Dave, the kids must have been playing "pilot" again, they've gone and pulled off the knob for the standby instrument lighting, make it like the other two rotaries. I'll fix the camera clipping on the seat
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I know I said this week but will likely be over the weekend, there were some LUA issues I needed to get my head around. As for LUA, I think I'm going to pull out some of the model features I've been putting into the model LUA scripts as it's starting to get in the way when I need to control them in game logic. Reading values and objects back seems to be a dark art, these things may have been fixed, or not bugs at all, but caught between moving engine versions and not much documentation I'm left
Was exactly a year ago today we started work on Combat-Helo. I really don't know where the time has gone. Happy buffday team, and well done. To commemorate the occasion I dug out one of the earliest screen-shots I could find to compare with one from this afternoon.
And thank you to everyone who's offered kind words of support and encouragement. It all helps.
Sept 2010 - "Herat"
Oct 2009 - "Camp Zero"
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Nakama - Japanese for comrade, friend, ally, gang, loved one etc.
That is how I feel about the software that people use that allows them to do what is otherwise improbable or impossible. That's how I feel about Leadwerks Engine, Blender, 3dCoat,Renoise, ADN Material Editor, etc. They are not tools, but they are my nakama.
With the latest addition of Genetica I feel like I have an ensemble of software for game dev now that is stronger than ever. For the longest time there was a gap as fa
Had a quick play with Saitek's DirectOutput SDK, results are mixed but not bad. The MFD resolution in Combat-Helo is a native 512x512 and the Saitek Flight Instrument Panel is VGA 320x240, there's a bit of difference.
Sampling the buffer down to a smaller surface and then adding a suitable BMP header to send over to the device. Remarkably easy. I'll have three more please Saitek
BUT please can you make an FIP version two with a 512x512 square ratio display? Or at least increase the ve
The last two weeks were mostly me wrestling with C++. I had promising results with a meta language that translates to C++ and compiles, and also learned how to create makefiles as a result of that. I tried CodeLite and CodeBlocks, in addition to MS Visual Studio. I finally settled on CodeBlocks.
Codeblocks can be configured pretty easily to use GCC, the MS C++ compiler that Visual Studio uses, as well as about a dozen others (very curious to see if LE3 compiled with the Intel compiler is
I want to thank Komodo Simulations for inviting me down for Summer Sim 2010, even though it didn't go according to plan we all learned a lot, I certainly did and this was really a chance to meet people and forge connections.
Rich was clearly deep in thought and concerned about hardware performance. I was lost in deep thought and concerned about software. Everyone else didn't seem to mind very much. What happened was, early in the day while I was re-compiling the demo to fix a stupid inverted
Following on from:
On The Right Path, A* Pathfinding In Leadwerks.
The Way Forward ... Making Blitzmax Trax ...
I decided to give the testing a few more hours. First off I wanted to create a new NPC Type which would have its own control flags and most importantly its own path storage buffer.
After a little thinking (a little thinking is what I excel at lol) and a few hours of coding and tweaking, I managed to get 32 new NPC Types all pathfinding their individual way around "Block
All the things we want to show but can't. Still making some final hour changes to get a robust demo working that can be operated by Joe Public (I'm told he's coming along). A simple flying demo that will show the technology, Afghan map, lighting and cockpit. It has the mark 1 flight model I keep tweaking. sounds could be better. I wish I had time to do the landing gear joints, it's hard to land without wheels.
Better stop with the bloggin and get back to writing.
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After more work the project has finally come to an end. It was very interesting to do a 4000x4000 tile 1 project with Leadwerks. Some things are running nicely with LE2.4 others gave me real pain. But Josh gave excellent customer support and reacted very quikly with engine updates to the problems and even improved things like the terrain scultping speed.
Most projects will have no problems but placing 2.750.000 vegetation assets plus thousends of models on the landscape will push engine
The Rocks and Stones Model Pack by Pure3D is now available here:
http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/assets/rocks-and-stones-pack-r1
You can also still get the Industrial Cargo Model Pack for the low introductory price of just $9.95 until Monday, September 6, before the price goes up:
http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/products/_/assets/industrial-cargo-model-pack-r8
Pure3d is happy to release another game-asset pack to the community. It's named "Afghan Vegetation 1.x" and features an all-round package reaching from small ground plants to lots (!)of bushes this time and some trees. All in all there are around 24 models in the collection.
