Futher development on Space Sim (screenshots)

Everything has been moving along quite smoothly with my Space game. Been working hard lately due to new jobs and my contract work. The contract work is at least paying for some cool Torque goodies. Managed to finally buy the Advanced 3D Game Programming All in One book and now waiting for the delivery. Also managed to buy some cool explosion animations. Again waiting for the delivery of that too.

As I'm not using lots of particles to create explosions, I decided using professional looking explosions are worth it. With some (all really) of the 2d space games I've tested, the explosions just aren't rewarding enough.

When I kill someone, I want others too see (and feel) what I've accomplished. The explosion itself is rewarding enough now. It puts a smile on your face when you see other ships in the vicinity feeling the cause of your doing:





The explosions are done with Texturelist which is supported by default; just not used enough, if you ask me. I dunno if it will look good enough with 3d games. For my purpose it's perfect.

Next thing I have to start delving into is energy based shields. I haven't seen anything on it yet. I was thinking of actually adding the shield to the spaceship model as an animation...

When energy is sufficient, play shield animation (which will just be a transparent bubble). The nice thing about a round shield, is that it is concave, so I can use that as the collision box. Will see if it works.

Any comment, ideas welcome.

Cheers
James