Palladium GamesI’ve started to write the network / multiplayer aspect of the game. It’s been pretty slow going, but I managed to get two separate ‘players’ moving around each other. I might have to rewrite a few of the methods I’ve used in the game, so it might be awhile until another update.
I rewrote the inventory system. Previously I had a loop that just wrote everything on one line of the inventory and kept track of how far the farthest item was to add new items. Now I have a two dimensional array and tracks each position that an icon takes up and checks each columns height to see if it can fit an item below another item. Here’s the screenshot:
I spent several hours yesterday working on a rifle model. I did a quick search to see what some similar rifles looked like, in terms of quality, and compared again those rifles I found the one I made looked awful. So I learned that I am not a 3d artist and I really don’t want to devote the majority of my dev time working on a 3d model that doesn’t even look good. Eventually I’m going to have to hire a modeller but for now I’m just using premade ones and modifying them to fit the game. I ended up finishing the normal rifle, plasma pistol, and plasma rifle.
I’ve finished smoke grenades, normal grenades, and a laser pistol. When you are holding a grenade and you press and fire button a bar appears in the bottom middle of the screen. The bar fills up as you hold the button down and is a visual indication of the force behind the throw. It takes about 3 – 4 seconds to completely fill up to max throw power. And the grenades are on timers instead of exploding on impact. The smoke grenade leaves a little trail of smoke when you throw it then creates a wide area of smoke particles. Once I get the networking up I’ll have to make sure if several people use them that it doesn’t kill the frame rate, but it’s not noticeable right now.
I also finished the laser pistol last night. It’s actually a combination of a raycast type weapon and a thrown projectile type weapon. It calculates damage and hit detection based on a raycast, but it also fires a projectile. I’m not sure if I really like the way it is right now, and I’m not sure if I’ll keep it this way or even keep it in the game.
As of right now, I’m planning the game to be a multiplayer only squad based fps. And the teams are humans vs aliens. I haven’t done any work on the alien systems yet, though. I’ll want pretty comparable weapons for each side so in regards to the laser pistol, I’m not 100% sure what I’ll have on the alien side of things. I’ll try to get some work done on the alien side of things so I can try to keep things comparable and not get too far ahead on one side.
I’ve finished the particles for the rocket launcher. The actual rocket has a smoke trail. When it hits an object, there’s an explosion particle system and it leaves behind a smoke particle system for a predetermined amount of time.
I built most of the house today, tweaked the inventory some, and almost finished the rocket launcher. The only thing I have left are the particle effects for the explosion and the smoke trails.
This picture is of the house, mostly completely, and halfway destroyed from a rocket.
Basic inventory screenshot. The icons are just placeholders for right now.
The inventory system for weapons and ammo is finally completed. None of the models are special effects are in place, but the mechanics behind it all do work. I still need to add the other category for misc. items like grenades, healthpacks, and flares.
I’ve done more work on the inventory to the point where I have the framework in place. I had to abandon the drag and drop system for the time being. I wasn’t getting anywhere with it. Instead I have a menu system. You have to be within a certain distance of an item, then you hit the inventory key. That brings up the inventory screen which is divided into two parts; the ground and your backpack. An icon for the item on the ground shows up in the ground section. Click on the item brings it to your backpack. Clicking on it in your backpack brings up two menus; one gives you commands to perform with the item (for instance, if it’s ammo, you can load it into your gun or drop it back on the ground), and the other shows information about the item (in the case of ammo, how much is left in the clip). I still have work to do, but the basic framework is there.
Palladium Games 