Air Ace ready for alpha testing
by Thomas \"Man of Ice\" Lund · 09/28/2006 (2:16 pm) · 16 comments
Ahhhh - FINALLY.
Definitions of alpha test are many, but we finally have a stable and fun game that doesnt crash anymore. With a basic dogfighting mission that looks OK'ish, I'll try to convince Phil that we should open up for alpha tests. Check our forums for latest news and the important "why should we pick you as a tester" post in the announcement section.
Forums for anyone not signed up yet: airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/
After merging with MS4 we still have some issues, but we managed to fix a lot of bugs the last few weeks - both in TSE and in Air Ace. So here we are 3 days before leaving with a game thats ready to be burned onto a CD and taken to Eugene.
But before going to the US, I wanted to take the time to post a new blog.
No blog without a screenie:
Well - we still have tons of things to fix, optimize, test, add, remove etc. Especially our menus are crap, but we got a nice concept going with some layers. I like it, and hopefully so will everyone else.
Air Ace is now fully playable with no known crash bugs. Particle effects have been added, the alpha test level is done and in general we are happy campers (OK - I am at least happy. Phil isnt happy, as he is "homeless" as you might have read)
So without much further words a link to an ingame movie!
airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/movies/AlphaTestMovie.wmv
Obviously there are some visual bugs still. In the upgrade process we lost the material mappings on the plane and the canopy cube map. Dunno what happened.
The big thing is Adam deGrandis fantastic effects. We are sponsoring his explosion pack, and he is also helping with level design and other things. Very cool, and fantastic work on the explosions. Check out how the spawned effect is determined by what it hits. Water spray when hitting water, dirt on the ground etc. Cool!
But heck! Time to ramp up internal testing and finding all glitches.
One of the hotter things we will work on after returning are the new planes we got in the pipeline. We found another great guy - Jesse - who has a few nifty planes that we bought a license for.
Read the entire post here: airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/viewtopic.php?t=94
And check out this nice P-38 - comming to Air Ace very very soon
(Yes - this is a slight rewrite of a forum post on our forums - bite me ;-) )
Regarding community weekend - Steelhead next Thursday at 7 pm!! Say no more. And dont drive, as we will drink all night and have great fun ;-) Eugene beware.
Definitions of alpha test are many, but we finally have a stable and fun game that doesnt crash anymore. With a basic dogfighting mission that looks OK'ish, I'll try to convince Phil that we should open up for alpha tests. Check our forums for latest news and the important "why should we pick you as a tester" post in the announcement section.
Forums for anyone not signed up yet: airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/
After merging with MS4 we still have some issues, but we managed to fix a lot of bugs the last few weeks - both in TSE and in Air Ace. So here we are 3 days before leaving with a game thats ready to be burned onto a CD and taken to Eugene.
But before going to the US, I wanted to take the time to post a new blog.
No blog without a screenie:
Well - we still have tons of things to fix, optimize, test, add, remove etc. Especially our menus are crap, but we got a nice concept going with some layers. I like it, and hopefully so will everyone else.
Air Ace is now fully playable with no known crash bugs. Particle effects have been added, the alpha test level is done and in general we are happy campers (OK - I am at least happy. Phil isnt happy, as he is "homeless" as you might have read)
So without much further words a link to an ingame movie!
airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/movies/AlphaTestMovie.wmv
Obviously there are some visual bugs still. In the upgrade process we lost the material mappings on the plane and the canopy cube map. Dunno what happened.
The big thing is Adam deGrandis fantastic effects. We are sponsoring his explosion pack, and he is also helping with level design and other things. Very cool, and fantastic work on the explosions. Check out how the spawned effect is determined by what it hits. Water spray when hitting water, dirt on the ground etc. Cool!
But heck! Time to ramp up internal testing and finding all glitches.
One of the hotter things we will work on after returning are the new planes we got in the pipeline. We found another great guy - Jesse - who has a few nifty planes that we bought a license for.
Read the entire post here: airaceonline.arcadersplanet.com/viewtopic.php?t=94
And check out this nice P-38 - comming to Air Ace very very soon
(Yes - this is a slight rewrite of a forum post on our forums - bite me ;-) )
Regarding community weekend - Steelhead next Thursday at 7 pm!! Say no more. And dont drive, as we will drink all night and have great fun ;-) Eugene beware.
#3
09/28/2006 (2:53 pm)
Congrats Tom and Phil. 
