I've made a lot of progress on the combat prototype this week end, and that's a Good Thing (tm), even if it wasn't as relaxing as it was supposed to be. I tested the space station interior with Shawn in network. Despite being a bit late and having difficulties with DLL hell, everything worked fine. For the first time, Shawn was able to "visit" his space station from the inside, with ships physics and collisions. I also showed him how the docking procedure will look like, and so far we haven't spotted any problem. It also seriously helped to "feel" the scale of the station, and how some sections are a bit too small even for a small ship to pass.

I've redesigned a large part of the code. I've introduced the concept of "ship parts" ( which was missing before ), and the ability to attach thrusters, hardpoints and weapons to a specific ship part. I've also recoded the breaking part functionnality and the collision bodies.

A lot of people have been working on their parts, too. Juan is advancing quite well in the hunter texturing, and today i placed it into the game (note: not the prototype) and adjusted the shaders to give it a nicer look; see screenshot underneath. John also sent the more or less final version for the sound fx and the quality is really good for mono sounds. Koshime's still making some fantastic sketches, and Russell's busy on the storyline.

Despite this, there is still a lot to do. I might get the "gameplay" done this week, but i'll probably need more time to add the HUD, 3D sound, particle / shaders effects, balancing, etc.. which means it's now quite likely that it'll get delayed again by a week.





A side view: