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[Vactor]

those look really good PTTG??

I'm going to have to rethink how I'm doing mouse picking though as this makes me realize picking via model isn't going to work very well for what I want to do.(with having multiple selectable items on any particular tile.)

I'm thinking using flattened bounding spheres for each tile would probably do the trick though.

[Vactor]

I've got the basics of mouse-3d element interactivity in now, you can now click on a tile to select it as your camera's focal point.  I also put in a tracking system that will assign a series of IDs to whatever exists in the game, so for instance the 4th tile of the 22nd airland knows both that it belongs to the 22nd airland, and which tile it is.  I think that this will make developing dependencies easier as each tile can remember who its neighbors are, what its neighbors told it, and when it should tell its neighbor tiles something they should know.

The picking is a little inaccurate right now, for the most part the only issue that crops up is when you're clicking on the tile you're already focusing on.  If you don't click near the center it is very much ready to jump to the next adjacent tile.  I'll try to nail down its precision, but right now i'm happy to have it working.

[PTTG??]

I've got a set of tiles I'm working on (though they aren't regular hexes, and I'll probably have to re-make them later) that could be used for testing. At the very least, I could send you some meshes and textures to try to import.

If you're interested, let me know what file type to use.

[Vactor]

After realizing that the inaccuracy bug was due to me adjusting the incorrect variable I quickly found the correct one and smushed it.  After that I flushed out a few more bugs with the mouse picking properly following the position of the airland and have the mouse system working quite well.

I also set up a multi-tiered picking system where the mouse only checks for a click on the current airland, and only checks against other airlands if the mouse click misses all tiles.  I'm hoping to be able to expand this to work at all of the various sizes of entities that may exist.  (ie. checks units first, then buildings, then tiles, then airlands)

oh and PTTG?? i'm using .fbx for my model format.

Newest Release:

http://rapidshare.com/files/173457725/Airlands.01.03.rar
http://www.mediafire.com/file/j1ttimo3im3/Airlands.01.03.rar



**note** if you have any previous release installed you may need to uninstall it via your control panel

-Mouse Implemented
   -can now select which tile your camera should focus on with the mouse
   -can now select which airland your camera should focus on with the mouse
   -new fancy clickable buttons with hover and click responses(no current function)
   -added tile cycling which allows you to cycle through looking at all of the tiles on the current airland via spacebar
   -animated cursor supported, with demonstration cursor included
   -button colors changed to something less offending
   -filename changed from WindowsGame1 to Airlands

Controls:

Left Mouse Button = select tile/airland

Q = zoom in
A = zoom out

Z = move focused airland down one strata
X = move focused airland up one strata

W = focus airland 1
E = focus airland 2
R = focus airland 3

SpaceBar = cycle through tiles of current airland

ESC = exit
ALT-ENTER = fullscreen toggle


***Edit***
-Known issue: clicking currently goes through the UI and will click on 3d elements hidden behind it.  Rest assured those buttons really don't work.


-Also, my next goal is to get working on building a few of the basic systems that will simulate the activites on the airland, hopefully have some visually apparent advancements as these last few updates have all, generally speaking, looked about the same.  These will be things like villages, farms, forests, roads, and other basic resource management.  These are things that I'll have to give a good amount of thought to as I implement, so i'm not entirely sure what the pace will be like. 

My current goal is the next release will at the very least allow you to watch some sort of simulation happen, and hopefully be able to interact with it at some level, which will start moving us from the realm of a 3d engine towards an actual game.

[PTTG??]

So far so good over here- and I have a particularly picky graphics chipset. We'll see what happens after we add some particles and distortion and fancy shaders...

[Vactor]

Just as a warning updates are probably going to be slow for the next 2 weeks or so, as I work until friday and then am out of town for a week for the holidays.  I've also got quite a bit to mull over in regards to the mechanics of gameplay.

[Dark]

Awesome project, keep it up!

[PTTG??]

While you're mulling, consider that this design is perfect for "encapsulated" gameplay. by that, I mean that if the Airland saves are local, one could play a singleplayer mode and level up your airland a bit, then save it and switch to a multiplayer skirmish against a friend over a lan. Then somebody opens up a server on the net and you, your buddy, and 60 other players join on that for a battle Royale with cheese.

