since I probably will be asking plenty of questions in the future, I thought it might as well make sense to properly introduce myself and my project to the community.
I’ve been programming for more than 10 years now, although self-taught and predominantly in the web-world. These are my first (serious) steps into the “3D world” and I’m more than happy that - with jMonkey - a potent engine exists for Java, taking one stumbling block out of my path. Anyhow, I’m a bloody beginner when it comes to anything 3D-tech-related, be it shaders, shadows or lights, but I hereby want to assure you, that I will always use Google before asking stupid questions on the forums and I want apologize in advance for any cases where I missed an existing explanation due to lack of proper vocabulary. I will also happily add my findings to the wiki/documentation when I find it appropriate (it probably will be a while until I’m anywhere near to being able to contribute code).
But a few words about the project: The game is supposed to be a “3D airport simulation” (think “Rollercoaster Tycoon”, just with an airport). As of now it’s merely a hobby and the focus does not (yet) lie on graphics but on the mechanics of the simulation. This is one of the reasons why I decided to use JMonkey instead of something like Unity: While the latter probably offers better graphics “out of the box” and offers more features, it ties you to a proprietary toolset, requires you to learn a lot of Unity-specific stuff and if something doesn’t work as you expect it to, your screwed without insights into how the engine does its magic. I really like the fact that JMonkey is - essentially - plain old Java and that you’re developing away using your accustomed toolset within minutes.
Here’s a short video of a very early (but also recent) build featuring the basic construction of taxiways (using custom meshes):
I will post screenshots of the game on this thread occasionally. If you wish to follow the development more closely, check out the AirportSim blog: blog.airportsim.aero/
That's it for now. I'm looking forward to becoming a part of this community and thank you very much for providing and maintaining this cool little engine!
That’s really looking quite good, nice to see progress
I did notice a slight artefact at around 30 seconds into the video. The sharp corner before you add the branch seems to have a line coming from the inside of the turn into the runway.
Yeah @zarch, that’s because there are no constraints yet. The node used for calculating the taxiway mesh does in fact lie outside of the mesh, but players won’t be able to create such sharp angles later on
From watching the video stats the object count increases with each new item so you should see if you can batch them, as they all seem to use the same material. This will improve performance when you have a large amount of objects on the screen at once
I know. Many years ago I’ve played it a lot myself and it is, to this day, an “inspiration” in the negative sense: It shows how you can totally screw up a great idea with an awful implementation. The graphics were really bad, even for the standards of the time, yet I know quite a few people who loved it anyway and despite all the ridiculous bugs because the airport lived in their imagination.
So in some way Airport Tycoon is a benchmark: If AirportSim can be what Airport Tycoon could have been had the developers put a tad more love into it, it’ll fulfill its minimal purpose…everything beyond that is nice to have
It’s also an inspiration to me because I’m also doing the same thing with a city generator 's “road editor” feature. Did you just use JME3 custom mesh for the making of that road? Or you also involve a graph library such as JUNG too.
I’m using JUNG and also Java topology suite to make a Road border shape, then extrude, triangulation into a mesh. For now, my road is just plain Unshaded material, because I can’t do UV map as your solution. Can you share some points of making your road’s UV.
As the good of adding more features for a city generation : adding cross lane, street light, walking lane, etc … I make this road editor work in 2D and also 3D for blue-print to geometry generation. A screenshot of the blue-print graph view of the road editor:
Please share your opinion for such a tool like this for a Road editor. Because a sim game and a city generator share a lot of common idea and algorimth, I can share my code if you need ( it will be opensource anyway) . Further maybe contribute a road editor tool for the community.
