Wooow!!! 
This is much more than a remake, it’s a giant project!!! 
Thanks for your answers!
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Hey @Domenec - I hear your concerns with stipple. Yes I was originally going for true Amiga replication, but then ran into some issues. I’ll try to clarify them so it makes some sense:
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Stipple - Because of the extreme view distance, the view plane is clipped as a “frustum” so its a hard square line, and when you are 30,000 ft up, this looks harsh. On the original f18.. it was all line drawing to screen, and it didnt have this it had a fairly clean “curved looking” horizon. In much of reproducing this, I had to sort of make sacrifices (I really would have preferred to do a full software render like the old Amiga one, but thats even more work
). So.. the stipple exists, to mask some of that. Sorry.. and I agree with your assessment. -
Menu - I did have the original menu, but things changed. I wanted to make an engine, that allows for making F15 Strike Eagle, F16 Falcon, A-10 Tank Killer and even M1A1 Battle Tank. Some of my favourite sims from the Amiga. And after spending time in these games again (I have a pretty complete collection of original Amiga Microprose Amiga games) I wanted to have more of the feel of the old school “start in the office” type game setup and mission/progression. The ReadyRoom is a development of that. The stipple on the Menu, is intended to give a low res look and feel, while also having a slightly “modern” flowing interface - many of the older games are not great to navigate
Hope that makes sense. So its not a complete remake of the original, but the aim to have most of the look and feel. There will be significant gameplay additions too. Since the original had maybe a dozen missions tops (if you include the multi stages within a mission). Im hoping the old game ‘feel’ is still there, I think the flight is pretty close, and the art will still evolve over the coming months too.
I hope to get this to Steam over the coming year, into Early Access, so I can grow/develop some of these elements based on feedback from people like yourself and others.
The end goal, is to have a series of games with the same system, networked so you can play different games in the same world. Think of it like being able to play CounterStrike and Microsofts Flight Sim in the same world .. but retro Amiga style
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Still updating a little here as I get my new worldbuilder operational so I can complete the mission building side of things. Heres a little vid. Nearly all the capability that I had in the Defold version.. is now operational in my sokol-luajit version
Im hoping to start belting out mission content this weekend. And then look at integration of some new features Ive added to the data set into f18… and then … well.. bug fixes.. qa.. and so on.. and then hopefully Steam Early Access..
So I dont get too ahead of myself.. I expect this is a few months away still. Theres been too many gotchas each little step I take lately. If it comes sooner, great, but I wont expect that.
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This is really cool editor!
So you’ve built an editor in another engine to build your defold game?
I have a question: which platform do you target? Will it be only desktop or android or web too?
Because I really want to play that on my Anbernic console!!
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Its built from luajit + sokol. Here:
and I used an editor called lite to create a derivative called dim
The dim editor is all open source MIT.
The reason I did this is complicated, but I’ll summarize it so its not too long and dreary discussion:
- I ran into many issues with Defold as an application tool for something like a world editor. Ive been building apps with it for a while now, but there are window and ui features I really needed.
- I built pretty much all of the worldbuilder in luajit like code (just in case I needed to move to a diff app env) so it ported across pretty well.
- It used nuklear for the ui which Ive been using a fair bit in other apps so I can do reasonably complex ui layering and such.
- I wanted to also try out my sokol-luajit framework on a “real” application
- I wanted to be able to target Mac, Linux and Win desktop with minimal platform specific code
The editor itself for the worldbuilder has script editing, file management, 3d object preview, image preview and so on. This editor will be a deployable tool on Steam Workshop so people can make their own theaters and missions.
And because the whole editor is made in luajit - adding and adjusting the editor to suit your needs is pretty easy. Ive even leveraged lite plugins and themes in dim, and extended them. Also added background threading and more as well (this is in dim).
Theres still alot more to do, but its very usable and reasonably stable too.
If you do decide to use dim and want to do something like the worldbuilder tool, Id be happy to share some plugin work there
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