Thursday, 21 April 2011

Lunchtime blues.

Spent my lunch time kicking my heels and decided to try using some of the footage I put together the other week for a quick video. Wanted to show the mouse cursor moving seamlessly around from surface to surface but FRAPs had the cursor setting off. So here's an OTT music video instead :/

Back to exploding vehicle code for me.


Looking back over the blog, it's a year and a half of my life and Dave too, it wouldn't have worked without his dedication. It's funny looking at the old videos, back then I saw in my head what you're seeing now.

I knew what we could do, AD made it a reality. He's knocking out 3D models of Gatorade and probably cursing me for making him use the primitive tools that came with a 200 dollar engine. I think we did alright considering. What we could have done with a 20,000 dollar engine (saved a lot of time for sure) but I'm glad we stuck it out. Learning experience.

And of course we couldn't have achieved the fidelity we have without those who did what they could in offering offering specialist expertease and guidance where appropriate. You guys can see your influence in the game and as a result I know more about this stupid helicopter than I ever wanted to, but still just a fraction of the complexity.

You could spend years adding code to simulate every electronic and mechanical nuance but it wouldn't get you any closer to the experience. It's like measuring, the smaller the units you use the more accuracy you need and so on into infinity.

Soon the focus will be on flight model fidelity (as frankly I hate my current implementation) then it's balls to the wall polishing for a limited beta to get some data on how to make it system friendly for a firing range mini-game release to claw back some of the monthly costs of development.

Thank you all for your continued support and kind words, and to you regular blog commentators who make me laugh during the day when I need it most. And to Pizza Toast, you're always there for me when I'm peckish.

13 comments:

  1. Finally, at the appropriate scale hangars and other facilities.In EECH irritated me the most tiny all objects
    Fantastic, will be same pleasure from simply flying.
    Great music, it is Immediate Music?

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  2. Music is what I licensed for the game intros, videos and menus. It's called Glorious Victory and variations thereof by Pierre Gerwig Langer.

    All video games play with scale a bit. There are rules learned from game design, MMOs for example will exaggerate gathering spaces to accommodate players gathering, or prevent 3rd pseron cam clipping. Probably lots of things you don't even notice which is just how it should be.

    Sometimes you can get it horribly wrong, Star Trek Online comes to mind with bridges sized such that doors are twice as high as people and you need to sprint to move around.

    Carefully look at Apache Air Assault and the scale of objects on the ground. Stand back and it all looks quite natural. So I encourage AD to play with scale where appropriate rather than say 'everything should be 1:1'.

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  3. This rocks!!! Spotlight is awesome and those wipers and MFDs and everything...wow!

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  4. Must have been a long lunch hour!!

    very nice, becoming a bit of a video/audio wizard are we flex!?

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  5. It really doesn't take long when you know a video package. about 30 mins for the flight and recording then dragging it into Vegas.

    Hit 'S' to split a video into segments you can quickly shift around and position to match peaks in the music track. Really that simple.

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  6. Hmm, you are terribly boring, and no sense of humor, as befits an Englishman, but nice to read your blog ;))
    Oh I forgot about Dave and his "Cheers" - very annoying people :|
    I write only from each other after every novelty entry several times a day-i think -I need it!
    And if not you will release it quickly allowed illegal threats
    Cheers

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  7. Yep, I'm using Vegas too. Couldn't aford the pro version and 10 isnt 64 bit. One day we might see mainstream 64 bit apps that aren't expensive pro versions.

    Maybe this heli next Richard ? forward to 1:35
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9kdUqN2CCY&feature=player_embedded

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  8. 'Claw back devlopment costs'

    I'm sure there are a few of us willing to help with that.
    Bring on the Beta. Awesome work.

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  9. My wife says I've lost my sense of humour. I haven't really. But I do tend to play 'straight man'.

    @Druid

    I use Vegas Studio 10 Platinum HD which from Amazon was not much more than a PS3 game. Bargain. And it also included on the disc an audio tool, filters from which pop-up in Audacity, quite handy.

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  10. BTW hands up if you spotted Rotor Cam(tm) in the last few frames?

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  11. Sim development is a leap of faith but we've done everything right. If we can't make it a success I don't think any team can.

    Cheers

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  12. Yep Flex, have the same suite. I've used the audio tool to create some fairly realistic ATC and Oxy mask comms. Overall nice piece of kit.

    Celebrating Easter slightly early here (away next 4 days) so off to stuff my face full of chocolate with the kids. ....help !!

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  13. @Druid yup, doing that here too. I still haven't got the chocolate out of the Epson SX-400 inkjet from last year (long story). Sometimes I print something and all I get is a page with brown streak right across it. Quite disgusting really.

    Might have to tap you for some settings to do ATC comms.

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