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Flexman

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  1. Flexman
    [NTS] Left Upper button. Next To Shoot is the ubiquitous video game cycle through targets. Or TAB target if you play MMOs.
     
    I've touched upon how radar works in this blog entry from August - Radar - A Discussion
     
    The Apache can automatically selecting priority targets based on some sort of criteria. This short blog post touches on how I've elected to do this. Again if you're familiar with the 1996 classic, Janes Longbow 2 there's nothing unfamiliar here.
     
    The TSD (tactical situation display) collects data from visual cues (look at object), radar and TADS (again look at and store). A linked-list of 3D entities is stored and sorted by range. The list is re-sorted by what type of object it is.
     
     



    Target object sorting as follows:
     

    Fast Movers
    Helicopters
    Air Defence with Radar
    Air Defence
    Armour
    Wheeled
    Aircraft normally only show up in air targeting modes. The image above has one on the GTM Radar which is a BUG but that helicopter (another Apache) is on the ground.
     
    Then these are sorted by range.
     
    The [Cycle Target] key (default: TAB) steps through the list. This is different to the [Padlock Cycle] key (default: LCTRL F4) which applies to your head view and steps outward through visual targets sorted by range only. Sometimes the nearest isn't closest to the centre of view.
     
    I'll touch on how I've programmed the game internally. A linked list of objects that are picked up in the FCR footprint are added to a TSDcontact list if the entity pointer (an entity is a vehicle) is not already present.
     
     
    The game maintains separate lists from sensors and a Tactical(Situation Display) list which is used for referencing entities on the TSD. It also allows for messages received by the THelicopter message handler to add entities to the TSD when the player presses the 'ABCC download' button to download shared targets from a shared digital battlespace (fancy name for a simple array). To upload your TSD list you press the 'ABCC upload' function. I will think about expanding this to work on several channels in later versions.
     
    Tactical Sensor Lists
     
    The TSD used in our Apache vehicle is simply an instance of the TacticalSensor class which is used for all AI but the inputs are wired up differently.
     
     



    These inputs are updated when in use, typically triggered by a player pushing keys. I've colour coded the inpus accoring to type. FCR is radar type area scan, high volume, Orange (HMD) is using the Mk1 eyeball, TADS in blue is an optical sensor (longer range eyeball) and Red is known data from external source, which you can imagine as a radio or some data modem.
     
    As potentially there might be a hundred active AI vehicles in close proximity having all of these using all kinds of sensors, doing lots of volume searches and entity queries is woefully inefficient. Fortunately the natural hierarchical structure of unit can be simply used to make things much more efficient.
     
    Since entities are grouped into Formations which share waypoints and mission targets, they share a common awareness. The same TacticalSensor class we use in our Apache. Only this time the inputs come from the different entities in the formation. Some will have an active sensor system, some are unable to supply input.
     
     



    They periodically perform a sensor scan (interleaved to spread the load) to refresh their group TacticalSensor list.
     
     
    Oh NO! The MIG! Target Priority
     
    I'm sorting the linked list when updated based on criteria that I want based on experience from other games of this type. Worked for them, works for me.
     
    In LB2 a Mig was triggered at random if flying over 250 ft. If not spotted quickly it was almost certain virtual death. To give these a high priority I added a Priority field to the SensorClass and arranged the icon IDs (1,2,3,4 etc) so by default the Priority value can be taken from the icon ID then modified later. Now the most dangerous entities can be simply sorted on this field but we could for example assign an entity as a "Primary Target" and add +10 to the Priority to have it automatically sit at the top of the TAB target list.
     
    Very handy for scripting tutorials and the like. For example we can now spawn a virtual waypoint marker on a target range and command the avionics to give top priority.
     
    So whatever the first entry on the linked list is, that's the NTS object, the second in the list would be the ANTS.
     
