My god guys, I am so bored. Splicing the Menu program and the main Angels 20 program together is a lot harder than I had originally hoped, and I fear I may have to scrap that wonderful menu I showed you guys last post. The big reason why I wanted to split up the components of the game into seperate parts (Menu , Main Game ,Mulitplayer Client , Multiplayer Server) was so that I could mess with the menu source, and not have to wade through all the other crap I have written, but alas, the computer is cruel mistress. Another problem I have is that it is so easy to set a transparency for a color in SDL, but it's so damn difficult in OpenGL when you're using .bmps and masks. Grr!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyways, I got some more stuff working in the server part of multiplayer. The scheme of the multiplayer set-up is that you have one server that is running the game, updating player positions , checking for collisions, etc. Then you have your peripheral clients hooked up to the server, which recieve all the data they need to draw an accurate representation of the game, then the client sends the server a list of key presses that the user pressed after it recieved the update. The server then looks at which player pressed which buttons and adjusts the player at its end accordingly, then the process repeats. I'm not sure what kind of lag I am going to get with 8 players in one game, and depending on the severity of it, I might implement some extrapolation into the clients, and send data less often with the server.

The multiplayer gameplay will be almost exactly the same as the single player, without the ground targets. In fact, I found out that most of my engine code for the Single Player game can be reused with a minimal of rewriting, saving me lots of time. The Multiplayer maps are split up into Eras, with each era having a different map, plane choices, and secret 'prototypes' for you to play around with. The Eras present so far are:

-World War I
-World War II Russian Front
-World War II Europe
-World War II Pacific
-Korea
-Vietnam
-Modern Day

Each era has 2 sides (for team dogfight) and each side has 3 regular aircraft + a prototype or advanced fighter for its day. For example, here's the layout for the WWII:Europe era

World War II : Europe
AXIS planes:
Me-109
Me-410
FW-190
Me-262 *prototype

ALLIED planes
Spitfire
P-47
P-51
F-80 *prototype

I'm really excited about the multiplayer portion of the game and its coming along great, I just hope it works out in the end [grin].

Well, I was sufficiently bored enough to go ahead and make little image with some of the enemy and friendly vehicles from Angels 20 on it, as you can see below.



Well guys, I've hit a pretty big coders block, so I am gonna give it up for tonight and play some old-school Wings of Fury for inspiration.