Sunday, 27 January 2013

Book end

Finally, time to post.

Crazy amount of work with three crunch times on the go. I just sent the final parts of my book, Grome 3 Terrain Modelling for Ogre3D, Unity and UDK (or whatever order it ends up in) to the publisher "PackT". Publication won't be too far away. Thanks to awesome technical review work at the guys over at Quad Software (www.quadsoftware.com) they kept me busier than I'd hoped :)

There was a CombatHelo development blog update scheduled to be auto-published in 2 days time but I've now delayed this till mid-February. Since I'll have time to complete some more development work this seemed prudent (as I didn't complete the AI material in the blog after falling ill over Christmas). I've once again trimmed the game feature list, removing the first-person on-foot component (until the Afghan campaign). Currently the game is going to feel like an in-depth Novalogic'esque production but manageable given current time constraints.

If you don't follow my occasional ramblings on LinkedIn or Twitter, I'll be spending the next few months focused on assembling playable build which I'll be taking down to the Weston Super-Mare flight-sim show this May. Although I should warn that I'm only going there to hang-out with my pals from Komodo Simulations and just soak up the atmosphere (and maybe a few brewskies).

Parting shot: When you put crew speech into a game, annoyingly it means the crew models have to lip-sync otherwise it looks weird.
Posted by Numfundle at 23:25

14 comments:

  1. gO_oSe28 January 2013 at 09:24

    Nice to read you, Flex !
    Have you some plans to update CH with the Leadwerks 3 after the Weston Super-Mare flight-sim show ?

    Best wishes for your book and happy new year for you and your family.

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  2. Pavel28 January 2013 at 19:07

    Hi Flex!

    Just awesome. Im glad You finished the book and I hope the outcome will be satisfying. :-) Caaaant wait for next CH news.

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  3. Numfundle29 January 2013 at 15:45

    LE3 is not a direct replacement for LE2. It's geared for native code development for mobiles. An engine change would be foolish at this point.

    I'm waiting for Quad Software to release an update to their Graphite Engine to try throwing our Afghan map at it. I've been very impressed by how fast you can create huge terrains, I just wish I was more artistically inclined. However the book should help anyone pickup GROME from knowing nothing about it to exporting stuff. I dare say you can use it for DCS world asset production, it comes with an SDK to make your own exporters.

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    Replies
    1. Pavel29 January 2013 at 18:40

      :-D man, there are only a few words in Your post, I unerstood. :-D

      Delete
    2. Numfundle30 January 2013 at 16:49

      LE3 looks cool for mobile devs'. It will have a next-gen rendering layer added later.

      Delete
    3. Pavel1 February 2013 at 17:32

      Thanks a lot. It wasnt a complaint. Just dont understand to that programing stuff. :-)

      Delete
    4. Numfundle1 February 2013 at 17:43

      I didn't think it was a complaint. Just making idle chit chat :)

      Delete
    5. Pavel1 February 2013 at 19:43

      Roger that. :-D

      Delete
  4. Anonymous1 February 2013 at 18:39

    Looking forward to both Ferbuary's update and May, then.
    The idea of having a Novalogic-esque design to the campaign/mission is probably a good idea, since I'm imagining that a fully dynamic conventional warfare campaign is probably not going to be easy to make and it will require a lot of time. And then there's the Afghanistan campaign, with all the various factors that would influence an asymmetrical warfare scenario with consideration for acts toward civilians and their activities, even if abstracted.

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    Replies
    1. Anonymous1 February 2013 at 19:42

      Clarification: I meant having a Novalogic-esque campaign to start with.

      Delete
    2. Numfundle5 February 2013 at 14:01

      Yes, it's just to fit what is reasonable to do in the available time. Not to mention how satisfying it is flying around blowing stuff up.

      A lot of the original campaign design came out of discussions which are no longer relevant. Something to review later. It's hard getting rid of stuff but you can't help but shake the gut feeling that the goals of the campaign would be better served in a later generation of the game engine.

      It's just more stuff to fix.

      Delete
  5. Pavel2 February 2013 at 19:27

    It would be interesting, to have some sort of an option, to start recording from Your TADS. Then You would have a chance, to view some interesting moments of Your flight, like in real life. Yes...it can by done by flight track, like in Cliffs of Dover or DCS simulations, but still...:-)

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    1. Numfundle7 February 2013 at 17:02

      From a debug point of view it's also handy. There's a way of hooking into the messages to save out the data required. I don't have an easy way to play it back.

      Delete
    2. Pavel8 February 2013 at 09:57

      Yes...I can imagine. Well...no....I cant even imagine, how difficult it would be. :-) Just an idea. Cant wait for playable demo or new video.

      Delete

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