Stuff you thought was going to be simple but wasn't

Swimming was one.

Setting up controllers in XPlane is another.

Yes the things you thought were going to take a few days which turned into a week and a bit (you could almost say 'two weeks'). Josh at Leadwerks gave me a leg-up on how to put an MMO style launcher together and I've almost done wrapping up all the security for the necessary database, key code generation, CVS style updates and all the stuff we need to match individual content to clients. We'll make available downloadable content (DLC) such as new maps and the occasional helicopter (the planned CH-47D), not to mention the odd mission pack.

No, this key won't work, it's a fake

So there was a lot to do to make a simple one shot MMO style launcher. The back-end server stuff had to be built from scratch. The launch .EXE calls home, applies on-demand updates and preps game settings for launch. For simple security sakes I layered server-side scripts for handling the updates, admin and audit. Auditing is handled by triggers, SQL injection is futile since only one procedure is exposed to clients.

Any DBA will tell you Auditing is an important part of any security. If you build any kind of database exposed to the internet and you don't build your own layer on top of any default transaction logging then you're kind of asking for trouble. The database engine used here is not known for keeping detailed logs so it was necessary to build one anyway. Things you might want to think about if you ever need to create systems like these are making log indexes suitable for frequency analysis (this one method Twitter uses to spot spamming), fake open doors and keys and silent alarms. My favourite trick in the past was a fake database that gives the intruder a high and makes them believe they have walked away with the crown jewels while evidence is collected. That sort of none-sense is not required here, I kept this one functional with a tiny footprint.

The Pilot ID we'll be sending out is the key to your content; install once, play as you like. If you share copies around on your network you can launch 'offline' no worries, no need to be connected to the internet until you want to update. It's nice if you want to buy multiple copies for your network and support the effort put into this project but I'm poor too so I know how it is.

Little bit of script consolidation and testing to do before we let this loose in the real world.

Nothing serious but one reader sent in this...

From an Australian gaming mag (and those guys are tough cookies) at the bottom of a review of Take On Helicopters...

Thanks for the mention guys :) the picture is a bit out of date though, but what the hell.

New scratch built industrial buildings

It was over a year ago we were notified that some of the models we had purchased from Dexsoft might possibly have been stolen. After a period of investigation the probability was quite high this was the case and Dexsoft contacted customers to offer new packs. However months later I was unable to get a reply about these replacements and only in November when doing a review of outstanding assets and licensing we had to either press again or do a re-build.

Dave elected to take it upon himself to do a rebuild and not wanting to have to reposition every building adopted the same dimensions with the exception of adding much needed 'basements' (a basement is just an extrusion of the exterior wall so that it will sink under terrain so no gaps are left if the centre of the model is positioned on uneven ground.

Originally the models were made for use in first-person games and LOD0 had details such as railings and girders. Dave completely built (from scratch) versions complete with new textures and made them more efficient at the cost of some detail. An original building had 5213 polygons, after a rebuild only 728 polys (which is iPhone territory).

Original stolen model on left, rebuilt from scratch on right

Scratch build on left, original on right

Any small indie developer takes a leap of faith when purchasing models from 3rd parties, you don't know where they came from or their history. In this instance we got bitten as did the 3rd party which handled the situation well (but it would have been nice to have the replacements anyway). No harm was done, anyone using or releasing games with 3rd party content be aware.

Thanks Dave for once again being on the ball.

Update

Started work on the updater again.This is based in part on the Leadwerks SDK downloader which is pretty much everything I needed given a little twist and a slice of lemon. Hopefully some of you will be seeing this in the near future. At some point we'll add user names and a regcode system prior to any content downloads (these will not be required to play).

As much as you might want to click on it, you can't yet :(

With any luck the 'one click' update system will let us add rolling improvements at the cost of  occasionally annoying you with a download when an update is available. I just want to be able to push one button, get the latest changes to any content I own and go.

Support for different builds (content)