long term means having to not cut corners and do what needs to be done.

Sucks though.

Who would have thought building a stand-alone study sim of the most advanced attach helicopter on the planet would be so difficult? What gives?

Lest we forget

11/11

Random pics of the Day

Some pics of the day.

Battlezoneesque - eerie (debug stuff)

Shadow puppet time.

Planning terminals awaiting attention

This is how I start every day

US Army showcases AB3 - Apache Block II to Block III in video

US Army released video showcasing the new Block III Apache in a virtual training environment.

The video covers in a nutshell...

• Weight reduction
• Improved software upgrade pipeline
• Increased engine power 701-D engines and improved drive system
• Better digital battlefield intergration
• UAV commanding
• IFR certified instruments
• Reliability and servicing improvements
• RFI range triangulation
• Maritime classification
• Awesome new logo

Further reading

C-SCOPE

While Dave is away hopefully keeping his head above water (all those Bear Grylls survival videos should come in handy) I've got not much else to do except worry and get on with my to-do list.

C-SCOPE was something I remember saying wouldn't make it but turned out to be a freebie since everything was available to simply drop it in.

[C-SCP] button on the FCR page overlays FCR target symbols on TADS video and HMD. Makes finding those hard to see vehicles a piece of cake.

C-SCOPE FCR symbols presented on the HMD

ref: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/ah-64-mfp-1-33.htm

The High Action Display is currently getting an update for the ACQ interaction (I've tried really hard to work through what this does and how I can gamify it to make something both usable and understandable by normal people).

Also I'm overjoyed at getting news of our ATC audio recordings and looking forward to playing with that.

Rain Stops Play - Bangkok Floods

Dave who is the artist on Combat-Helo is currently in the process of evacuating his home in Thailand as the floods in Bangkok have made living difficult. With no fresh drinking water for days, no supplies in the shops and place of work closed, services breaking down it's time to jump ship.

Blue indicates server flooding (clearly) Red=flood defence

BBC carries the story here

Dave's last act before evacuating was uploading the latest Chinook work to our server alas there was no time to upload the PSDs. Good luck and fingers crossed we'll hear from you in a week or a month... :(

Don't Panic

Yes Panic.

When you're rushing to get a reasonable build ready for hammering out problems I'm finding I'm making all new problems. Going over the HMD code I realise how badly it needs rebuilding, there are existing elements that need updating, a few new ones that require adding. There's no way to rebuild the HUD in time.

Another problem. LUA in the Apache entity. Works in the first instance, but fails in subsequent entity spawns resulting in the inability to mount the aircraft. It's an issue relating to LUA accessing keys stored in the model. I want to rip out all the LUA code from models except for the model initialisation that puts on pylons and attaches the rotor models. Not much time to deal with that either.

Dual Seat configuration.

The interaction between front and rear seat was not well thought out early enough, instead I opted for a 'duality' where all features could be operated from either seat with just some interface differences. I should have opted for a strict seat A can do xxxx and seat B can only do yyyy. This was a mistake in my attempt to simplify control but ended up introducing more complex logic.

It's not too late to undo this but a difficult process to start. If I have to design this game all over again I think I would probably nail down all of these problems from day one. Hindsight being wonderful.

TrippleHead - lot more pixels to post process, looks great but a GPU strain

Amazing what you can find on the internet today.

Not a Combat-Helo post. I'm engaged in a spot of design and research but was looking for some old material online and found I had left a digital trail pre-dating commercial internet use.

28 Years ago I drew this. I was in high school. Shocking really. I used Z80 machine code to generate the 'impressive' sound and visual effects in this game. *wince*

A lifetime of programming and tinkering, stacks of hard drives of unpublished projects ranging from Spanish school time-table generators to a Black Shark snapshot campaign generator.

Some material I doubt will ever be revived, the Memotech MTX 500 version of Next War was stored on cassette tape, probably oxidised beyond recovery. However the code lives on in other forms, the dynamic campaign system was enhanced and put to some use in a PC build. Some of which will form the backbone of the Combat-Helo campaign. One day I hope to merge the big war game with the Apache simulation and revisit the forgotten Fulda Gap scenario.

More unreleased WWIII fun and games
NATO vs Warsaw Pact at the Fulda Gap

Even my own attempt at producing a self-indulgent comic based on our exploits in the Star Wars Galaxies MMO...(PDF dug out of the old SONY Online game forums).