Of course, this leaves it open for cheating- players playing super-easy mode to level up for multiplayer or editing save files. But you can cheat at everything, and anyway, the whole idea is to play the game, so if you cheat, you'll just get bored of it and leave.

[Ivefan]

Considered that there's always some cheater that is not bored and untill that cheater are bored he will have ruined the game for many other players that did not cheat.

[Tahin]

Yeah. I vote for keeping everything server-side. I would like to see a "singleplayer mode" in the form of being able to host your own server and just play by yourself.

[PTTG??]

Yeah, I guess you guys are right, after all, Vactor can just host the game on his basement server farm.

How'd that work? I'm trying out that sarcasm rules thing.
I thought the main draw was the fact that you can play many games with the same, persistent Airland. Unless someone wants to host 5000+ people on an enterprise-class server system, (most likely not a realistic option- and if it was, it has it's own problems), people will loose their 'land with every new game, or they will have to bring their saves with them.

Wouldn't a better system just be to live up to the promise of the game and give moderators and hosts the option to boot cheaters?

And, come to think of it, it you cheat and give yourself an Uberairland, won't the game loft you up into the Leet levels of the atmosphere, where there are groups of players who got there the hard way, and have the experience to back it up? Cheaters (at least those who exploit the weaknesses of the encapsulated theory) would be crushed anyway since they wouldn't have the skill to back up their Airland Level.

Of course, any arguments we have is purely ornamental; this is all up to Vactor.

[Ivefan]

Yes, keeping it Server-side is can be quite demanding, perhaps it will go the same way as the browserbased persistant strategy games.
But the whole idea of the game seems to be built in a manner that requires a large number of players and not an RTS where a match is over in 30 minutes.
Also, i was under the impression that the size of the isle decided the floatlevel and there are many ways to cheat, consider that someone hack the stat of one unit so that it cannot be defeated?

[Callagan111]

Maybe keep the airland server-side and load it up for multi-player games? Then you wouldn't need something that could support 5,000 people.

[omagaalpha]

Well honest I been hearing is keep sever-side but that any one host the sever so they can play with themself if they want or have an multiplayer games between friends.

Though this assume he is going keep it free and not charge to play his game in multiplayer setting.

[Metalax]

This looks interesting, particularly if a singleplayer variant is developed.

A few ideas, some of these may have been suggested before;

Would it be possible to have key definitions for commands in a config file? I hate being unable to reassign keys to commands and it would seem simpler to have this built in from an early stage.

Some sort of border or other indicator of selected tile?

How moddable are you planning on allowing this to be? Say I wanted to build a world on the four elements (earth, air, fire and custard) would this be possible?

Flying creatures/airships could enable you to conduct raids on non-docked islands. Teleportation magics could also allow for this, either via straight transference or portals. Of course potential loot would be limited by what surviving raiders could carry back.

Mountainous tiles: having two or more adjacent mountainous tiles result in not only the central subtile of each being mountainous but the subtile that connects them as well. This would give you the potential of mountain ranges and actually make it worthwhile having tunnels/passes to pass though the mountain range. If for example mines could only be built on mountainous subtiles then multiple mountain tiles together could provide more spaces like this

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Regarding the larger islands being forced to lower altitudes or the suggestion for larger islands being repulsed to higher altitudes, I can see potential problems with both.

For the bigger = lower, as you've said that isles can gain new tiles from the ground, It would be logical that it would take less energy/effort to get these tiles from a lower altitude leading to accelerating tile gain for large isles, although this is potentially limited by a max isle size before you crash into the ground.

For the bigger = higher, following similar logic, bigger isles will stagnate as it becomes harder to gain tiles from the ground. Certainly some can be gained from raids on other players but that will soon push you up out of range of those other players.

Regarding the server-side/client-side storage of isles, perhaps something similar to the neverwinter nights sytem for characters could be used. I.e. you can always export an isle from a server to client(for use in single player) but can only import to a server if the server permits it otherwise you have to use isles stored on the server.