What Captain_Kill has been working on...

[Captain_Kill]

...not much

Just kidding!

I've been quite busy working away on the tech demo for my game. At the moment here's what the finished demo should have:

* Standalone - You won't need Q3 or anything like that
* Q3 BSP buildings
* MD3 Models for Infantry, building parts and weapons
* Semi-Crappy graphics - I don't have the time to do decent graphics so i'll be aiming for functionality more than anything else
* Sound FX, for weapons, UI, music, (maybe) unit speech etc... basically, if i can find free SFX i'll use it.
* Potentially unlimited map size (Limited by RAM and imagination!) Maps can contain as much or as little detail as you want
* XML map format - weird but simple
* XML units and buildings
* Basic weaponry
* Hacky physics (Not enough time to use Newton)
* Infantry
* Construction Units
* SP ONLY!
* Whacked out GUI and controls...

As you can see there'll be some cool stuff but i still have a fair bit of work to do. But it is going better than what i expected

The release date should be before at least 2-3 weeks (I hope...) I may consider releasing early versions for people to try out if there's any interest. Or i could tease you all with screenshots

If people have questions, comments etc then feel free to post them here and i'll answer them. (And no flames. At least wait until the demo is released!)

[Captain_Kill]

w00t! weapons are in! splash damage and all all i need now is some physics for grenades and some enemies!

[Captain_Kill]

Yet another status update

I've made a LOT of progress!
* You can build (BSP format) buildings using construction units (Buildings are octree optomised and do have collision BUT the units don't have any collision at all! If anyone knows an easy way of doing model-to-map collision in Irrlicht then PLEASE post here!)
* There can be enemies (finally... ) Although there's still only 2 teams at once for now...
* Weapons can harm enemies and friendlies (building damage is a bit dodgy but being fixed)
* In the map file you can now specifiy units and buildings to be placed on the map
* You no longer need to hold down A to get units to attack. you can just click on them then click on an enemy, like most RTSes
* Still no physics may do hacky style physics if time
* It's easy to add new units, weapons and buildings
* Special RTS camera
* Misc stuff, eg. weapon splash damage is decreased depending on distance from the target

Soon enough this demo will be done It's looking pretty good and it makes a perfect base for RTSes that want to use Irrlicht

[thesmileman]

Screen shots? source? soemthing?

[LordNaikon]

i am very interested , too

[Captain_Kill]

Don't worry, screenshots will be coming I'm just setting up a web account to host 'em. Otherwise i would have put some up earlier Been busy coding even more stuff

[Electron]

With the number of onscreen units you're planning to have I'm not sure that you could spare the CPU time to do realistic physics with Newton or another full physics engine. I'm not really sure what your performance is going to be, i could be wrong, but something to consider

[Tyn]

Depends on how detailed the models are going to be, what texture size you use, what filtering you decide upon and the speed of Irrlicht as it develops further. You probably would still struggle with over 20 units on screen at one time.

[Robomaniac]

I'm just setting up a web account to host 'em.

Takin' a little long, eh?

Show us some screens

[Captain_Kill]

umm... how am I supposed to show screenshots when I've only just got my web account set up? Yes I will post screenshots soon, hopefully by the end of this week. But I can't promise anything because problems have come up (real life related)...

[Electron]

Depends on how detailed the models are going to be, what texture size you use, what filtering you decide upon and the speed of Irrlicht as it develops further. You probably would still struggle with over 20 units on screen at one time.

I'm hoping niko's going to start using vertex arrays soon, I think that should hopefully improve the rendering speed (maybe make it more comparable to Ogre's for instance)

[Captain_Kill]

Dark Reign 2 sometimes had hundreds of units on screen at once and it was totally 3D AND it could run on old video cards. Plus its maps were some of the biggest and the best I've seen in an RTS. But don't worry people. Irrlicht can handle what I have planned. If it can't I'll rethink and redesign but never give up

[Tyn]

The nearest game today that I have seen to that is a game I am playing currently, Ground Control II. That features quite a lot of units on screen at one time, the maps are quite big and done with a height map and it also features a lot of features like dynamic reflections of the water, so you should be alright. It would require some testing to see what you can and can't do but that comes with time Shouldn't you set up a website somewhere, like Eve Corp, so you can store your ideas/screenshots/news/downloads in one place?

[Captain_Kill]

The funny thing is, that's what i'm doing at the moment! I set up an eve-corp account and all but I'm unable to access it via FTP! I PMed Saigumi about this so hopefully when we fix this I'll be able to give you all a link. The site will be at http://www.eve-corp.com/darkreign3/

Tyn: Testing will be interesting I have another example that shows my game is possible too: Rome - Total War. It has 10000 unit battles EASILY. I'm talking about LOTR size battles in realtime with some insane levels of detail *me wants their game engine*

[Captain_Kill]

Dark Reign 3 Website Is LIVE Here: http://www.eve-corp.com/darkreign3/ ph3ar my text based website! Don't worry, it'll get better For now though there's 2 screenshots!