Vehicle mounting system progress (video)

I'm not normally one to post 2 .plans in quick succession, but as I have something to show I thought I might as well :) First off, a link to the video (excuse the bizarre art, its what I had to hand when I was scripting this up - it's hover tank utilising wheeled vehicle, its just that at the moment the wheels are visible):

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsuCYEaeHmg&v

What you see in the video is several things:

1. Simply creating a vehicle on the fly
2. Walking up to it and pressing E (use) to bring up a little GUI.
3. Selecting to enter the vehicle as a driver (the D 'button')
4. Being mounted in the correct position with the correct keymap etc and a message being displayed saying what have entered the vehicle as a driver. (Displays a message like this for every seat you enter)
5. Dismounting and using the vehicle again and this time entering the vehicle as a gunner, in the gunner's seat and with the gunner's keymap.
6. Dismounting and using the vehicle again and this time entering the vehicle as a passenger, in the gunner's seat and with the passenger's keymap.
7. Dismounting and using the vehicle again and this time simply closing the GUI with the X button.
8. Using the vehicle one final time, this time walking away from the vehicle beyond the maximum mounting distance. A message pops up telling you that you are too far away and how far you are.

Things of note:

The GUI will correctly display which mount points are of what type: Driver, Gunner, Passenger etc. It will also display an X on any occupied seat and not let you select to mount the vehicle in that position. The GUI shown is just some simple placeholder art, its intention is to allow you to have an aerial image of the vehicle with the mount locations shown in their physical locations. This is fully supported, I just haven't bothered doing nice art to fully demonstrate that yet.

The GUI will only let you mount if you are within range (it checks your distance again when you select a position to enter in - so no opening the GUI and running far away and then mounting) It also times out after 10 seconds and disappears.

So What's Next?

Well primarily the next step is to hook up controllable weapons (turrets etc) to the vehicles that the gunners an take control of. This of course will mean creating some sort of tank style class that will support this (guess what? I already have this done :D just tied up inside the wheeled vehicle code) I'm also going to create a little object that will allow me to use a control panel to create the vehicles (and ultimately select which vehicles to make etc)

Obligations...

I couldn't really go another plan with no image, so for those too lazy to see the video, here is a screenshot:



Ok seriously go watch the video as this shot makes no sense :)

New Book

I got a new book in the post today, "Game Design, Theory and Practice." I haven't had a chance to read it yet but it looks like a nice little chunky book (650 pages) full of discussion with the industries big guns and plenty of differing topics. The reason I mention this is because of the big grin it put on my face when this was the first page I opened it to:



Probably cannot see that properly, so the text reads:

"You have ignited a nuclear war.

And no, there is no animated display of a mushroom cloud with parts of bodies flying through the air.

We do not reward failure.

OK"


How can this book not be excellent? :D


Bye for now!
craigfortune _at_ gmail.com
www.craigfortune.co.uk