State of play
Alrighty then, time for my er, bi-monthly blog update. So Christmas came and went, interrupting me whilst I was very busy. I also went skiing for a week in Austria (which was ace) and I had a couple of bouts of illness. All in all it meant that progress was knocked sideways for a while and getting my head back into work was difficult. I decided to put all my efforts into the database editor so that John Jensen's Underpants and his band of merry men can get cracking on the team and player data. The editor is now going through a period of testing and final tweaks so hopefully the database will start taking shape very soon.
Over the past few weeks though I've been looking into a very neat piece of work by 'SimonH' over on the BlitzMax forums. He has basically written an add-on to BlitzMax which allows you to create 3D games using the same commands that Blitz3D uses. Yes, that's right, I'm experimenting with a 3D match engine. Here, take a look...
Ok, so it's not much to look at yet but it's early days. I was a bit wary of switching to 3D but when it comes down to it, it's no more difficult writing a 3D match engine than a 2D one. The ball still has an x, y and z location, all the match rules work in the same way and all the stats, player abilities and so on are under the hood. In fact there are many advantages to writing the game in 3D. For one, you don't have to create a new strip of sprites every time you want to add a new kit design. You simply apply a single kit image to the 3D player model. Then of course you have a range of views that you can play the match in or watch replays from...
I'll will also look at the possibilty of a player-cam so you can view the match at pitch level from just behind your player. This kind of thing has been attempted in the past, with mixed results, so it may or may not be included in the final game depending on how well it works. On top of that there is a whole load of functionality that has already been coded into the BlitzMax 3D code, such as working out the distance between two objects or detecting a collision between them. All of which saves me time.
I guess this news of a switch to 3D may come as a bit of a disappointment to some, especially the nostalgia freaks, but I really feel that the benefits both in terms of gameplay and ease of development outweigh the appeal of a 2D match engine. I should make it clear that the game won't look anything close to real life and will have more in common with Sensible Soccer 2006 than FIFA or Pro Evo, at least graphically. The depth of gameplay will be far superior to the Sensible update ;). You may also have concerns about how well it will run on a low-end system, but rest assured that I'll do my very best to make it work on the most rubbish graphics cards around.
So there you have it. The big news. Now I need to get back to writing the competition viewer so that we can see the new database in action. So i'll say goodbye with another snapshot.
Over the past few weeks though I've been looking into a very neat piece of work by 'SimonH' over on the BlitzMax forums. He has basically written an add-on to BlitzMax which allows you to create 3D games using the same commands that Blitz3D uses. Yes, that's right, I'm experimenting with a 3D match engine. Here, take a look...
Ok, so it's not much to look at yet but it's early days. I was a bit wary of switching to 3D but when it comes down to it, it's no more difficult writing a 3D match engine than a 2D one. The ball still has an x, y and z location, all the match rules work in the same way and all the stats, player abilities and so on are under the hood. In fact there are many advantages to writing the game in 3D. For one, you don't have to create a new strip of sprites every time you want to add a new kit design. You simply apply a single kit image to the 3D player model. Then of course you have a range of views that you can play the match in or watch replays from...
I'll will also look at the possibilty of a player-cam so you can view the match at pitch level from just behind your player. This kind of thing has been attempted in the past, with mixed results, so it may or may not be included in the final game depending on how well it works. On top of that there is a whole load of functionality that has already been coded into the BlitzMax 3D code, such as working out the distance between two objects or detecting a collision between them. All of which saves me time.
I guess this news of a switch to 3D may come as a bit of a disappointment to some, especially the nostalgia freaks, but I really feel that the benefits both in terms of gameplay and ease of development outweigh the appeal of a 2D match engine. I should make it clear that the game won't look anything close to real life and will have more in common with Sensible Soccer 2006 than FIFA or Pro Evo, at least graphically. The depth of gameplay will be far superior to the Sensible update ;). You may also have concerns about how well it will run on a low-end system, but rest assured that I'll do my very best to make it work on the most rubbish graphics cards around.
So there you have it. The big news. Now I need to get back to writing the competition viewer so that we can see the new database in action. So i'll say goodbye with another snapshot.
posted by newstarsoccer.com at
4:08 PM
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