Today was a pretty good day overall for me (although I am thoroughly wiped out). My day started at 7AM, when I woke up to go flying(it gets pretty rough in the afternoons this time of year). I took a camcorder with me so thatI could get some video for my friend who's making a short film that involves air combat and whatnot. Its going to be pretty cool, they are going to overlay 3D models over the footage I took, and greenscreen actors in. Anyways, my dad decided to fly for a while, and holy shit was it awesome. I swear we were no more than 5 feet over the desert(his inner-child took over), it was awesome. I'll have to put a video clip up soon, because it was pretty damn cool looking.
Anyways, after that I went to work for a while, went home, saw The Island (good, but it was way too long), and then programmed some more stuff into A20.
Speaking of A20, I was on a special effects spree today. I was planning on getting a better dynamic rain effect going today(the one right now sucks), but I didn't get to it. What I did finish though is pretty cool IMHO.
Thing #1: Vapor Trails
This was the first effect I put together today. It works by remembering where the player has been for the last 60 or so updates, and then drawing a line strip from point to point along the fighters positional history. Anyways, I still have some stuff to work out, such as transparency and line width/color, and the conditions for the contrail showing up(right now if you turn, they start forming). Anyways, here's a screenshot of it in "action":
Thing #2: Water Shockwave
This one is probably the coolest looking effect out of the 2 IMHO. This effect pretty much simulates the effect of spraying water behind the fighter if you are really low and fast. This one looks a lot more impressive moving than in a screenshot, but here's one anyways.
Well that's all I really did today, and you guys can expect to see these effects in the update, which I think will be done by Wednesday if I'm lucky. Let me know what you think about them, and I'll try and fix them to mold with popular opinion.
BTW, there's no art from Mark today, but I think tomorrow he'll have some top-down fighters for you guys to see. Until then, peace out.
