Holiday Project

[Starglider]

The composition lacks overlaping elements. At the moment every element stands for itself. The woman, the building, the bad guys and the bird. Some overlap would do wonders.

I'd expect overlap to be bad in this case because it breaks up the silhouettes and makes recognition harder. In fact I'm already concerned with having the text overlap the main image elements. This image has to be recognisable when scaled down to a quarter this size and then flipped through in the Xbox dashboard or an online store.

[salm]

So, what´s going on? Are you still on this thing?

[Starglider]

So, what´s going on? Are you still on this thing?

I am, but I've been really busy with commercial stuff. The result is that I've made various minor improvements, but I haven't had a chance to tackle any major outstanding features. Since the last video I have;

* rewrote all the shaders for improved frame rate and visuals; water looks much better, tree LOD transitions are much smoother
* added a prominent thermal lift arrow and visual stall warning to the HUD
* added an animated 'flightpath' to follow in the racing & soaring modes, when you are learning the levels
* added y-axis invert and configurable auto-flap
* improved the controls (e.g. easier tutorial mode), added a mild amount of auto-aim
* rewrote the camera logic to look smoother, fixed various minor graphical bugs
* added ambient sound effects for thermals, water and forests

Hopefully next month I will have some more free time to do all the character-specific magical attacks.

P.S. I also added this vital debugging feature;

[salm]

Aye, good to hear that this is still developing.

[Starglider]

I have started updating this code to XNA 4.0 with a view to possibly entering it in this year's Dream Build Play competition (in mid-June). Unfortunately Microsoft take absolute glee in randomly and arbitrarily changing the whole API, totally breaking backwards compatability, and outright disabling key features for no reason at all (or because they don't work on the Zune, which is virtually the same thing). Given limited free time at present it will take some time to get it working even to the 2/3rds complete state it was in before.

[Hawkwings]

Good to hear that this still exists and is being worked on. I eagerly await updates.

[Starglider]

After nearly two weeks fixing all the stuff that Microsoft broke in XNA3.0 -> 4.0, I was finally able to implement a couple of usability enhancements. Firstly, some of the testers got lost on the more twisty racing challenges, so I finnished implementing this 'flightpath' effect;



You can turn it off if you don't like it. I also made thermals visible on the level map;



with the appropriate subtle whirling shading effect (that doesn't really show up in this screenshot).

My current desktop system is quite excessive for this game; it is in fact capable of running ten instances at once at full Xbox360 speed. Next up; fixing landings/takeoffs, which are pretty thoroughly broken ATM.

[Sarevok]

Have you considered porting this to Windows Mobile ? I imagine it would be quite a hit.

[Zixinus]

Just curios: will us regular PC players be able to play it or just people with 360s?

[Sarevok]

Just curios: will us regular PC players be able to play it or just people with 360s?

It's C# and XNA so unless Starglider is looking for "consolization" I see why not.

[Starglider]

Have you considered porting this to Windows Mobile ? I imagine it would be quite a hit.

It would be difficult to run the game on anything significantly less powerful than an Xbox360. Smartphones have another year or two to go before they're that fast. The main problem though is the control mapping, I can't think of a way to squeeze all the necessary controls into a touch screen.

Just curios: will us regular PC players be able to play it or just people with 360s?

Yes but it needs a gamepad with dual sticks and triggers, which I don't think many people have. Maybe I will eventually try and make a usable mouse/keyboard mode, but that input method is always going to suck for this application. This game was really designed around the control scheme and flight physics.

[Zixinus]

I do have a standard 360 Controller. I presume that would be ideal?

[Starglider]

I do have a standard 360 Controller. I presume that would be ideal?

Yes, the 'Xbox 360 for Windows' controller is what I use for development.

[Executor32]

Have you considered porting this to Windows Mobile ? I imagine it would be quite a hit.

It would be difficult to run the game on anything significantly less powerful than an Xbox360. Smartphones have another year or two to go before they're that fast. The main problem though is the control mapping, I can't think of a way to squeeze all the necessary controls into a touch screen.

Just curios: will us regular PC players be able to play it or just people with 360s?

Yes but it needs a gamepad with dual sticks and triggers, which I don't think many people have. Maybe I will eventually try and make a usable mouse/keyboard mode, but that input method is always going to suck for this application. This game was really designed around the control scheme and flight physics.

I imagine you could use the accelerometer for pitch and roll like most flying games on smartphones use. It works rather well in X-Plane, for example. You'd just need controls for everything else, like attacks and flapping the wings.

[Starglider]

New concept art, for the story mode missions.

[Hawkwings]

Zeppelins make everything better!

[Starglider]

I never got building-bird collision detection working correctly last year, I am fixing/debugging it now;



Windhaven uses a three-phase collision detection strategy; group axis-aligned bounding-box, object aabb, then line/triangle checks. The later is somewhat less accurate than triangle-triangle checks, but faster and adequate for this application.

[Starglider]

New concept art for the story-mode characters, in human form;

[Sarevok]

Starglider how are you handling collision response ? As I understand the core of this game is the bird flying physics. So are we going to experience the joy of mid air collisions ? Maybe even simulating what it feels like to go splat against a Boeing 777 ?

[Starglider]

Starglider how are you handling collision response?

The bird gets ejected from the surface via the inverse of the highest penetration vector and the appropriate torque and velocity change applied. For anything more than a trivial impact, the physics mode is changed to 'crashed' (semi-ragdoll) and you are reset to a flying position after a few seconds.

As I understand the core of this game is the bird flying physics. So are we going to experience the joy of mid air collisions ? Maybe even simulating what it feels like to go splat against a Boeing 777 ?

Yes. Bird-bird collisions aren't currently implemented, but you can crash into the airships and the target balloons. You can fly through the enemies, they are some sort of ethereal goo, but it rapidly drains both your speed and your health.

[Starglider]

More concept art - these are the first kind of enemy you encounter in the story mode :

[Starglider]

Starting to work on the survival mode, here is an island under attack by phantom rays.



Needs more particle effects, also evasive maneuvers and a defensive damaging particle spray on the rays (kinda like WWII bomber guns).

In short I will not stop until this mode is 'HAWX 3 : Actual Hawks'

[Sarevok]

What kind of lighting solution are you using btw ? I think at least having the terrain be lightmapped would make the graphics look a heck lot better. Real time per pixel lighting with shadows would be even better if you could manage it.

[Starglider]

I think at least having the terrain be lightmapped would make the graphics look a heck lot better.

The terrain is lightmapped. That's a fairly flat bit of the level at noon, so the effect is subtle, but it looks noticably worse if you disable lightmaps. This is what the level looks like with directional lightning only (no ambient);



This is what the same area looks like at sunset;

Real time per pixel lighting with shadows would be even better if you could manage it.

Per pixel lighting is implemented but the only dynamic light sources are the fireballs and other very powerful magical attacks, which are not in these screenshots. Static shadows are implemented, I will do some limited dynamic shadows later. Unfortunately the Xbox 360 has insufficient rendering capability to do the reflective+refractive water, 10,000 visible trees and global pixel-accurate shadows against non-flat surfaces.

[Starglider]

Also some more (draft) story art :