     
    PFZs
     
    Another often asked about feature in Combat-Helo is the ability to create PFZs. Which is something that only applies to the Hellfire missile system which is coming in a later update as we've not yet implemented it. However our Tactical list makes this a trivial matter to implement. We have a static list of entities, mouse input on the TSD map and mouse driven events. Everything needed to add PFZs and NFZs.
     
     



     



    Correct weapon symbology coming soon
    Whole HMD needs a going over.
     

     
    Source
  2. Flexman

    Camp....insert name here

    By Flexman,

    AD has been working on a new FOB which will be the "other" main camp you'll be deployed at during the course of the campaign.
     

    It's a triangle arrangement used by some forward operational bases. Here the CH47s are ready to be deployed.
     

     

    And finally..
     

    Don't have a name for the camp yet.
     
    Source
  3. Flexman
    Another little progress update but first a diversion. Yesterday I took some time-off to brush up on gaming skills and really enjoyed Disney Interactive's "Split Second", one of the few car games I keep going back to since I typically find racing games tedious (lack of skill and patience on my part). However this game is almost pure adrenaline and I find my self coming back to try and shave off 2 seconds while avoiding exploding aircraft and collapsing control towers. Split Second is actually the perfect arcade car game IMO and probably much overlooked in a busy genre. It screams for a post race replay option though.
     
    Enough digression. Not much to show yet as I've only spent an hour or two on it this morning, I hadn't put in the VR cockpit data for the TSD buttons so went and put that data in. Had some color issues down to a mix of LE and OpenGL and sorted out the MPD scale for rendering the currently loaded nav map image.
     
    TSD stands for Tactical Situation Display
     
    It is the most complicated system in the helicopter. Which I will strip down to the bone for the first release otherwise I'll be at it for months. The TSD presents a 'Gods eye' view of your helicopter and your environment. Downloaded target information, friendly unit sightings, route navigation and more is presented here. It is a moving map system that can be frozen, panned and scaled.
     
    I need to slim it down into something manageable. Also there are many functions that are desirable to use in the command HQ tent planner and also other helos in future.
     
    Our TSD will feature
     
     

    Fire zones (aka PFZs, old school but everyone will want them) Route editing Threat, target and hazard objects Nav and Attack mode (PHASE) Freeze, panning, zoom Crewman cursor acquisition, click on map and point will be made virtual in the helmet display.
     

    So there's a few things to do but also shared with the ground planning system on the HQ tent computer.
     
    For the base map, it's using the TTerrain() object on the loaded terrain entity (I needed to cast it to get access to the height and normal map data otherwise it's considered a TEntity). A shader converts the normal map into an intensity multiplier ( float intensity = dot( normal , lightdir ) ) for the colourmap, multiply the diffuse and intensity and voila you get a shaded relief map just like the one in the Leadwerks editor (except I don't need the realtime light position and colour that the editor uses).
     
    To this I'll add a colour lookup table from the heightmap and possible some contour lines. I've not used an "lut" function (look up table) in a shader yet so it will be a fun little exercise. Contour lines could be done by setting output colour if the heightmap value is a multiple of 10 (meters) or whatever value I pass to the shader. This just colours the pixel if the value is in that multiple, steep terrain might bypass that value so results will be a bit patchy depending on the source data. I'll look into a proper contour function.
     
    Keep in mind the heightmap in terrain doesn't have a flipped y axis.
     
    Source
  4. Flexman

    ENG rebuilt

    By Flexman,

    Been pretty ill this last week, progress has been sporadic. I took time out to rebuild the engine code so it's now the same for all Apaches, AI and player alike.
     
    Pilot feedback from screen-shots and videos also allowed me to rebuild the whole engine start-up and ENG display page. Automatically switches to in-flight mode. Things blink, change colour, are boxed appropriately. Couple of bits left to do, the biggest headache was dealing with all the fiddly scale changes and adding new code to simulate power transfer which needs some attention. Here's the page with some values thrown in to show some extremes. The whole thing is worthy of a tutorial video sometime.
     

