Small Update…
I just wanted to post a quick update since it’s been a little while without any news. Real life work is crazier then ever at the moment, and I’ve been away alot so I haven’t had the time I would have liked to spend on coding. However that’s not to say I haven’t done any. I’ve been mostly concentrating on the movement AI, and so far its coming along nicely. Im just tearing out my hair trying the get the craft to bank properly, but I think Im amost there. I just need to sort out some tricky maths and then I think it will look fine. Will report back when I have something a bit nicer than cubes flying around.
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The problem with true 3d, is that an enemy can attack you from the rear easily, and the player just does not have the tools available to sense and defend properly.
As a human, we can hear when things get near. In air combat, they can both hear in surround, as well as being able to pan their heads around easily to scope things out. They also have a co-pilot to scan things over.
In 3d games, they have to dumb things down, and try to make rules which do not attack the player from behind. Also, in a realtime battle, the experience can either be a complete bore-fest, or an impossible task. So, they tweak again, on the side of boringly easy… to play it safe, so that its not ever impossible.
(or in some cases, make everything a rail shooter.. which is awful too)
In the end, you pretty much get crap with a free roaming 3d game.
The better solution, Imop, is to:
1) create pre-programmed flight paths.
2) call randomly, based on time of last incidents (never leaving a lot of time with nothing happening), a certain # of ships, and a flight pattern set. Ships will enter the screen from a random depth, position on the screen, speed..etc.
3) The enemies use AI to randomly choose to fire, keep on the path, or break away choosing a pre-programmed evade pattern. (with random plasmaball accuracy)
4) certain enemies being used for background looks, IE: too far away to hit, but make the screen appear that there is a lot more action happening.
5) Enemies that flee the screen, past a certain distance, will be auto-terminated.
This will result in an experience that still is random, yet is controlled to the point of providing an excellent experience every time played. Depending on the games difficulty level, level attained and other factors… the time for each encounter, the number of attackers, the complexity of the flight patterns, the speeds, the evasion tactics, fire accuracy, teamwork/setups, etc.. all will be easily adjusted and controlled.
Hello my good man,
Keep up the good work. This is the ONLY worthwhile Star Wars “special edition” that’ll actually be worth waiting for. I’m building my SW cab in the hope that one day I’ll be able to play all three games in vector format!
Best wishes,
Ian
I definitely think you should remake the Star Wars and Empire Strikes Back as well with the new engine…
That would make your star wars cabinet totally unique!…
Just curious if any work has been done recently…. very excited to see this completed!
Hi. No big progress at the moment, but Im still working on it. Just finishing off an iPhone game at the moment, then I will be back to this
Been some time, just checking if anything is happening or if other projects have taken priority.