Sorry had it in draft mode 
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ahah that’s super cool! Brought me back quite a few years 
How are you getting the upres/downres?
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Its a post shader quantizer. You can press 1 to up res and 2 to down res 
A little more detail:
It does a modulus of the resolution with a block step, then some adjustments based on Z.
Its a pretty simple shader. Will put it on github along with the camera system after xmas.
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A little discussion on the build of f18.
I was pleasantly surprised to find Win10, OSX and Linux builds are between 8-10MB in size. Addmittedly this is a very long way away from the original 880KB on the Amiga, but Defold has show how good it can package well. Its quite impressive.
I’ll have the Win10, OSX and Linux versions up on itch in the next hour. Feel free to download and drop in some feedback either in the comments on itch or here.
Thanks for trying it out!
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@Dziq Asked on the discord forums about the size of the San Francisco area. I thought it was around 140km square, but its not Its 240km East<->West and 270km North<->South.
The accuracy is not great - its been optimized to have a fairly small data set. Originally it was weighing in at around 200MB. Now its down around 9MB uncompressed. I hope to have weapons, targets and some missions ready over the next day. With some improvements to the map.
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Updates:
- Mig29 added
- DDG added
- Menus and Title page added.
This should be released in the coming week on itch.
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Added:
- Dashboard and hud compass
- Fixed horizon
- Initial radar dash
- Various fixes for quat code I wrote.
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Some thoughts on building f18 hornet so far…
As I have been going through building this project, a number of interesting things have happened along the way. Firstly, I ended up building a 3D export/sync tool for Defold which has made building full 3D scenes quite fun. One-click export directly to a Defold project means you dont need to be playing around with import/export settings. The additional benefit to this tool, was beginning to embed meta data into the map so I can have missions and assets completely content driven (no code needed to specifically load and manage resources). Its a nice way to iterate.
The merging of 3D with the 2D gui and different resolution outputs concerned me at the start too. I wasnt sure if Defold was going to allow many of the things I wanted to do. I was wrong… very wrong. Many of the Gui features for instance, took minutes to implement - again, very surprising.
Then there was the 3D. I have built a few demos and tools in Defold with 3D previously, and so I knew the 3D would be doable, it was a question of complexity and time. With the export tool, and a handful (around 4) of custom shaders it was quite easy to achieve. Its been very good fun and I would liken it to building 3D in Unity (with the right tools). Sure the rendering in Unity is much more complex, but Im referring specifically to the development experience, and not the user one.
One very odd issue with doing a game like this, has been how different it is to build an “old school” rendering output for modern 3D systems. Creating a wireframe styled look has been full of compromises (I considered writing a software renderer to get it more accurate). For example to replicate the Nimitz carrier I ended up using textures for some of the lines. This is because 3D meshes dont really have “coloured lines” in their structure. You could do some sort of weird shader, but it made me realize we have lost a certain capacity to do some things in modern GPU rendering - kinda sad, since the original looks so clean.
Im looking forward to putting the final touches on this little game. I hope people have enjoyed reading and playing (I hope you played it!). There will be multi-player down the track and missions, and even custom user generated content (maps and missions). So keep an eye out
Cheers,
Dave
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Hi there, I have been following your posts with keen interest. The work you have done is just amazing, your tool pure wizardry. And the game looks awesome!
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Thanks for the support. I appreciate feedback. If you have good or bad things to note or ideas for features, feel free to make suggestions (much easier to change something while its in dev ).
I hope to have a new build up this friday. There have been many additions
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There is one downside: I crash your beautiful planes all the time!
Apart from this, to me, the game looks perfect.
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The new release is up. I didnt get everything in I wanted this week.
What did make it:
- Updated cockpit dashboard
- Title and Menu screen - still needs alot of work
- First mission implementation - incomplete - weapons and ai behavior to be completed.
- Meta data exporting from Blender into maps (not visible, but makes dev much easier). Will allow custom maps, possibly user developed.
- Improved general rendering - tweaked shader normals and so on.
