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[AndyKorth]

We have a new post on our blog about how we made planetoids in Solaro. It's pretty picture heavy, so hop over to the blog to check it out:

http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=352

[AndyKorth]

Scott's written a beautiful post on how we lead projectiles so the AI can hit moving targets. It's a great tutorial for people who are looking to do something similar, since he goes into the math in great detail.

Just about everybody who’s played a shooting game knows about leading the target. For instance, in Halo, rockets move pretty slow compared to bullets. To get good at the game, you have to learn how far ahead of your target to fire the rockets so they will run into the rocket’s path just as it gets to them.

This isn’t an easy skill to learn as a player, so how do you implement it so that AI players can do it too?

Read more on our blog: http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=358

[AndyKorth]

We’ve been working on a few neat new essential features.

First, we’ve got ship damage working. Individual components can be critically damaged. This might mean a weapon won’t fire, or an engine will produce less thrust. Once you lose your critical components (all the cockpits) or 80% of your ship’s total health… kaboom! We might play around with the damage mechanics a bit more, but things are currently looking pretty good.

We haven’t been happy with our particle engine effects as we’ve moved towards small intense engine flares. So we’ve now got a new system that avoids some of the problems we’ve run into with Unity’s particle systems. There is a very nice animation as the engine is firing, and we have easy control over the colors shown in the flame. The size and length of the flame scale to represent how far each engine is turned on.

[AndyKorth]

There’s been a lot of little stuff- Scott’s been tweaking and improving the controls.We’re throwing together a simple demo with some more refined controls. The enemy AI is looking really good right now. I’ve also been doing some cleanup with asteroids, their rotations, how they break apart, basic weapon effects, and shield generators.

More to come soon!

[AndyKorth]

We've been using tracking software for quite a while in different places and different forms. We even worked on a XP Tracker project back in college- it tracked different projects based on the story / task model popular in various agile development methodologies.

For many of our projects, we've found post-it notes worked really well. You write down a small task- something that can reasonably be accomplished in just a few hours, then they are all placed on a corkboard. Then, as a group, we prioritize the tasks, putting them in a rough order with the tasks that need to be done first on the left side of the board. Sometimes this stage also includes categorization- art tasks to be done by a different person or group will go along the top or bottom.

When you start a task, you take the post-it note, so no one else can accidentally start it. I like to stick mine on my monitor so I always know what I should be doing with my time.

One great plus of this system is you get a great feeling of accomplishment seeing the physical notes move around the board as they are completed. However, it does require everyone to be in the same place, and it might even require you haul the big cork board around in your car.... So we've moved to Pivotal Tracker.

This gigantic image below is the result of our most recent brainstorming session. It's a roughly-organized todo list. We've assigned some rough size estimates to each item as well (the blue lines next to the star- more lines means more work expected). Pivotal Tracker ( https://www.pivotaltracker.com/ ) is pretty specific about how things are done, but it mostly lines up with what we want. If your estimates are accurate, Pivotal Tracker holds you to accomplishing the same amount of work each week (which is a bit strange, since it is happy to lower the expectations it has for you after a slow week).

But anyway, enough rambling! This is what we are working on!

[AndyKorth]

Our demo of AI controlled enemy ships is finally ready. We've got a basic playable where it's you and two escorts vs. an endless number of hostile drones, bent on destroying your way of life.

Here's a gameplay video we posted on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/v/VYibrSVW1ks

A few cool things to look for include the new missile launcher (target something and press shift)- the missiles seek mercilessly and it only takes a few to shred these drones. We've refined engine and explosion effects a little bit. The shield generators are new, as are some of the changes we've made to the ship damage system.

Click the image to try out our playable demo in your browser. Controls are on the demo page.

Please share the video with your friends!

[AndyKorth]

Here’s a sneak peek of our example quest. You’ll also see our new targeting artwork.

[mokesmoe]

My name is Inigo Montoya...


This game is looking really cool!

[slembcke]

My name is Inigo Montoya...


This game is looking really cool!

Heh. Good, it wasn't too subtle then.

[AndyKorth]

We fixed some bugs with the ship damage stuff- it had to do with how values were recalculated when components were lost. We created a medium blaster, as I’ve been learning how to model a little bit. It’s a slower, but more powerful weapon with a larger energy draw.

I’ve done some visual upgrades to the ship editor, and Scott did some work on turrets that auto-track. We also made quest indicators that show up on your map for active quests.

[AndyKorth]

Check out our new art in the new ship editor:



Click for a larger image.

[AndyKorth]

Check out the turrets on this ship automatically track an asteroid as you turn! Notice that they track correctly no matter what side you put them on.

[AndyKorth]

We’ve got a new demo that starts you in a basic ship, and allows you to land and edit the ship or create a new ship. Also check out a few template missions and our turreted weapons.
Click the image to try out our playable demo in your browser.

