My work project (MyVirtualHome) is coming along nicely and we have a new website which shows off some of the fancy graphics we’ve been working on over the past year. I’ve also been working on a small tech demo in my spare time. I thought I’d start to gives some updates on how I’m going on this project….

The tech demo is a capital-ship based tactical space game. What’s that mean exactly? Well the capital ship part means that giant kilometre long ships will be dueling it firing hundreds of missiles and torpedo’s at each other. I’m using David Weber’s Honor series as inspiration for some of my ship design. The tactical part means that you will be deciding what projectile types to be using and where to attack the enemy ships, as well as which defensive weapons to use and which incoming projectiles are the most dangerous. The final part (space game) means that it’s based, obviously, in space. However not the 3rd dimensionally challenged space that so many games are based in. I’m talking true 3D, where up isn’t based on some pre-set axis but is based on where you ship is currently facing. I’ve spent a fair bit of time working out how the interface for such a game can work. So far I’ve implemented a simple point and click interface within the 3D world and I’m quite pleased with it so far. I’m going to give it to a few friends to try out and tell me just how good/bad/moronic my design is.

So far, I’ve been working on a simple framework with which I can build the tech demo (and future tech demo’s) on. I’ve got a few simple systems completed in the framework so far. These include a material manager, post process effect manager (with some effects such as warped explosions and glow effect), chunk/mesh manager, input manager and I’m currently working on the design for an interface manager. I’ve only just started working on the actual game engine and currently have two ships sitting there with the ability to plot the course of a missile between the two.

I decided to learn High Level Shader Language (HLSL) to do my effects, and I’m really pleased with how it’s shaping up. I feel like an assembly programmer who has just been introduced to C for the first time. I’m trying not to get too carried away with all the special effects, and I’m starting to get into the core design of the game engine, which I’m excited about. I’ll keep updating regularly and put up some screen shots in the coming weeks.

P.S. I’ve got Battlefield 2 and love it, even though someone forgot to put the headsets in the Australian version.