Hey everyone!

I actually got stuff done today, so read on and see what we've been up to...

Ships Version 2.0
As you guys may recall from an earlier entry, there are large ship enemies in A22 that are much different from their Angels 20 predecessors. While they are using essentially the same textures, these new ships have the ability to mount any type of weapon, which then acts as an individual unit, so you can effectively "disarm" a ship by destroying all of its turrets. Anyways, I recently broke the ships out of storage to get them working right, and I managed to create one of the best looking procedural death explosions in the history of me making procedural death explosions. It pretty much involves a bunch of flaming chunks of debris, and few randomly placed explosion animations, a couple particle burst, and a pretty "dead" texture from Mark. As you can see below, it certainly makes killing the ships a bit more satisfying when they make such a huge bang....



Skip Bombing
So today I was playing A22, and trying to kill a ship by flying really low over the water, and then pulling up as I dropped a bomb. This got me thinking about the skip bombing technique the American's developed in World War II against Japanese shipping. The goal was to get a bomb to "skip" along the water like a stone until it hit the sides of a ship, which were generally less armored that the tops. Anyways, I got to thinking, and after about 5 minutes of coding, I had the bombs skipping across the water, until the slowed down, and then exploded. It's a pretty cool thing to see, and its just another one of those neat little things for players to discover, which is always a good thing. In this screen you can see my bomb on its second bounce, and about to hit me[grin]



Carrier Launch
I spent a lot of today working on little things that Mark keeps bitching about everytime he plays the game, and one of those things was the carrier launch. As some of you may know, modern carriers use steam catapults to propel their aircraft to flight speed, the CVX carriers in A22 are no different.... except for the fact that they are supposedly "electro-magnetic catapults", which means no steam, but fear not, we're going to put some in there anyways, for..... cooling purposes or something. Anyways, now steam flys from the airplane when it launches from the carrier, as you can see in the screeny below....



The New Level
Mark and I have been playing with a new level that we designed to show off most of the new features we've put in since our last demo release. It consists of a few islands, each one with something that showcases the A22 engine. For example, one island has a lighthouse crumbler on it, while another has Radar Sites and SAMs. There is an enemy ship in the level, along with some picture-esque villages. We're also planning on the final (ie. right hand) part of the level to consist of an airfield that is under construction, so expect some grounded aircraft to strafe. Anyways, we're getting real close to releasing our new demo, so stay tuned, and thanks for your patience! Until then, see if you can find the hidden light flak in this screeny.... yeah its not that hard, but its kinda cool right?



Thats all I've got for now, let us know what you think, and I'll try and get a demo out to you guys ASAP. Peace Out!