Just check out the catalog here)(.pdf).
Price is again 22,- Euros, game-ready for Leadwerks plus lots of additional file formats.
Check http://www.pure3d.de for other fine asset packs too!
AD made some atmospheric screen-shots when playing with lighting and environment settings. SimHQ Diary
Starting with the only major airbase in the region. AD is responsible for some Strike Fighter mod aircraft models, one of which is a Tornado GR1 (?). Which he's used here. I don't think these will be in the game unless we get permission from the original mod maker to use it. But it does look nice.
This is our early version of Camp Stone complete with a half-court basket. You wouldn't
These are placement tests for the Apache model in the editor, getting a feel for colour, levels, position, range and angle. The left nav light (red) on the Apache model needs to have the fullbright material applied to be visible in dark conditions. One pilot was telling me that the ground on the left side on the helicopter appears brighter than the right with night vision. Interestingly our night vision shader amplifies lighting levels based on final pixel colour and gives a boost to red values
Added some fixed internal views for 'quick' look downs and drama shots.
Wiper dash...this has a little vibration.
Pilot displays...
Over shoulder...
Pilot engine controls (startup and lighting)...CP/G similar (not pictured)
Co-pilot target panel (TEDAC)...
I think a 'foot-well' cam will come when we get a pilot model in game so we can see the crew looking around. And I think we could use an ADI/Comms panel view. Feel free to suggest a few more.
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What an interesting first week. I compiled a C++ program for Android, made a programming language, learned about iPhone development, and figured out a lot of C++ stuff I did not know.
It's nice to see that a port to Android will work pretty much like I was hoping. I just write an abstract driver for every system, and have specific drivers that extends that class:
class GraphicsDriver {}
class GL4GraphicsDriver : public GraphicsDriver {}
Then when you have something like a surface tha
Following on from "On The Right Path, A* Pathfinding In Leadwerks" I thought before I archive the code, I'd have a little "dabble" with a basic function to get an NPC reading the path data and then following it to the "target" I had a couple of ideas on how to do this but as time for playing in leadwerks was running out I opted for a basic idea.
1. Target Position Selected
2. Path from NPC to selection calculated.
3. Path transfered to a temp storage array for that particular NPC
4. An NP
This is months of painstaking trial-and-error, optimisation and experimentation. I said months ago, "We don't have the resources or time to build a whole city, just a close approximation". Well it's an approximation but it's more than what we anticipated was possible. Given that the old girl Longbow 2 had a small village, a dozen or so muddy cubes, this is 2010 and we can afford to push it a little.
Putting the demo together for Summer Sim 2010 next weekend, the updated map includes Herat
Summer Sim 2010 is nearly here. Komodo Simulations, makers of replica helicopter controls for virtual training are sadly not going to have their replica controls ready in time but a recent news update on their web site shows the current collective at the pre-mould stage.
Komodo Simulations WAH-64 collective WIP
Looking good so far. Combat-Helo will be there to show a build of some kind. Although like the controls we're perhaps not going to have all the goodies ready to go into a demo bui
Taking a little time-out from debugging to recharge my batteries, something slightly less frustrating, camera views.
Not helped by my original program flow which had camera commands in-line where needed, and I still have to go through and fix up TrackIR to work with the new class but shouldn't take long. TrackIR is really simple to implement in this kind of software.
Crew positions are parented to a pivot and then offset so it was important to retain any camera/parent relationships, add
It's ridiculous, I'm seemingly unable to purchase from the UK, PC Pilot, a UK based flight simulation magazine . The only way I'm able to obtain copies is via ebay sellers in the US.
Local stockists are non-existent and repeated attempts to buy them online results in emails informing me that they are unable process my details. The same details which seem perfectly fine for US ebay vendors.
Two weeks now.
I give up, I'll stick with US postal charges. More reliable.
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Well, it has been a while since I made a blog entry, let alone done any work in LE. But I do keep an eye on the forum and Leadwerks in between Daily life and working on my project(s).
I have also been going through my Blitzmax code archive, where I stored all my Blitmax/LE projects and code snippets (finished and not completed). One idea I had been playing with before, was basic NPC AI. I had some small success with some Bugs using autonomous logic.
See Here
In my "treasure trove" o
