DevBlog

we moved the restaurant supply link building devblogs of our projects into one common blog: http://schattenkind.net/

for download, see Main Page

Ghoulsblade 00:40, 15 February 2008 (CET): we're still around, but rather busy lately with other stuff, some interesting things that will probably be used for sfz planets later are being experimented with in iris (see iris devblog ), namely shadows, sky, and also iphone photography a few grass and tree experiments. Also code for TextureAtlas and geometry-batching for better performance has been added there.

and we're also brainstorming for a redesing of the guicode, a few notes here.

2008 January

fastbatch

Ghoulsblade 21:09, 4 January 2008 (CET) : we've been working on a class for grouping the geometry of up large numbers of objects into a single batch, similar to the Ogre::StaticGeometry, this allows better performance at a slightly increased vram cost. It is a bit more lightweigt and flexible than static geometry, and has been designed to construct the batch fast so it can be used for contructing the batch at runtime, whereas Ogre::StaticGeometry was rather designed to construct the batch while loading a level or similar, so it wasn't really designed for fast construction. Also our batch allows colouring instances via vertex colour, and allows the whole batch to be repositioned and rotated as a whole. The main reason for developing it was to improve performance in iris, but it will probably be useful for things like asteroid fields in sfz as well, and maybe for stuff on planets later as well.

2007 December

merry xmas to all ! quiet here lately due to work on iris

Ghoulsblade 16:17, 24 December 2007 (CET) : merry xmas to all who read this =) it's been a bit quiet here lately, we're currently busy working on performance improvements for iris, but at least some of them might also be interesting for sfz later =) We're experimenting with multitexturing, tilebased terrain, transition masks, and a more dynamic batched geometry class than the Ogre::StaticGeometry, as we need to change the contents at runtime, and want to avoid costly reading mesh data back from VRAM. And since iris and sfz share the lugre lib, both projects benefit from the resulting code improvements and addtitions.

2007 November

tractorbeam experiment

Ghoulsblade 21:03, 26 November 2007 (CET) : first experimental tractor-beam weapon. Can be used to drag enemies inside the range of deadly close-range weapons.... or for having fun with asteroids :)

<flvplayer width="320" height="240" loop="false">TractorBeam01.ogg</flvplayer>

short video of interior walk

Ghoulsblade 16:22, 22 November 2007 (CET) : no new feature, but i made a short video showing how interior walking and furniture placement currently looks

<flvplayer width="320" height="240" loop="false">Interior.ogg</flvplayer>
Interior.ogg(1.5mb)

weapon icons : cooldown bar

Ghoulsblade 22:17, 20 November 2007 (CET) : the weapon icons now have a bar displaying the cooldown time until the weapon can be fired again.

clickable weapon icons

Ghoulsblade 17:16, 19 November 2007 (CET) : now we've got clickable weapon icons, left-click to fire the weapon, rightclick to open a context menu (currently only for unequipping)

better movement and more weapons

hagish 13:00, 18 November 2007 (CET) : Last night and the last 2 hours we improved the ship movement. Now we have a non-newton-max-velocity navigation. This not very realistic but far more fun. There are some new weapons too: splitting rockets (nut,star), chain laser, lightning gun

split rocket

hagish 16:45, 17 November 2007 (CET) : the first new weapon starts to work. a split rocket and a chain laser. http://sfz.schattenkind.net/wiki/images/f/f0/Splitrocket.ogg

weapon icons 2

Ghoulsblade 17:14, 11 November 2007 (CET) : BR48 showed up in the freegamer irc and asked if he could help out anywhere, now he started making nicer icons for us =)

Error creating thumbnail: Unable to save thumbnail to destination

forum thread : http://forum.freegamedev.net/index.php?t=msg&th=443

weapons and enemygroups

hagish 19:40, 4 November 2007 (CET) : last night ghouly and i worked a little bit on sfz. he startet to implement the new weapons and i merged the contributed enemygroup patch and started to implement a hero-defense like game mode.

weapon icons

Ghoulsblade 03:44, 1 November 2007 (CET) hagish and i met today, and we decided to focus on combat. some notes : Sfz31.10.2007 i already started making a few weapon-icons, they're rather simple, but should do for getting started.

(unguided missiles, last 3 can split into multiple warheads, in different formations)