Even though the game will soon have the plug pulled the footprints we leave behind in the digital space will live on...for a bit.

I've rescued the original PDF and made it available here... Orion Outpost Chronicles part 4 - PDF

Anyway back to work.

Minigame...I mean gun

AD has started some great work on the armaments of the CH47 that will form the first major DLC pack for the full release of Combat-Helo. Each door position will offer a fun interactive activity, usually in the form of throwing out obscene amounts of virtual lead.

For more pictures please see: ADs SimHQ CH-47 blog update thread

Mini-gun, I don't get the mini part though.

Random Pics of the Day

Starting to feel the pressure now. Both the financial and stress factors are weighing in. Doesn't stop me working but it's hard to switch off. On the business side there's a ton of things on the to-do list, it all eats time taken from production.

Spooky, ok so the lip light isn't actually on his mic.
If it was you wouldn't see this.

Boeing sent me a poster back in 2002, this is a homage to that.

This time with the rear seat.

Taking out bad guys without damaging the good guys is a challenge.
Experimenting with simple TSD display and labels.

On top of this I'm studying some Unity material and shader programming. I could use a beer, a real one.

GROME 3.1 is out

Quadtree software has released the 3.1 update to Grome.

 Grome is a fantastic terrain editor I've been playing with for future enhancements and rolling out a larger terrain systems in the future. If you play flying games and RPGs on consoles chances are you've probably already seen a Grome edited terrain. It's used by nearly every major player in the simulation industry. Incorporating a plug-in system, OpenSceneGraph and now new improved Unity integration.

What's new in 3.1

I'm quite keen to see how it works in the up and coming Leadwerks 3(D) engine which is looking to sport threaded streaming of assets. If this could be incorporated alongside the vegetation system it would be perhaps the most powerful and complete 3D engine for less than 1,000 USD.

Did I mention the FCR offset?

Remember the spinny radar thingy in Longbow 2? Scan sectors sizes and off-axis settings for the Longbow FCR (Fire Control Radar)? No?

If you look at the heading tape of the screen-shot you'll see in the heading tape the "butt-cheeks" (two Ds back to back) on a heading of 225, off axis by 45 degrees. This indicates the direction the radar is pointing, as the FCR display is 'always up' in GTM mode. This can be a little disorientating and the radar footprint is mirrored on the TSD, this paints a clearer picture of where it's pointing. Failing that you can see the radome outside the aircraft turning as it seeks out the designated offset.

(And why are all our aircraft IDs Z666? We shall never know. If you have a TrackIR and explore the cockpit nooks there's even a Clint Eastwood reference in it).

Radar offset angle is set by clicking on either of the two LEFT RIGHT arrow buttons on the MPD or your designated sensor left/right control input when the FCR is your selected sensor. (If TADS is selected the sensor control steers TADS instead). NOTE: The offset can not be moved while the FCR is active, although you can queue movement by hitting the offset control then quickly cycling the FCR burst key. Got it?

It will be in the manual. Promise.

Vectors - all vectors, no bitmaps

In the front seat, TEDAC view of the FCR

Apache Maintainers

On the topic of fuel systems, someone shared this video recorded at an FOB. One of the more difficult jobs.

Fuel XFER

Dull day, so lets post about something most normal people find dull. Fuel flow controls. In the Apache D model this is administered on the FUEL MPD page.

Not much to say about it, I'm bored already. It does what it does. Our Apache has two internal ballistically shielded self-sealing fuel tanks. Fuel can be drawn or transferred from one or the other to adjust weight distribution. Activating fuel boost engages the rear tank cross-feed valves as seen here. Fuel transfer between tanks should normally be left to auto unless you feel the need to play with it. HTR flight model should take account of the weight distribution.

Marching ants

Fuel flow takes about 4 seconds to change, while changing, indicated fuel lines are drawn in high intensity white before returning to green.

The most important button on this page is bottom right [CHECK]. This brings up the a sub version of the page where you set your bingo fuel status if you get an alert reminder in the UFD.

Bingo Time

Award for dullest sim video goes to...."Fuel Crossfeed"..yeah. There it is. It's Friday.

