Tracked tank with Newton
Posted on March 5, 2008
| Sascha
Back in 2006 I tried to simulate a tracked tank in Newton using a very uncommon method. Instead of moving the tank around with forces I tried to implement an “inverted” conveyor belt material for the tracks, to achieve a more realistic movement. Sadly it didn’t work out 100% perfect back then, but recently I revisited my demo and I now got something that almost perfectly moves like a tank.
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Some Newton beta-goodness (updated)
Posted on February 22, 2008
| Sascha
There have been some internal beta-releases of the Newton Game Dynamics Engine over the last few weeks (right now it’s beta 7) and I did implement the last beta into my NewtonPlayGround (no release date yet, but soon after NGD 2.00 goes live), to see how it fares. And I must admit that it has come a long way and that most of the commercial physics solutions out there should fear it’s final release.
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Impressions from the battlefield
Posted on February 3, 2008
| Sascha
Amongst other stuff, I’ve benn mostly working on the different battlefield settings for the turn-based battles that’ll come with “Phase 2”. As of now I plan to have eight different settings (ranging from desert, to snowy, to lush and so on), and each setting also having different maps. This should bring in enough variety into the turn-base battles to make them fun to play. Here are some in-game impressions from the settings I started working on (note that they’re all still work-in-progess, especially the 3D models like trees and buoldings) :
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Skinning of military units finished
Posted on January 8, 2008
| Sascha
The title says it all. During the last few days I created all skins for the existing cast of military units and made the 3D models ready to use them, which means changing some parts of the model itself (most models now also have a lower poly-count, which is good for the turn-based battles) and unwrapping the texture-coordinates (a lot of work, it’s not easy, especially not for the more complex models).
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First new skinned military unit
Posted on December 23, 2007
| Sascha
In “Phase 1”, all military units have the same look across all nations. This is something I actually never wanted, but had to do due to time restrictions. This will be history with “Phase 2”, as (in addition to the new unique units for all nations) all military units will have different skins for each nation. Those of you that at some point did UV-mapping of a 3D-unit know that it’s not easy to create a half-way good looking skin, especially if you haven’t much experience in this field.
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Projekt "W" - Roadmap for "Phase 2"
Posted on December 10, 2007
| Sascha
On a quick note, I have uploaded a roadmap for “Phase 2”, you can take a look at it here. It lists all tasks that are still open, and the tasks I already finished. I’ll update it over time so you can see progress on “Phase 2”. Also please note that some stuff I’ve been talking about for “Phase 2” isn’t on that list yet, but it may be added later on.
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More on the manual hex battles
Posted on December 2, 2007
| Sascha
Besides other smaller things I finally implemented the A* search algorithm for the manual hex battles, which was the most important part to get the AI working. So if you battle an enemy controlled region now, the computer enemy will be able to find it’s way across the battlfield and around any obstacles towards your units. Next step is now to tweak the battle calculations, something a lot of people weren’t satisfied with.
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2000 downloads and more on "Phase 2"
Posted on November 17, 2007
| Sascha
Since it’s release on august 14th, “Phase 1” of Projekt W has been downloaded over 2000 times. Considering that turn-based games are a niche nowadays, with only a few exceptions (like the Civilization series) I’m pretty happy with the number of downloads. But what makes me even happier is the feedback I’ve gotten from those that played the game. With my recent projects, feedback was very rare, with the exception of my regular forums I also posted about my projects, but with Projekt W that changed.
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Different UI themes
Posted on October 21, 2007
| Sascha
In “Phase 1” all nations shared the same theme for the user interface, something I initially didn’t want to do but I postponed that features to “Phase 2” and just started working on this. So in the next version of Projekt “W” every nation will have it’s own distinctive theme for the user-interface, an additional way to distinguish between the different nations. So with “Phase 2” you’ll have a different 3d-background, a different sky and a different user-interface for the nation you choose, and in addition to that I also plan on having different skins for military units depending on their owning nation.
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Projekt "W" battles and some newton tidbits
Posted on October 15, 2007
| Sascha
Recently I’ve started working on the new turn-based battles that’ll come with “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. If you have played the game, you already saw the automatic battles with no possibility for the player to intervene. This will be changed, and you’ll have full control over attacking and defending regions. If a battle starts, the game will switch into the turn-based battle-mode where you firt place your units and then move them turn-by-turn (player after player) until one of the parties has been terminated.
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