It’s time to make a little update on my work. I have made a lot of commit last days, as I have again time to develop. So, here is a quick list of features :
(images: RealGame - Browse /screens at SourceForge.net )
• Support for vehicles (currently only a tank but done in a pretty “generic” way, so it should be easy to add more vehicles – and they are coming)
• Support for cosmetic stuff like the color for teams. See images.
• Abilities. Right now you only have the handbomb, the shield and the “opaque shield” (which only block the view), but, again, it’s generic enough to allow more type of abilities. And they are coming (for exemple a “push-back” ability will come). Abilities use shield energy.
• Plates. Basically you can trigger effect when something is on it. You have now a teleport plate and some “change ability” plates. The teleport works with ability (you can throw a grenade through a teleporter).
• Basic animation stuff is here. I still need an animated model of a “soldier” (or a robot or anything with “run with a weapon” animation) though.
• Tchat. Actually, it’s almost just an echo implementation (the naming stuff is NOT done by the server), and you have a “sub” protocole shared by client. For exemple, if you say “#nick something”, it means (to other player) that your name is now “something”, but there is no guarantee that they will accept it. You could even locally rename them, it wouldn’t change anything.
• Weapons. Right now, you have only three weapons: the assault rifle, the shotgun and the plasma gun. This last one use the energy of your shield (like abilities). It’s hard to see it on pictures, but you have some very detailed weapons, even if they don’t have textures (for most of them).
• Maps. Of course. The i18n sucks a bit here (I added it in the xml, but I realize now that it would be better with an external .properties files) but for most thing it’s ok. The xml file is pretty declarative (it’s more or less a list of items with their positions etc.).
• Some miscellaneous “funny” stuff, like the “double kill”/”triple kill” messages (when you score 5 kill in a row, you get the message “Jack !”, I let you find why … and, no, it’s NOT politically correct).
• Mods. Currently only 3 mod (jailbreak, death match and capture the flag). Now, as I have vehicles, I will start to create an “onslaught” mod).
• Likely a lot of things I forgot to mention here.
Things I will try to do/I would enjoy to have
• Improve the “end game score screen”. Yeah, the current one sucks.
• Add some voice. Right now, the only voice in the game is a “ah” when you take a hit. It’s harsh, ugly, etc. I would enjoy to have some nice feminine voice too (for “double kill” etc. stuff for example).
• More “impact” textures. I have only one, and I use it for every weapon. I would like to have one impact per couple material/weapon (not material in the 3D sense, more in “physics” sense).
• More weapons, more vehicles, more maps, more abilities… you get it.
• Fix some rare and random bug with the physics engine. They happen very rarely and it’s pretty boring.
• Find a girlfriend. No link with the game, just saying .
• Add the “mutator” thing. It’s maybe a bit late however :’(
• Have a look at the “bot/ia” thing.
• Have a look at the “story mod” thing.
• Have a look at the “script” thing.
• Add boobies. Because we are all fratboys.
• Add shaders, and create some shader myself. For a reason I don’t know, I just can’t get them in my mind, it’s just like they are magical. You know, if you say to a programmer “hey, in this language you have to declare magic global variables with the good type and some mystic value will be put into them” you’ll kill it. Not to mention “hey, it’s highly hardware dependent, you can’t do things sequentially (like pseudo-random algorithm with a persistent and shared seed) and it’s so C-like that you multiply matrix with the operator *”. I tried to download a shader pack, but when I see a zip of 37 Mb … well … Ok, anyway, I’ll have to do it, so I’ll take the time it needs. I, for example, want a post-processing whole-screen filter that performs a movement-based vision. Maybe with an embossment approach, I don’t know.
• Add planets. Yeah, there is a light scattering shader out there, and working pretty well. But, once again, a file used by this shader is 17mb, so …
• Add a story. Actually, I already have a story, but I need to translate it in english.
• Find testers.
• Put the keybinding in a .properties file and/or create a menu in-game to change keybindings.
• Learn english.
• A lot of other things.
I do everything myself, from the 3D modelling of weapons/vehicles/arenas to the sound, the skybox etc. So, it’s slow, and I can’t be good everywhere.
Happy new year to everyone !!!