Big Updates

Coming soon....

Cloaking Emissions

I've run into a slight conundrum while implementing full ship cloaking. And that is.. how do you hide your emissions? Redirecting/bending electromagnetic waves around a body or surface is one thing, but when your drive systems must propel a particle or gas, how do you hide trail? So for now, realistic, crappy cloaking, until the United States develops some propellentless drive system.

New:
US Fighter
Missiles
Cloaking
Basic Context Menus
Revamped UI
And renamed Engine to LycanEngine (it was Ace's idea)

Color explosion!

Here is a pretty awesome new bug we have. Basically about 30-60seconds into the game, all the colors explode! And then... they are gone.. never to return.. the only items that remain behind are some buttons, and the weapons that are attached to ships...
#willfixsoon lol

I actually captured this screenshot on accident, for the explosion is normally finishes as abruptly as it arrives. One for the scrapbooks

Improved Ship Trails

Everyone has been busy, and we are dealing with some non-screenshotable problems. However, here is a cool screen of our new ship trails!

New Russian Ships!

Whoa! From concept art to in-game ships! The new Russian Faction Fighter looks kickass, sweet stylization by Zeck (painstakingly implemented by me :P)

Russian Ships concept art

Presenting the Zecks concept art of the Russian Factions ships. We should expect to see some of these digitized and in-game soon.

Same but drastically different

The new engine is all in place and we have re-implemented everything we had from the old engine, plus some new stuff. So this screenshot may look like the exact same game as the previous screens, but its not! Appreciate the unseen!
Programming blitz tomorrow, expect collision

Engine restructuring complete!

After our short break, well, everyone except for Asael, engine restructure is now complete. Maybe infographics soon? Possibly more concept art and screenshots?

--------------------------------------

Engine restructuring in progress....
Ask Aseal Temple about it...

Chinese Ships

Introducing the concept art for the Chinese factions ships, drawn by Zeck Donahue, our lead designer/artist.

Collision detection against rays to circles

After toiling for a little while, I came up with a pretty nifty method for detecting when our beams hit against a circle hit box. The method involved solving the y = mx + b equation of the beam, and then taking the normal equation of that that passes through the center of the circle. Then through some algebra manipulation you solve for when the two are equal, which then lets you easily solve for y. Once you have this, you essentially know how close the beam is to the circle, make a simple check against the length of the radius, and in 6 lines of code you know if you have a collision.

XBox 360 integration

After hours spent hours figuring out some xbox360 specific stuff, a few more hours integrating it into the game, and little optimizing, here is our first screen shot from the 360 with a ship that you can drive and a laser that does damage. I took out the call to Ryder's collision loop that only slowed everything down allot since it isn't used for anything at the moment . I also found that reducing the frequency of checks on a laser beam to about 6 per second does a good job at boosting frame rate as well.

Collision Detection

is hard...
that is all

Smart Asteroids

I am forced to remember the mimic ships from HomeWorld Cataclysm as the first asteroid I create flies away with shocking speed. The lesson of today is.. Asteroids dont need ship AI.

HUDs need lines

One thing that has really bothered me about XNA is the lack of simple shape primitives like lines, circles and whatnot. So while I was thinking of interfaces and HUDs, I realized I could no longer avoid this issue. An hour later I have perfected my simple custom line class! Its basically just a simple single pixel distortion trick that no one should be proud of, but I dont care, its fuckin cool, because XNA didnt have it, and now it does.

Also, as mentioned earlier, got a simple HUD up, with the help of my new lines.

PS: With how useful and awesome these lines are, it makes me think I should start posting the source of some of these useful custom classes I am creating for other people to use out there!

first ship & screenshot

I guess its kinda messed up to have this blog about a game in development without any concept art or screenshots. So here is an image of the fist ship in the game.
Its a US fighter. It is currently constructed of only 7 components, 4 hull sections, 1 crew section, 1 engine, and 1 base. I have no clue whether this will be in the final game, but its good enough for the testing purposes I need it for now. Below is a in-game screenshot with a lined blueprints of the ships components.

Any of you who have ever played a certain real-time full 3d strategy game will recognize this particular ship ;D

Progress Update

Its almost been a month since the very start of the project and even though its only a hobby project, a crazy amount of progress has been made
Heres a list of all the little tiny technical details no one ever mentions.

• Acquired XNA and setup the collaboration software for the participating members
• Learned C# and the XNA framework from scratch (wasn't hard, and theres still much to learn)
• Got through some quick tutorials to get us on our feet
• Started the base project
• Successfully implemented all the major objects 
• Built up the  ship class < still not finished
• Got all that barebones, control, and flight dynamics stuff in there
• Got the camera working < Thanks Matthew
• Got the first weapon objects
• Got the main ship construction mechanic implemented
• Got the ultra-precise pixel intersection collision detection implemented 
• Realized that its not that easy
• Tossed the " ultra-precise pixel intersection collision detection " out the window for now until we can make it more efficient
•  Got the basic AI working
• Sounds and such
• Solved some AWESOME trig problems < Thanks Joel
• Acquired way more concept art that needed
• Lost some people
• Gained some people

Whats next? Interfaces! And then more collision detection!

...followed by AI..

damn this shit is fun

Hello World!

Welcome to the Agents of the Void Developer Blog! I am primarily making this blog to keep track of the work that me and my friends have been doing on a game we are currently developing.
What is this game?
Its a 2D tactical overhead action space shooter with RPG and sandbox elements! Sounds complicated? Well it kinda is, so read more about it if you are a lover of scifi or spaceships or awesome combat, or awesome RPGs, or awesome storylines, or amazing art, etc.

Who is making the game?
Well at least one person for sure, myself, Ryder Donahue. But I am working with tons of other awesome talented people as well. The structure of the development team is basically open, anyone who wants to help, can,  and they can do as much or little as they want, any contribution helps! Even if its just ideas!

Why are you making this game?
Well some of the general ideas and game mechanics in this game are things I have personally always wanted in a game and thats part of it. The larger part is I wanted a fun project to work with friends on, and to learn new things with. I dont program for work, I program for FUN.

WTF are you gonna be posting, on here? Well, I think it will be a good place to document progress that we make on the game, and thats pretty much it.

More soon