Updates, etc...

Hey folks! Been a while since the last real update and I think those of you who actually read this blog deserve a new post :)

Cybertronic Armageddon...

Since my last post, a lot the rendering had to be re-written for the sole purpose of speed. We had it running on multiple machines and achieved 32 fps on my main rig. Pretty good, eh? Well, it dropped to a sluggish 5-6 fps on one of our designer's rig. (At his request, his name will not be mentioned)

So I cleaned up a lot of the code and cut out a lot of unnecessary gunk. Then it ran at around 26 fps on his machine and remained at around 32 on mine.

Currently, I'm writing a pretty hefty bit of code that takes all of our resources and packs them into a WAD/Pak-like format. (If you're not familiar, the WAD format was used in Doom-Quake 1 and the Pak format has been used in many many games in the past decade)

As for any sort of release, we're gonna go with "When it's done!" for right now.

SWORDS...

Ah yes, SWORDS. My own project.

Since my last post, I've gotten tons and tons of work done on SWORDS.

For starters, it's actually playable! It's no longer a glorified scrolling-engine! Whoo! For now, the enemies are just poorly drawn tanks and little unanimated stick man who explode into many little chunkies :) Good use for my particle system, yeah?

I'd love to talk to you about new technical things in SWORDS, but it's mostly just been pretty simple functions going in here in there. And yes, I'll admit, I've been playing the game more than working on it. But's only because I'm having so much fun with this game now that it's actually playable! And really, when you play your game more than work on it, that's a very good sign that other people will enjoy too.

Another cool thing I've been working on for SWORDS is the music element. My vision is to have some pretty heavy riffage going on at a lower volume during the normal gameplay and when things get really hairy, up the volume a bit and really unleash the fury (in the words of Yngwie Malmsteen).

I'm also setting a "When it's done!" date for SWORDS. As you know, I'm awful at giving release dates for my projects and I'd hate to promise anything.

A quick word about the projects on the backburner before I sign off and get back to work...

As of right now, they're not being worked on much at all and as much as I'd love to be able to do work on those games too, I just dont have time between working on Cybertronic Armageddon and SWORDS. So the official word is that they will remain mostly untouched until my other projects are finished and out the door.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned!