Tooling up

Here's the real-time AH64D complete with pylons and typical weapons loadout. David has once again done a fantastic job on the M261 and complement of Hydra rockets (with animated folding fins).

Close up of the Hellfire rail system.

Apache Longbow - pre flight

Here she is in the game engine. Still doing some changes to the material and making sure all the rigging is good for the physics, player mounting etc.

A thing of beauty.

Here's another one with less saturation, which I think is better.

She's almost ready sir.

Bit more to do on the tail section then we can begin rigging the cockpit and parts for the game engine. And an amazingly low poly count too. It's actually done with just one vertex and the rest is a shader - yeah right :) Only joking.

Software is never finished, only abandoned

"Each painting has its own way of evolving...When the painting is finished, the subject reaveals itself."

William Baziotes

American abstract expressionist

I'm really excited by how the overall look of the project evolves over time. One of the major problems we faced was funding suitable assets for our indie project. In my budget projections, the bulk was devoted to hero ship assets.

You'd think that as indies seem to be the darlings of the games industry at the moment there would be a lot of willing investors. 

Even EA, the biggest games publisher on the planet formed their own "indie" games unit to cash in on finger-gaming popularity. News of which caused my nostrils to spew coffee, the cheek and irony of it.

The opening quotation I felt relevant, watching the various parts of the game evolve over time.

Software is like art, I'm not saying it *is* art which is a different argument, but like art, software is never finished, it can only be abandoned.

More mapping, refining and scripting

Dave spent the better part of the day rebuilding the cannon and putting scratches onto the cockpit canopy which you can just make out in this image.

Although it doesn't look like it yet, the Apache is being mapped, ready for her first paint job. It's very exciting but a lot of hard work.

I made some improvements to the material assignments on various objects. Applying specular highlighting, correcting bump mapping.

I fixed up a lot of the existing LUA scripts and started creating behaviours for the AAA by adding a search mode with a target tracking mode to come.

It's nice to just drop these into the editor and see them come alive, fix up behaviour code and retry without having to re-compile.

This is the old Apache Longbow in the soft hanger. Too much specular.

We discussed at length the campaign system, the game within the game and I think we're all happy with the direction it's going to take. It's much more fun to fly combat missions with longer term goals in mind, it gives meaning to your environment. Here you are engaged in a battle for hearts and minds, where factions on the ground are influenced by mission outcomes. Action or inaction may turn the tide against you. I will elaborate in future updates. Until later.

New base objects in game

A selection of wire fences, barriers, dish, wood barracks (styled on the 50s huts at Camp Stone), water tower and more.

The sway shader applied to camo netting works really well, shadows dance over objects below, like this static ZU-23.

View of the open canvas hanger with Apache, huts and water tower.

Major base landmarks will form part of the 3D user interface, the hanger for wing configuration, sat dish for multi-player, barracks for roster and pilot selection, landing pad for instant action. The gatehouse (or portable toilet) as game exit.

Static ZU-23 closeup

Real-Time Apache model work-in-progress

The much neglected "hero ship" is finally receiving some love. Here it is getting ready for a lick of paint. New rounded parts, more detail.

And more base items checked off the list, barracks, sat dish, canvas hangers.

I've started assembling a system for auto-updating, finding a reasonably priced FTP server is a problem, especially with the anticipated bandwidth requirements.

More Apache updates during the week.