    Still have some parts to add to the engine simulation, oil, temp. Rotor speed and torque needs values from the new flight model to work properly but essentially it's just polling values from the helicopters state. Oh another thing I didn't put back in, the actual transient timers, these are counters that show how long you're flying outside of normal parameters which can shorten component life or lead to failure.
     
    The new alert system which I also had to overhaul is ready to drop the betty samples in en-mass.
     
    Will tidy this up tomorrow, look at where we are with the new flight model and see about the Leadwerks 2.40 engine upgrade. The PHY situation is not bad as I thought since we're not using LE for vehicle physics.
     
    Source
  5. Flexman
    The HMD of the new MTADS Apache comes with a number of 'virtual' items displayed to the pilot. The currently selected waypoint is made virtual in cruise and tranistion modes, the waypoint position is marked with a flat bottomed diamond with a dot in the centre. See the take-off point (W00) on the image below.
     
    Flying with the flight path marker inside this symbol and you should head right to that spot.
     
    Waypoint marker
     

     
    Source
  6. Flexman
    While waiting on fixes for the flight-model and control inputs, putting some game into the game we talked about ranges and how performance measuring was going to work. In addition we wanted to add a little variety which required working mob AI.
     
     
    So nothing fancy but I managed to rustle up a simple finite state machine FSM to get some tanks and cars running around. Our design uses a group formation system (a group is a number of individual units that share common logic, e.g a tank platoon) and if you've ever used Missioneer you'll be familiar with the concept.
     
     
    Currently tanks are driving around a small test tool I'm using to test the module, switching formations, revving engines, exhaust smoke. Performance is king so updates are interlaced, no vehicle physics are required so animation suffices.
     
     
     



    Each group member has a goal pivot, when the formation changes the individual vehicles seek their pilot according to their driving behaviour. All the pivots are parented to a master pivot controlled by the group. This way you just need to update the group position (e.g movement orders to x/y) and the rest takes care of itself.
     
    We can look into expanding the states later when we want them to do more complicated things, and do that on a per unit basis. Tank gunners will want to turret to target when attacking, manpads will simply turn to face. Same state but slightly different logic per unit. And this can be done in LUA level by setting the models "fsm_mode" key. That makes less work for me and gives Dave the artist some nice toys to play with. At the end of the day I at least have a tile based tank engine to play with. I'll throw up a video.
     
    For the gunnery range we don't need anything demanding; some AI road following traffic, people in groups and the odd vehicle following a set of waypoints. Nothing spectacular or difficult there. That hardest part is turning the 3D geometry of the road network into a navigation grid. Then your mob groups need to know if they are supposed to be following the road or their own formation (switching as they move from one to the other).
     
     
    Roads
     
    The one problem I have in getting AI traffic running around is putting together a nav-grid I can work with. Our roads are large models (2 or 3 assorted) that are built in 3D Max using a height deformation modifier (the same height-map used to build terrain layers). And it mostly fits. I think we need to flatten it out so only the surface triangles can be read and turned into usable data.
     
    Speaking of art, "Mossie" has been given some love.
     
     



     
    Further reading:
    FSM gate scandal - Why they are old hat
     
     

     
    Source
  7. Flexman
    Dave completed more of the survival equipment, looking really good. The concept is simple, if you need to perform an emergency landing and leave your helo, the CSEL can be activated and will mark the location on everyone's tactical situation display. The signal flare may be use to mark your position visually.
     

    More up close pictures in the SimHQ thread here.
     
     
     
     
    I spun off a new shader to do the MPD video mixing. The symbology layer needed to mask the video layer using its alpha channel which was a five min job.
     
     
     
    Ideally I'd like to pass a "brightness" value to the shader but as the material is used for five displays which have their own settings, the symbology level is set by the alpha value.
     
     
    Here's the completed shader mixing sources and masking.
     
     

     
     

     
    Source
  8. Flexman
    Spent a lot of time today house cleaning. No not code, literally the house. It's amazing what teenagers can do to your treasured Monty Python DVD collection, it's not funny. Stop that, it's silly.
     
