Hello everyone -- I did this little dogfighting game as a project for my freshman CS course here at GeorgiaTech -- it was a competitive project, in that people in the lecture voted for the best one, and the winner got a bag of M&M's. I won [grin]. Anyway, you can check it out (plus the source code) here. It was done in Java (my first Java project -- I've always been a C++ person), and so it'll require a JRE. The physics are very very basic, and not realistic in the slightest, but I think they're fun. The bullets, smoke, and sparks run off a basic linked-list particle system, and the collisions with bullets and the ground are done per-pixel based on the transparency values of the rotated airplane image and the ground. By pressing 'D' you can see the calculated height of the ground and its normal on the terrain, along with a bit of other information, which is used for the airplanes bouncing off the ground. The AI is basic point, shoot, and stay away from the ground (it goes in defensive mode for a while, too, based on its health). The graphics for the airplanes were modelled and rendered in Blender, and the clouds and terrain were done in the GIMP. The 'Change of Heart' button changes which airplane you control. Press 'Start' to start, after which you can control everything by keyboard. It took me a little less than a week, a few days of which were spent overcoming this problem, much of the rest figuring out how Java does various things with images. Basically, I didn't get to go home for Thanksgiving, so this is what I did instead. Tell me what you think!

I must say your game is impressive with very nice smoke and opacity effects and pixel perfect collision. The physics are also cool. I would like the AI to be a little harder but maybe that's just me. Overall I think it's a cool game!

\Jimmy H

Thanks -- my first rendition of the AI was too hard, in that it would essentially lock directly onto you and fire -- it looked very unnatural, and at that time it also didn't avoid the ground.

Now that everything's turned in and I get out for Christmas at the end of next week (for almost a whole month!), I'm going to rewrite much of it, including the AI and make the physics a bit more real looking.

By the way, the concept for the game was inspired by Airstrike.

Oh, I thought you meant real dogfighting... *ruff*