Plan for Phil Carlisle

Air Ace, Round the World and Other adventures

Get ready, because Ive got a feeling this is going to be a LONG plan guys!

First off, Air Ace updates.

Air Ace has been motoring on since we posted the last image of the day. I've been working on the interfaces for player spawning and had quite a lot of interesting stuff working, but then it hit me! We need it to be REALLY simple. So thats getting a much much MUCH simpler interface now.

I've also started doing some mapping for the airfields. I got an absolute crapload of reference material for buildings and I'm just waiting on a few texture CD's to actually begin mapping the bases completely. One thing I did learn while browsing Tim Aste's info on his new content pack, is that I'm going to map the airfield almost as a single map. So I'll create the buildings seperately then load them all as prefabs for each airbase.

Physics is still ongoing so more about that when we get an update.

One setback this week was the loss of Rog B off the project. Rog has been brilliant to work with, so I'll miss his input, but the project must go on! So I'll ask here and maybe post a help wanted ad:

Any very good 3D modellers (that is, professional quality, sorry we dont have time for training), who would like to work with me on delivering this game for Xmas 2005 please get in touch! You will mainly be tasked with modelling WW2 era planes (approximately 10 of them altogether) and other minor objects (fuel trucks, tents, tree's or whatever).

I'd prefer someone like Rog who can just do the job without any supervision and who actually takes charge of the artwork and tells me what he wants :)

Now losing the artist off a project might be seen as a major setback, but I dont want to let it become that. So if I cant find someone to work with in place of Rog, I'll likely just end up paying some contractor at the end of the project to do the art. We have more than enough placeholder stuff and have the pipeline and scale all worked out already.

On another note, apart from the downer of losing Rog, I've been on a high because I've finally got the go-ahead for my dream trip!

I'm heading off at the end of June for a 2 month long trip around the world!

I've always been interested in gamers from different countries, so I'm taking a trip round the world to study games and gamers from different countries. Stopping at US, New Zealand, Australia, Singopore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan before heading back.

I'll be buying a new laptop for dev work and staying online wherever I can (thankfully most of those countries are well connected) and will report back from the various places with pictures and impressions on the gaming scene there.

This also means that I'll have lots of hours to spend coding, which will see major advanced in both Air Ace and the AI Pack.

In order to do the AI for Air Ace, the AI Pack will get a few more features, like the ability to control arbitrary vehicles, sensor based turrets, navigation grids that work in the air and on water. If you've ever tried PaulDana's turrets, you'll notice that using a trigger volume is pretty nasty! and does tend to slow things down if you have a number of them, for instance.

In fact, this work is going to go into my new AI Wisdom 3 articles, so it should be fun to try it out!

So no screenshot this week (losing artists means less screenies), but good progress and a good overall feeling! :)

Oh, and Jeff! have a great trip too!!!!!