    I over-complicated the map drawing and stripped it down. Added functionality to the TSD page for controlling the map scale. I'm happy that it will work with 3rd party maps too. Oh I just noticed in the screen shots the scale index is off by one.
     

    The green colour is from the low elevation range but I blend some of the terrain colour too which I should perhaps leave out since it gives a false impression. I'll add a button on the page to cycle map modes rather than have to go through a sub page perhaps. Otherwise it might get (more?) confusing. Hey, Longbow 2 had one button to cycle through NAV/ATK and BOTH....and no map unless you flew the Kiowa (I think).
     

    So tonight I'll add the aircraft datum (the helo symbol on the map focal or point of rotation) and begin adding the glyphs for the waypoints and other symbols that we want to appear on the map. Should finish adding the waypoint data while I'm at it (ETA etc). I can't work out endurance time yet as the fuel data isn't yet present. It varies with payload and altitude, there's a table in the A model dash-10.
     
    Would like to have an elegant algorithm to approximate it.
     
    Source
  9. Flexman

    HMD flight symbology

    By Flexman,

    More flight symbology added today. Raining almost non-stop and my cars wiper motor has failed, so wasn't going anywhere.
     

    We added a couple of items that make it possible to do some precise flying.
     

    Velocity Vector Acceleration Cue The Velocity Vector is the blob on the stick that originates from the cross in the centre of the HMD. This is a representation of the direction and speed of your aircraft. Think of these as "top down" views with your aircraft in the middle, forwards movement is up, sideslip left and right. It's scaled so that the top of the HMD (below the heading tape) represents 60 knots. This scale changes depending on the mode but for now I'll stick to the TRANS (transition) which is the most used.
     
     
    Floating around the end of the "stick" is a circle, that's the Acceleration Cue which shows your helicopters acceleration. Generally the blob on the stick will steer towards the Acceleration Cue as you manoeuvre the aircraft.
     
    Using these cues it's possible to perform some precision flying and arrest unintended movement before it becomes a problem. Learning how to read these will improve slow speed manoeuvres approaches and landings.
     
    I also changed the rate of climb indicator to a solid pointer, slip ball is currently being added. And basic waypoints and steering cues will probably be done this weekend. Especially if the weather is still lousy.
     
    Source
  10. Flexman

    Internal views

    By Flexman,

    Added some fixed internal views for 'quick' look downs and drama shots.
     
    Wiper dash...this has a little vibration.

     
    Pilot displays...

     
    Over shoulder...

     
    Pilot engine controls (startup and lighting)...CP/G similar (not pictured)

     
    Co-pilot target panel (TEDAC)...

     
    I think a 'foot-well' cam will come when we get a pilot model in game so we can see the crew looking around. And I think we could use an ADI/Comms panel view. Feel free to suggest a few more.
     
    Source
  11. Flexman
    Actually the rotor brake system. I'm not really clear what would happen if the rotor brake is off when you move the power levers from the Idle to Fly position. Procedures say DONT, return the switch back to on until the engines are at flight speed (approx 100%). Once the engines are happily settled at flight speed flip the brake off and the rotors begin to turn. Watch the rotor RPM gauge on the MFD until it's in the yellow close to 100% then you're good to go.
     
    Conversely, I'm not too clear what damage might occur when then rotors are at 100% and the rotor brake switch is is turned on. A lot of heat and grinding metal noise? A nasty letter from the Boeing company? Currently I just have it decay the RPM to zero under a constant until I get a better answer.
     

     
    I added more realism options to the config.xml for control over individual items like startup, targetting, flight model.
     
    OOOH, I just remembered why I was really happy today. AD fixed the road physics problem by using displacement mapping in 3DS MAX. So no hacky hacks may be required for road driving afterall. Well done sir. I knew I was feeling buoyant for a reason. If you want to know what the hacky hack means, the road surface was aligned to the terrain with a vertex shader which moves each point on the model level with the ground (relatively) but physics engines don't know what vertex shaders do to geometry, as far as they are concerned the model is unchanged. So there's a disconnect between what the physics engine updates and what the 3D card renders on screen. Using displacement mapping with our heightmap as source, the road meshes are baked at the right elevations to fit, the physics model and visual model are now united and traffic may now use the roads without any problems.
     