Controls are on the demo page!

[slembcke]

One complaint has been that the target view is a bit jarring when it pops on and off. I now made it so that the game fades the target view nice and seamlessly. It's exactly the effect I was originally hoping to achieve.

Hop to the blog for more information or skip straight to the video:
http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=424


(anybody know if you can embed YouTube on tigsource?)

[deathtotheweird]

snip

Ah that was really fun! I especially LOVED cruise control. Man, if only Captain Forever had that button..

[AndyKorth]

Glad you liked the cruise control, allen!

We've recently made some big strides in cleaning up some of the backend code for handling how ships are put together and how collisions are handled. We uncovered a few bugs with calculating the center of mass of a ship and its moment of inertia. It's now much more robust as you edit an existing ship, or pieces of your ship are destroyed. Now that this is cleaned up a bit, we can start experimenting with some 'real' values for engine thrust and component masses.

I've found that your ship's turn speed and acceleration is too easily changed by adding components, and it's easy to end up with a ship that's a lot slower than you expected- so I've begun a spreadsheet to balance everything out.

We've also got a start on the player's inventory, their hangar, and what sort of things enemies can drop when you kill them. Our main goal here is to keep it simple- we especially want to avoid having the player do much inventory manipulation- we want the player to focus directly on the fun stuff!

[slembcke]

I've been working on the AI more. I've been implementing pathfinding behaviours so the AI doesn't seem so embarrassingly stupid as it bounces around the asteroid field.



Read more on the blog or skip straight to the video:
http://howlingmoonsoftware.com/wordpress/?p=429

[AndyKorth]

We’ve been working on allowing players to upgrade ship components in-place. Basically, this is an easy way for players to improve their ship, without having to disassemble and reassemble big pieces of it.

A variety of scrap ship parts can be gathered off destroyed ships- so there’s always something to look for when you’re exploring the galaxy and killing pirates (or perhaps you are a pirate yourself!) Different pieces will upgrade different components on your ship; the upgrades will be small, but noticeable improvements to the power consumption, mass, thrust power of engines, fire speed of your guns, turret tracking speed, and more.

[AndyKorth]

It may have seemed quiet for the last week or so, but it’s because we’re working on some great new AI behavior for Solaro.

We’ve set up a small test village that is modeled after what we think the starting area will look like. This area has three landing pad, a warp gate, and a few mission related items. We’ve got a set of ships that fly from one landing pad to another, trading commodities between locations. We’ve also got a set of patrol ships. These patrol ships intercept other ships, chosen at random, and inspect the cargo using scanners. If they find any contraband, they attack the targeted ship. So how do we do it? With a state-based AI system:

The States:

• The Seek State: Ships in the seek state simply move towards a specific point. When they get within a certain distance of this point, they will go to the next state in their list. Oh, and we’ve also got some nice obstacle avoidance, so they’ll fly around asteroids and obstacles.
  
• The Wait State: This one’s easy. They’ll wait a certain amount of time before going to the next state.
• The Pathing State: This is somewhat similar to the seek state, but it allows for flying through a set of waypoints. What’s the difference? With the pathing state, we can specify the desired speed and direction through each point, and the ship can fly through them without stopping at a specific point. It’s more powerful and flexible.
• The Attack State: Kickin’ ass and taking names… and we’re all out of names.
• The Patrol State: Fly around a specific point at a certain radius and certain speed. If enemy ships come close to the point you are patrolling around, attack them. If they flee, go back to your patrol point. (So already this has proved very useful in missions)
• The Intercept Target State: Intercept a moving target, and in this case, scan it’s cargo.

So if you’re not impressed yet, it gets better! We can combine these states for UNLIMITED FUN. For example, our basic trading cargo ships do the following: First they start off in a seek state, going to a random landing approach point. They get there and stop, and they automatically go to the next state we’ve queued up, which is another seek state to land on the actual pad. After that, they go into the wait state for 3 seconds and it loops over. We’ve got a simple “DamagedBy” method that will cause these ships to switch into an AttackState to attack whoever damaged them. So it’s very easy for us to customize these behaviors- to make a trader that will flee when attacked, mission specific patrols, and all sorts of good stuff.

[AndyKorth]

With a lot of the core gameplay of Solaro roughed out, we've started work on generating some content. This step is key in figuring out the "flavor" of the world and direction of the game.

Here we've got a set of missions near the starting area. I think there's some good variety. We have a new set of art- we've got 10 different space buildings. These add a lot of flavor to the area and make places recognizable and unique. We'll show more about those later!

This mission string starts off simply- just by shooting some asteroids. After that, there's some exploration, finding core samples off a missing mining survey ship, destroying the pirates around a new ore location, and finally setting up a new mining base for Rock Busterz.