Progress Report

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Progress Report
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- The download has been disabled. GE is now in private development and recent changes have made the client unstable when connecting to the current server.
- Loot spawning has been implemented when destroying stuff
- Asteroid destruction works, the asteroid is moved to a new location and loot is dropped in it's place
- Camera control added - now supports follow, cockpit, turret and rear-view modes
- Server-side destruction control added, handles object destruction and loot spawning
- NPC wingman code working, NPCs now follow you when assigned as a wingman
- Test NPC spawing implemented, select a target and create a NPC, the NPC will follow the 'test_pilot' FSM script, this is for testing the NPC logic code
- More commodities added
- Ship trader implemented, you can now purchase new ships
- New systems added
- New planet textures added
- New stars cubes added
- Static FX can be set to a specific rotation (used mainly for jumpgate FX)
- FX bug fixed that was causing flickering in the weapons and jumpgate FX
- Timing bug fixed in FX code that caused FX to last too long
- Explosions fixed by squaring textures, non-square textures caused anims to stop before completing
- Manufacturing added for several bases, bases now only sell what they manufacture or preset to buy for a high price, some are preset with higher than market values for trading purposes but do not manufacture those items
- Only estate (property) dealer and technology dealer are left to implement
- All dealers are commodity based no matter what they are selling, for stuff that is more than just a commodity it is requested from the server as to what extra features it has
- All prices are still fully controlled by the server no matter what you are buying or selling, all markets are now handled by a single routine on both the server and client
- Tons of internal tweaks to speed up gameplay

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Progress Report
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- Lootbeams are now active. This means anything within range of your lootbeams can be beamed into your cargo hold. This is a major step forward in completing this project.
- Full conversion of all movement code to quaternions. This includes all of the rooms and also the surface.
- Weapon support on the surface. Currently it fires what you have mounted on your ship so it's not fully ready yet but it does work.
- MP visibility fixed, now when a player logs in and out their ship will disappear and reappear like it should.
- Rotation values are now sent with the movement packets. This smooths out the other players turning but without the timer in the packet it's still a bit jerky.
- Server initiated spawning, now the server can spawn models on the players side.

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Progress Report
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The new shader based renderer is coming along nicely. The core code is nearly complete. With the changes I will be able to do much more graphical features such as parallax mapping, post processing fx such as bloom and much more.

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

The new shader code is nearly ready to put in the game. Once it can render properly using glow, environment and bump mapping I will rebuild the core graphics in the game to use the new classes.

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 5:21 am Post subject: Re: Progress Report

oorah!

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Progress Report
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So far the new 3d renderer supports
- Automatic mesh creation/destruction
- Automatic texture handling (base, normal, glow)
- Shader 3.0 HLSL rendering
- 1024 dynamic lights

Secondary features
- Full DirectInput keyboard support
- New camera handlers, allows attaching camera to anything or as a roaming cam
- Support for normal mapping (commonly called bump mapping), the texture can be created with Photoshop or XnView from a heightmap

Posted: Fri Jul 09, 2010 7:02 am Post subject: Re: Progress Report

Woot the man is still doing business!

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Progress Report
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This version is a complete rewrite of the GE III engine. It is based on the HLSL shader 3.0 model or higher. If you have anything less than this you won't be able to run this game.

Lights implemented as meshes
Full rendering support for INI based scenes

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Latest Update
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- As of July 20th, 2010, the Galaxy Empire engine is being completely rebuilt
- A whole new renderer is being used. It is fully built on HLSL shader version 3.0, meaning you need a video card made within the past 5 years
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The basic default shader supports...
* Base texture
* Normal mapped texture (used for bump mapping)
* Detail texture
* Gloss texture (aka specular)
* Glow texture (aka light map)
* 1024 lights
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Program features (hehe, it is only 11 days old as of this post)
* Scene based scripting (as in the player plays within a scene)
* Dynamically controlled model and texture handler, objects and materials loaded on a need-to-use basis, reducing the memory footprint to just that single scene
* First stages of cloned meshes being reimplemented, will most likely get merged into the default shader code, current limit is 4096 clones per mesh
* First stage of reimplementation of collision system, clones already detect player collision
* Sky boxes/spheres fully reintegrated, full support for both types reinstated
* More user commands are being supported for keylist.ini, most of the surface movement keys fully work (currently being used to only control the camera)
* All modes of the key support has been fully reintegrated into the code. Any of the older key lists can still be used
* Model format extended to include a controller, this means NPCs can be used as the objects controller and this will also be used to send the camera movement commands to the model the player controls

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Latest Update
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- Targetting system reimplemented
- Collision system fully reimplemented, every model now detects collisions
- Attaching to object fully working for camera, will connect to current target and control it, precusor of ship boarding code
- Beginning of HUD code, rebuilding it to use dynamic memory

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Latest Update
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- Basic Hud system is functional
- Beginnings of networking code being reimplemented
- Global server project started, the client can log into the it already
- Scene post-processing scripting added, allows various controls over how the scene is displayed after it's loaded
- Asteroids added back in and converted to a hlsl 3.0 shader
- Multiple scene switching fully fleshed out with full support of menu based scenes (as in 2D and 3d mixed together)
- New hud based control system works through the key handler so the key and hud commands are interchangable, as in any key shortcut can be part of the hud as a hardpoint
- [paths] section changed to [defaults], now it contains all of the default startup info for the game, both SP and MP
- Fully functional main menu completed
- In-progress multiplayer menu being added
- Single player game functionality added, additional features will be added
- Some of the flight mechanics have been overhauled to make the camera movement more fluid
- Dual timers added, one for the 3D rendering (runs full speed) and one for the game play (60 fps atm), fx etc...

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Latest Update
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- dynamic ecomony is nearly implemented, a market can be attached to any object in a scene
- global server handler is working, the client gets a full list of the available servers (several fake ones atm)
- first stage of scrollable hud created
- most of the new code is using dynamic memory handlers, this will result in a game that only uses the memory it needs
- the storyline is being fleshed out, post if you want to help
- various artifacts are being developed. Only the dev team will be able to contribute to this list

Posted: Wed Aug 25, 2010 1:32 pm Post subject: Re: Progress Report

I wanna help with the story

Joined: Jul 11, 2008 Posts: 221 Status: **Offline**

Contact me on MSN and I will send you what I've done.