    So, way to go AD. Another cracking solution.
     
    Source
  12. Flexman
    My Dennis Norden bit. Out-takes from today. Most programmers we have a few wilco tango foxtrot moments from time to time. Here's a few from today. Starting with "How not to render lights to a buffer."
     

    The canopy glass makes for an interesting effect. Next, an interesting effect you REALLY don't want to see....ARRRRGHHHH....
     

    This is me getting a transform wrong. You can almost see the join between the high detail cockpit and the Apache exterior model. Mind the gap? I did fix this by correcting the TForm and resetting the camera back to the origin. Still have the lighting to correct but it's almost ready. The cockpit is rendered after the world, the zbuffer cleared and the pit is drawn at the world origin so zbuffer and floating point error is nil. All games have hacks to make them work, didn't you know?
     
    Speaking of hacks I highly recommend "Game Coding Complete" by Mike McShaffry. Full of funny developer anecdotes and a brief history of Ultima which is fascinating. As well as many best-practice approaches to game programming.
     
     
    Moving on, Dave was back to polishing the textures and models. More AO baking, backfaces, specular tweaks. Here's a selection of views from today. (Leaving out the rude England footy twitter jokes, some of which were priceless).
     
     

     



     
    Source
  13. Flexman
    My wife reminds me that it takes typically two weeks after each engine upgrade to get things working as intended.
     
    There's the odd "caps sensitive" issue in some of the LUA source. And a quick change of fw.Main to fw.main in Renderer to get ll the helo/sky scripts working. Rebuilding the lua-gluefunctions and making sure not residue from the previous version was causing problems.
     
    All that's left is handling changes of appearance and shaders....and re-serialising all of the 3D work.
     
    Performance is fantastic almost doubling frame-rates in our vegetation heavy scenes. The vegetation rewrite has been well worth the effort, with collisions and lighting changes. More varied lighting does a lot to reduce the uniform appearance at range. At least I hope the lighting variations are intentional and not some shader problem. The evening skies came out purple in the new version for some reason, now I really like this colour. It reminded me right away of the
    . Nailed the colour palette. 
    The downside is the need to re-export all the 3D work. The cockpit simply doesn't work anymore except for a couple of buttons. Interestingly the weapon arming only 50% works too, that uses linepicks also. And the upfront controller material has a normal map smeared over it. I'll have to look at the materials for these, make sure it's not using one.
     
    And the occlusion culling is a little problematic. Half of the cockpit vanishes at certain angles and the helipad and radio towers vanish, and when they do other objects tend to go with them. Those are typically large objects, the helipad is often positioned so it intersects the terrain. It's all very strange and interesting doing these updates
     
    I'm hoping a lot of problems are just down to the need to fix up the 3D assets. Some behaviours have changed, Coronas, I used as hazard lights are so dim they are hard to see. Also the sun as represented by a Corona, now seems to have been flung from the heavens and lets you 'walk' around it. But is still rendered in the background world.
     
    In the mean-time while I go through those assets I'll continue work on the current 'stable' build. I've added config options to set the server and port address with an 'auto join' flag to start the client mode after game load. The 'radar' dish (pictured above) is another interactive object that gives access to multiplayer options. Start Server / Client Connect and an as yet unimplemented address-book.
     
    I'd like to thank AndyGFX for his posts on migration issues past and present that helped enormously, and also Macklebee, Red Ocktober and others that have also been posting their issues and solutions.
     
    Source
  14. Flexman
    Formally announcing the foundation of the legal entity Tricubic Studios Ltd. developers of Combat Helo, associated content and iPhone/iPad games / applications.
     