Shaders the old fashioned way

Yes were still using Notepad to edit them. Well that's not quite accurate, I'm using Notepad++

What's nice about Leadwerks is being able to create a shader to add new effects or change how the engine renders something without anything getting in your way. So when Dave asks for a version of the cubemap that will blend in some particular way it was no problem to quickly put it together. He's doing terrible things to make filthy looking windshields, chrome toggle switches and this rather neat looking rear view mirror.

Who needs fancy wysiwyg editors....well it would be nice sometimes.

Dirty Mirror finish

It's a double rainbow! Testing blending and reflections.

AD posts more Chinook updates at SimHQ

AD posted more Chinook goodies at SimHQ Link here >>>  SimHQ - AD Chinook Update

What am I looking at?

It's a little creepy, crew heads now reflect the pilot helmet sight (PHS) and gunner helmet sight (GHS) Vec2 offsets, so using trackIR, mouselook etc will operate the appropriate crewman head position (with suitable organic tweening). These positions are stored in the aircraft state so will work across all aircraft (AI and player) as well as multi-player. How creepy is that?

"Everyone gets everything he wants."

"All I wanted was a mission,"

"and for my sins they gave me one"

Shot on my iPhone. This is what TrackIR and mouse movements do to the crew head positions.


*edit*

There's a few pages in the system that are informational only, the FUEL page was one, I fleshed it out a bit tonight, adding a working cross-feed system complete with animation (yes the real one does that too). It's lacking the fuel check and bingo settings (to be added later). Setting the bingo stat is part of your start-up checklist, it would be a shame to leave it out.

Combat-Helo Prologue wip Video in HD

Now available.

*edit* A few additional notes...

The controller setup page shown in this video has a number of devices listed. These are just the ones I had plugged in at the time of recording. All DirectInput controllers should be available, some will have ready to fly config files (most Saitek sticks, Logitech).



I forgot to turn on the post processing effects since I work without them (generates more heat). There is a LOT of changes going on to various sensors and the IHADSS won't be updated to reflect these changes until I've done the MPDs. So please no accuracy police, I'm aware of the various bits and bobs. It's all in hand.


YouTube Link: http://youtu.be/L8AHX8uXHpQ?hd=1
Vimeo Link: http://vimeo.com/29957378

Screenshot of the day

Cleanup in lanes 1,2,3,4,5 and 6 please.

Padlock, shoot, padlock shoot, HMD mode
cleans house at close range , almost too easy

Two years old

Yippe..the 18 month project is now 24 months old. Horray. Short post but I felt I couldn't let it slip by unnoticed. Especially with all the Tipex (White-Out) all over my Project Planner.

KBU, FCR mode logic

First screen-shot of a quickly put together KBU (keyboard unit). This is a flat 2D image you click on, taken from the texture used in the cockpit. I wanted to see how good/bad it looked since we don't have time to develop a 3D one.

Clicking on Air Surv will abort current FCR operation
and switch to an active air scan (air surv mode)

The keyboard command list is looking horrible if you want full control over this. The shot cut keys work fine however. I made some tweaks to the heading tape symbols and the Air Surveillance Mode has been adjusted according to recent feedback posted. No sweep indicator is displayed (? is that correct) but the radar is still active. And not NTS or targeting is available. This mode is not available if either crew station has FCR as the selected sight. Either crewman selecting FCR or cycling through HMD/TADS/FCR will cancel this mode.

I made attempts to smooth out the logic for simple joystick control so you can hot key from mode to mode.

FCR Scan and FCR Scan burst will cancel each other out with immediate effect, no waiting for a scan cycle to complete (which is what it did before).

I'll adjust the scale of the FOR box shortly. The dot isn't active yet, will fix that shortly and then I'll correct the cue dots in the HMD,

That will be as much time as I want to spend on the FCR. I think it's not too shabby and does nearly everything it needs to do for now. Completing the command list for the sensors now means I can finish the default control setup for new installations.

For full control on a joystick you need 3 hats minimum.

• 4 Way Sight Select (HMD, TADS, FCR)
• 4 Way FCR Mode Select (GTM, ATM, other to come)
• 4 Way FCR Footprint Set (Zoom, Wide, Medium, Narrow)

There are also keys assigned to FCR Mode Cycle Up/Down to keep the control count down on smaller sticks.

As always if I've got it wrong then please leave some feedback however I'm unlikely to embark on any more major changes for now. Quite pleased with the detail and how it works.

CH-47D Overhead Panel Complete

Dome light fixture, fist pass on panel illumination