#4
09/28/2006 (2:53 pm)
Nice! I'm glad to see Air Ace finally in motion :)
#5
09/28/2006 (3:10 pm)
Yea, a really beautiful plane model, congrats on that. Your UI looks top-notch as well. People have to beg you to be alpha/beta testers? That is certainly an enviable position to be in for an Indie. Good luck with that. I'll be happy to download it and try it when/if you post a link publicly.
#6
09/28/2006 (3:40 pm)
Very nice. :D 
#7
Try turning on anisotropic filtering for your screen shot of the runway, it will help improving the look of lines when they are coplaner to the eye vector. :) If you app is limited by textures (which is unlkely with TGE which is almost always cpu or bus bound, you may see a decrease in performance. If you aren't limited by textures then you probably won't see much of a decrease in performance at all.
09/28/2006 (4:12 pm)
Looks good. Sounds like fun. Didn't the early ancestor of torque start off as a flyer?Try turning on anisotropic filtering for your screen shot of the runway, it will help improving the look of lines when they are coplaner to the eye vector. :) If you app is limited by textures (which is unlkely with TGE which is almost always cpu or bus bound, you may see a decrease in performance. If you aren't limited by textures then you probably won't see much of a decrease in performance at all.
#9
09/28/2006 (6:30 pm)
Wow that looks really fun. Im looking forward to the finished product!
#11
We are ultra happy with reaching this stage - still some hard work ahead of us to turn it into a real game.
Opening up the game to "others" is hard. There are still visual bugs and issues in there, menus dont look to great etc. So when do you say enough is enough, and get externals onto it? The good old test early, test often sometimes is hindered by 2 old grumpy farts (me and Phil) who want things to look great, work great before someone else critizises the game.
@Michael - the runway blends in nicely ingame. But yeah - on the screenshot it stands out. Might have to take Erics advice next time :-D
@Andrew - our initial lineup will be the 5-6 named planes in the referenced forum link. If (when?) Air Ace becomes profitable, we will increase the number of planes and make interiors to match. But for initial launch we had to do some hard choices.
09/28/2006 (10:54 pm)
Thanks guys for the kind words!We are ultra happy with reaching this stage - still some hard work ahead of us to turn it into a real game.
Opening up the game to "others" is hard. There are still visual bugs and issues in there, menus dont look to great etc. So when do you say enough is enough, and get externals onto it? The good old test early, test often sometimes is hindered by 2 old grumpy farts (me and Phil) who want things to look great, work great before someone else critizises the game.
@Michael - the runway blends in nicely ingame. But yeah - on the screenshot it stands out. Might have to take Erics advice next time :-D
@Andrew - our initial lineup will be the 5-6 named planes in the referenced forum link. If (when?) Air Ace becomes profitable, we will increase the number of planes and make interiors to match. But for initial launch we had to do some hard choices.
#12
And yeah, materials need some looking at.. and ui.. and and and... :)
09/29/2006 (3:07 am)
Hehehe.. soooo much more to do! :) but yeah, we're getting there. If I can figure out how to turn on ambient lighting again for the plane/projectiles/whatever else.. that'd be nice.And yeah, materials need some looking at.. and ui.. and and and... :)
#13
Seriously - you guys are awsome!
I hope you have some "what if" scenarios one day that let me fly a plane from the European theatre against a plane from the pacific theatre. Even German planes against Japanese, or Russian agains Japanese or even Russian against the RAF, etc, etc.
09/29/2006 (5:14 am)
Does the Red Baron modding community know about you guys yet? Because I think you've captured the title as "spiritual replacement for the Red Baron".Seriously - you guys are awsome!
I hope you have some "what if" scenarios one day that let me fly a plane from the European theatre against a plane from the pacific theatre. Even German planes against Japanese, or Russian agains Japanese or even Russian against the RAF, etc, etc.
#14
09/29/2006 (7:09 am)
This looks AWESOME! :) Keep up the good work!! 
#15
09/30/2006 (1:51 pm)
That P-38 looks sweeet.. always been one of my favorite WWII planes.
#16
11/02/2006 (11:24 am)
If you need any more testers, let me know :) ... I'd love to play this! 
Torque Owner Michael Hense
the top shot though... the runways contrast toooo much with the rest of the terrain...
(i know it's alpha testing, so i'm sure a lot of stuff is still a wip)
--Mike