    This doesn't change very much, it grants us a recognised identity for trading, taxation and investment. Plus we get a chance to develop an insipid company website. We plan to have our first mobile platform release ready for the summer. More details on that in a few weeks. Blog updates will continue at this location.
     
    Source
  15. Flexman

    Bogged Down - Chin Up

    By Flexman,

    I apologise for lack of updates, long time since the last one (weeks it seems although I have two unpublished ones which are no longer relevant). I've been avoiding online spaces during this time, work has been bogged down with the multitude of tasks not just relating to the Combat Helo game.
     
    I'm working on the flight model again this week so don't expect any updates in a while. I did get started on an updated FAQ and will publish that ASAP. Lots of things happen around this time of year with concerts and church services, when you have a musical family there's a lot of evenings taken up with those.
     
    So I don't know when we'll have something to show for all this work. It'll happen when it happens, there's no budget to finish and I've got huge debts that require me to stop at some point and take time off to do other work.
     
    On the plus side I did get a nice pressie from one of my brothers which is going to buy a nice cheap car (sensible, used K car but importantly has a working HEATER, a nice to have feature for UK winters). Something to be said for being happy just by virtue of being in a car that's warm.
     
     
    "Do you know what’s killing Western democracy, George? Greed, and constipation. Moral, political, aesthetic. The economic repression of the masses institutionalized." - Bill Haydon from John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974.

     
    Source
  16. Flexman
    Dave sent me his first bridge work for crossing the Death Star trench across our terrain.
     
    Pictured below is an editor scene showing it in place with some of our other 3D assets rolling across it.
     
    Five brickwork textures were used to break up the surface detail with colour matching used to make it blend with the terrain textures.
     

     
    Last night I finished playing around with the cockpit night lighting thanks to Bushmaster and his reference photos and nudging to fix the colours. Three rotary controls by the pilots left side control levels of the panel lights, dome light and backlighting. Having an little issue with the backlighting levels as I'm setting the levels by sending a uniform float to adjust levels of the glow shader, with mixed results, I'm doing something wrong.
     

    Have some details on the MPDs and navigation to sort out. The direct-to menu to add on the "M" key, rocket submode and the master arm on/off. I've borrowed some nice bullet code that I plan to adapt to the chain gun when these pages start driving me crazy again.
     
    The next month will have me looking at our iPhone game which is a way of supporting longer term development by using existing 3D assets in a two-minute finger shooter. We've been experimenting with the dev kits just to get a feel for the workflow and HID considerations. Our game is not ambitious, take-it out, play, spank some bad-guys. The platform is capable of a whopping 6k-8k polys with around 30 draw calls per frame, which is a little smaller than the typical 250k-500k poly scenes in Combat-Helo.
     
    Here's a parting shot of the CP/G station with panel lights and backlighting, again with the mock TADS image from another game (image supplied by Gary Wright). Hopefully it won't be too long before we get ours in place.
     

     
    Source
  17. Flexman
    AD made some atmospheric screen-shots when playing with lighting and environment settings. SimHQ Diary
    Starting with the only major airbase in the region. AD is responsible for some Strike Fighter mod aircraft models, one of which is a Tornado GR1 (?). Which he's used here. I don't think these will be in the game unless we get permission from the original mod maker to use it. But it does look nice.
     

     
    This is our early version of Camp Stone complete with a half-court basket. You wouldn't have a pair of M1A1s on the doorstep but they do look interesting.
     

    Poster child..."never alone"
     

    We have been hard at work on getting a simple flying demo ready for a public showing, we've had to make it playable and gave me an excuse to put some more time into the mark 1 flight model which is a much simpler easy to fly model for general consumption. This approximates the mass of the helicopter, rotor thrust from engine power and semi coordinated turns. The landing gear desperately needs some joints to make it easier to land but I don't think I'll have time for that.
     
    Following the road north our of Camp Sone you eventually approach Herat, our version is perhaps more idyllic taxi-free version, and perhaps more green to make efficient use of geometry. Enough to fill enough area to represent a small city.
     

    No orange sunset here. Looks much more natural.
     

