Getting Close!

Missile Defense

Today after uni Pete and have been working our butts off in the hope that we can get the game ready for the scheduled Beta Test tomorrow. Pete has been working on the concept of Power ups, a Power up in our engine doesn't alter the game in any way it is designed to send events off to other players to increase their load. The reasons behind implementing Power ups was to give the player some incentive to move around whilst playing Asteroids, during our testing sessions the both of us found that most players would stay in the middle of the screen rotating around and not moving. By introducing Power ups we hope to break this pattern of behavior and reward risk.

I started putting together some new textures for Missile Command, but rather than following the same theme as Missile Command Pete and I both decided to change the game to be land based. The objective of the player is defend their bases from the onslaught of kamikaze tank drivers, hell bent on blowing up things. In that respect we opted to rename the game from Missile Command to Missile Defense, I think it suits the game much better. Below is a background texture I for Missile Defense, I drew this one myself in about 5 minutes.

Background I drew in Photoshop.

I also added the below turret texture, it is split into two parts so that we can have the turret move and rotate on the base. The texture might not look much like a missile launcher, but it was the best we could do in the time frame we were given. I coded it so the turret followed the location of the mouse, its small things like this that really make a game in my opinion.

Turret Textures.

I created a new Tank Game Object, this object is not much different from a missile, but it uses different textures. When a new tank is generated it randomly chooses a texture and tank type, to keep the game as random as possible.

Tank textures.

I created a new texture for the city object, I also make it randomly select one when the object was being created. Each city has two states, a normal state and demolished state.

City textures.

I made a helicopter animation, using a set of helicopter textures. Below is the method I used to get accurate texture coordinates so the animation flowed properly. The idea behind adding the helicopter was that when a large event occurred in Missile Defense, the helicopter would appear and begin shooting missiles at the players cities. It would be up to the player to shoot down the helicopter.

Working out the texture coordinates on a large poly.

I updated the blending mode for smoke particles, previously the smoke particles were looking very white but we want the smoke to look more gray like what the actual texture looks like. I used the glSandBox again to do some more tests to figure out the optimal blend mode. In then end I got the particles looking much better, so I can't complain.