Here’s the first update on Wasabi Defense! May I present you: the new lander! I have thought a bit about what I could change about it and I came up with an interesting idea. The lander now has two modes: approach mode and landing mode. Approach mode was the same as in the old version. You control the ship by rotating it and firing the thruster engine. In landing mode, though, the ship stays level and you can control the horizontal speed. This can’t be used for a long time, though, since landing mode will eat through fuel like crazy. And, because this will make aiming easier, you’ll need to touch down very precisely. Here’s the lander in action, with its engine firing:

With Sub Commander finished, it’s time to get started on Wasabi Defense again! I’ve had plenty of time to get everything ready for the new start, and believe me, it will almost be a completely new start. I’ve decided to dump most of the graphics, lots of the old code and basically start over. The good news is that I’ve already completed all the graphics for the base, and even a lot of code. Here’s what the finished base looks like:

I’ve decided to follow a different approach than last time. When I started developing the game, I designed everything I wanted in one level and then moved on to the next one. This means I designed a base building, a weapon for the player, a few enemies and then put them together in a level. This time, however, I’m gonna design the base first, then the player and all the weapons, next the enemies and finally build the levels. I think this will make planning a lot easier and avoiding the huge mess I ended up in last time.
I will also start storing as much of the game data externally in XML files instead of hard coding them. Things like hitpoints, weapon strengths, movement parameters, etcetera, will go in XML files. This will make it easier for me to modify them, since I won’t have to digg through the source code for the correct variable, and it will also make it possible for players to change them, making the game harder or easier!

As promised, here’s Sub Commander! Did some final test playing and bug fixes the last days and here it is. I’m pretty satisfied with it. I think it looks quite ok and the gameplay is just what I had in mind. It’s available for download on the Games page. Of course, it’s possible there are still bugs left, so if you find any, feel free to contact me.
So what’s next? While I was working on this game, I also did some work on Wasabi Defense, wich will be resurrected one of the following days. But first I’m finally gonna play some games! I still haven’t finished Bioshock, for crying out loud!

Go to games page

The end is nearing! I have added a battleship to the game. Here’s what it looks like:

The battleship takes a whopping 8 hits to take out. Now that most units are in the game I’m beginning to get a good overview of the difficulty. One thing I’m gonna change is the ammo capacity. Currently the player can carry 12 torpedos but I’m gonna up this to 16.
The only thing left now is adding an aircraft carrier, test playing it and writing some documentation. I’m confident enough now to announce a release date: June 30. Of course, this is by no means a promise but a carefull estimation.

Finally fixed a few very nasty bugs. The menu bug I talked about in my last post, the one that made the game crash, has been fixed. Instead of the sprite-based menu, I decided to give the gui builder another try. It wasn’t easy because this is the most underdocumented part of Torque, but I managed to get it to work, complete with sound effects and automatic centering. The only part that I didn’t get to work for now is resizing it so it always looks the same size, no matter what resolution you use. Getting it to resize can be done automatically, but the problem is switching between aspect ratios. I designed the menu for a standard display, and when you play the game on a widescreen display it gets stretched. I think I can solve this, but it will take me time and a lot of experimenting. Since I think this game has been in development for too long already I decided to keep the menu the way it is and try the resizing thing some other time.