Known Bugs (there are lots):
- Threats point the wrong way and dont turn properly. - fixed
- If you set speed to 0 the horizon meter goes white. - fixed
- Pause doesnt pause threat objects - doh. - fixed
- Threats not removed from mission if you go to free play. - fixed
These are the bigger ones I hope to address today and release an update. I hope to get weapons on Mission 1 all working today. If not, it will be in next weeks release. Im going to start releasing every Saturday.
Hope people enjoy it. Will be more fun when you can shoot down the threats! See if you can find them in Mission1
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A little update. Added a nice “fly in” from the mission view to the cockpit.
Working on weapons and AI atm. Hopefully a mission or two by the end of this week.
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I saw this on Twitter and immediately thought of your game:
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Very nice. I love the dithered graphics - love it
Has almost a playstation or early PC feel. Nice…
@britzl - so this is really weird. I was talking with a mate on the weekend, and I used to work with a sim group that made a pretty cool engine called TITAN IM. http://titanim.net/
Anyway, my mate works for Calytrix and they bought TITAN IM (Effectively). And… the ex-owner of TITAN IM then bought MICROPROSE - guess who is publishing the game you posted above!! sooo freakin weird.
Tiny Combat Arena | MicroProse
Its a small world… it does look good fun.
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Pesky little mig. AI pusuit working well.
Weapons and mission should be ready tomorrow (Assuming life doesnt get in the way ).
Will put a new release up tomorrow regardless.
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Well. I broke everything. Doh. I refactored the general state management of the system (which was needed) but it means I now have a very broken build. Its probably added a couple of days. The benefit of the refactor is that its very easy to add new game flows and entities (of all types). This is kinda a good thing, because it means:
- addition mission 2 with the ddg
- addition of cruise missile mission
- The nimitz carrier can move around … it wont initially… but it can!
It has delayed the weapons testing - I may still get mission 1 in over the next couple of hours, but its unlikely.
Thats coding… Release probably around Wednesday… but I might push it to Friday (I have to build a large shelf in the shed next week… uggh).
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Ok. Finally back to some semblance of normality
New updates (which will be up online tomorrow):
- Missiles in and firing. Collision to be finalised tomorrow.
- Weapon control and management.
- More tweaks to the 3D models, and the Mig and F18 flight dynamics - the Migs still cheat badly
- Various debugging facilities (will be removed once some features are complete)
Things not working:
- Targeting (might be in tomorrow - possibly not)
- Mig destruction (also may make it)
- G forces number is not right
- Heading horizon can go real wonky.
- If your frame rate is low, the flight model will have a fit. Im looking at ways to make this much better (a more consistent fixed update mode for the physics)
- Mission still incomplete.
I have been playing around with bullet3d for collision. I may use it, I need to see the impact on the frame with a full mission running.
Heres a quick vid showing missile firing and missile control. Note - the missiles are set to only 300kts speed (so I can see them ). They will accel up to mach 4 like the real things.
Uggh. I just noticed the missiles are firing from their opposite positions!! Doh. Another bug to fix.
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Still not where I want to be, but many new features added. Im going to have to pause this for a couple weeks while I spend some time on the exporter. I have put up an new release (and executables).
New improvements:
- Added targeting
- Arming and firing missiles has been improved
- Mig29 has been tweaked - they are still too good. To test Mig29 press the ‘b’ key to activate one of them. They will end up on your six, and they are almost impossible to shake.
- Added improvements to HUD.
- Added warning lights - stall is working (dont get below about 105 kts)
- Gforces should be fairly accurate now.
- Collision with carrier is kinda working - technically you could land on it. But the arrestors do nothing
Things still to complete:
- bugs… a few annoying bugs.
- Collision and tracking for missile - code is in, but need to finish off.
- Landing strips - need to add airports and landing capability.
- Mig29 missiles - Im not sure I want to give them some … they will be really hard to beat
- More improvements to f18 model - inertia is still too messy.
Here’s a little vid I made. Hope you enjoy it - please go play it!
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