Current Progress

Ok, so on Thursday I had a massive reorganisation day (with help from Rob ofcourse) in writing my code. I now have a clearer idea of how to code up my game and their is a structure now so it’s easier to actually do things that I intend to do without getting sidetracked. 😛

Within the reorganisation process, we managed to get the ‘Collision’ aspect working against the Planet obstacles. So whenever a boid hit an opposing teams planet, it would ‘die’… since then, I’ve been able to respawn the boid back into action so it almost becomes an endless game.. This will have to be changed so i’m going to give each planet a health pool and upon death of the planet a winner is announced. I’ve also attempted to make the flock’s collide and die / respawn too.. Although for some reason whenever I try make a little animation of when the boids clash it doesn’t seem to work (lagg’s immensely).

So after the collision is fixed.. other elements that I will have to try implement is :-

Creating a Commander – Creating controls – Adding decoy planet obstacles (perhaps at certain health of planet?) – controlling the camera better so it’s either always in 3rd person view, or changes to different boid upon death of current Avatar..

Umm… i believe those are the main implementations I will have to add before getting more crazy and mind boggling:P

Maintaining the flock vs flock idea

Since yesterdays class and last weeks when I had decided to continue with a game aspect rather then a screen saver I’ve been worried about whether or not what game mechanics I should include or try incorporate / implement.

Because this is a 3D view (third person), I wasn’t sure if I should make it so each boid can shoot down a target? and I thought, it may be laggy enough without each boid constantly shooting (and then would I have to implement AI if I went down this path?). So I think what I chose is still a fun idea to create… and once I work out the code for normal collision, it’s almost knocking out 2 birds with one stone. So what I am thinking is to have 2 planets (1 spawn on each end and this will be the starting point for each flock). The ‘computer’ that you are versing will do it’s flock-like thing and randomly fly around and if it hits the opposing (your) planet then which ever boid’s that hit /collide will blow up (disappear) and the planets life will be taken down.

Im thinking that as each boid dies… it will they will respawn again at their base planet. Boids can also run into other boids to protect their own planet. (but im not too sure if it’ll be too difficult to make it so i can control some boids seperate to a flock if they’re already in the flock radius? in the event of setting up defences like patrols…

I am also thinking of having other planets (so like a solar system to make it more interesting in having … more things to kill…)

Current progress.. / troubles :(

So at the moment I’ve been trying to get 2 flocks working at the same time… (good vs evil or P1 vs P2)

When I first tried, it seemed as though the 2nd flock was limiting itself with smaller boundaries.. so I tried fixing that by adding it into different ‘for’ loops but now I am getting an affect where it looks like there is 4 travelling at the one time when it is only the 1 still. (well when I pause it, its still only 1 unless 4 are travelling at the same time?)

Anyway, I can’t figure out what I’ve done and I can’t get back to where I was (just don’t know what I did), so I am currently in the process of re-writing my code… Hopefully i’ll spot what I’m doing wrong…

Previous presentation

Just uploading the presentation slides that we’ve just had to complete in the last week…

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post presentation number 2

after the presentations I received some very good inspiration and direction from Will and Rob.

 

http://freegames.1up.com/games/azulbaronis.html

And the plan is to make one Boid the captain so to speak and the flock reacts to the captain… (the captain should also be controllable)… time to act..