So I finally got some spare time to work on Angels 2X, and I must say, after a few days of work, I'm having trouble getting away from the computer. Game Dev is addicting.....
Terrain Engine
As many of you may remember, the terrain system in Angels 22 was useful in scenarios with gently rolling hills and smooth elevation changes. Well, we wanted to be able to do more stuff with the terrain, so making the terrain work better is the first thing on my list of stuff to do for A2X. Accordingly, the new terrain engine has been what I've been working on for the past couple of days. It's still a 2D heightmap, but with a much higher resolution (ie. smaller spaces between elevation points), which lets us make much more drastic elevation changes without looking too angular. The higher resolution, along with a few other tricks Mark and I have come up with, makes the new system much easier to work with than in A22.
The New Engine
For Angels 2X, I've completely wiped the slate clean. I'm starting completely new and only using the A22 code as reference for how I did it "back in the day". Among the benefits of this approach is that I can apply the stuff I learned during the development of A22, but couldn't implement in the middle of the project.
Camera
The most obvious change in A2X will be the new camera system. In A22, the whole game was done in OGL's orthographic mode, which meant that zooming in and out easily was out of the question. The A2X engine on the other hand allows zooming in and out, which is handy in many situations. If anyone reading this ever played the original Angels 20, they'll recognize the zooming feature we're talking about. As you gain altitude, the camera zooms out, allowing you to still see the terrain, where in A22, you'd essentially be blind. The new camera system also allows for some cool cinematic effects, but I think I'm getting ahead of myself.....
Skybox
Another new feature of the A2X engine is the inclusion of a "skybox" texture that acts as distant wallpaper to make the background of the level more interesting. In Angels 22 the sky was just a simple solid color, so you can see how this is quite the jump forwards. This feature also has some cool implications, as Mark and work his magic with the background and hopefully get some cool stuff going on back there.
Piktarz!!
Here's some screenys I took today to document the progress on the engine. Keep in mind this is about the 3rd day of actual development, and most of the textures are stand-ins or old A22 textures.
This screenshot shows of the drastic elevation changes that can happen now, this will be about the standard zoom for flying near the surface. You can see the big poofy clouds in this screeny too, which are left overs from Angels 22, just scaled up really big. Note the gradient in the sky, the entire background is a texture that Mark made up, so we can have pretty much whatever we want back there.
This is a screen of the same level, just zoomed out really far to demonstrate the zooming capability of the engine. I really like this one because of how the clouds look. Unfortunately, the poor quality of the terrain texture really shows here.
This shot is zoomed up really close to the terrain. You can see the grass placed on top of the terrain, just like in A22.
The Next Step
My next task is going to be encapsulating all that I've written so far, and getting rid of all my prototyping code. After that, its time to get some objects in there, I'm wary to start putting in Actors too early before we really decide on a final design doc for the game.
Well, thats all I've got for right now. Unfortunately, I have my first round of finals next week, so this might be the last post for at least a week, because those will probably take up quite a bit of my time. Questions? Comments? Feel free to ask[wink]