    Freecam mode lets you move anywhere you want to take snapshots. Contemplating broadcasting a regular call to prayer from the towers at the appropriate local game time.
     

     
    Nice choice of sky. You can see what we had to do to the rivers to prevent a lot of clipping and z-buffer fighting. Hence the "Death Star Trench" name we use.

     
    Source
  18. Flexman
    It was over a year ago we were notified that some of the models we had purchased from Dexsoft might possibly have been stolen. After a period of investigation the probability was quite high this was the case and Dexsoft contacted customers to offer new packs. However months later I was unable to get a reply about these replacements and only in November when doing a review of outstanding assets and licensing we had to either press again or do a re-build.


     

    Dave elected to take it upon himself to do a rebuild and not wanting to have to reposition every building adopted the same dimensions with the exception of adding much needed 'basements' (a basement is just an extrusion of the exterior wall so that it will sink under terrain so no gaps are left if the centre of the model is positioned on uneven ground.


     

    Originally the models were made for use in first-person games and LOD0 had details such as railings and girders. Dave completely built (from scratch) versions complete with new textures and made them more efficient at the cost of some detail. An original building had 5213 polygons, after a rebuild only 728 polys (which is iPhone territory).


     



    Original stolen model on left, rebuilt from scratch on right
    Scratch build on left, original on rightAny small indie developer takes a leap of faith when purchasing models from 3rd parties, you don't know where they came from or their history. In this instance we got bitten as did the 3rd party which handled the situation well (but it would have been nice to have the replacements anyway). No harm was done, anyone using or releasing games with 3rd party content be aware.
     
    Thanks Dave for once again being on the ball.
     
     
    Update
    Started work on the updater again.This is based in part on the Leadwerks SDK downloader which is pretty much everything I needed given a little twist and a slice of lemon. Hopefully some of you will be seeing this in the near future. At some point we'll add user names and a regcode system prior to any content downloads (these will not be required to play).
     
    As much as you might want to click on it, you can't yet
    With any luck the 'one click' update system will let us add rolling improvements at the cost of occasionally annoying you with a download when an update is available. I just want to be able to push one button, get the latest changes to any content I own and go.
     
    Support for different builds (content)

     
    Source
  19. Flexman
    At no point before have I felt so much under pressure as I do now. Hence the lack of blog updates. The new physics engine is still being problematic but these are issues relating to -ff-math and tracking down typos, the odd logic error and other errors that occur when programming.
     
    In a flight model, such errors result in numbers quickly blowing up, which they do. So I'm currently tracking down each issue, one at a time until, eventually, it should just all click into place.
     
    I finally configured my Combat-Helo input map for my Saitek X52 and apart from my shocking oversight of an inverse axis option it was a nice experience using the old mk1 flight model. It's frustratingly hard to get up to speed and it still flies in a nose down attitude. I may fix those points and retain it as a 'rookie' flight model.
     
    All this debugging and testing is taking up all my time, the goal is to have it in place for the show on the 28th. It's looking hit-and-miss atm. We're supposed to be working on some FSX stuff as well but that's had to take a back seat due to holidays and other things. Hopefully will be able to spend some time looking at that in two weeks time.
     
    AD did well finding an OK solution to paved roads. They work, efficient but they require a lot of work.
     
    To quote...


    Just to elaborate a bit. The key component is a vertex shader that takes the Z value (height) from the terrain and applies that to the Z value of the road vertices. The road itself is built in 3dsmax as a primitive mesh, a meter high and 20 meters wide. It's flat and the vertex shader sets the height at the end of each section of road.
     
    40960M's of road can be bought at the cost of about 2500 polys which is outstanding in comparison to the native road system which costs tens of thousands of polys for short distances, doesn't work most the time, creates massive slow-downs, and flickers like a 1950's TV in a washing machine.
     
    The only real down-side is the amount of work it takes creating the road mesh itself. It took me about an hour to lay down 10KM's, debug the path and smooth-out the ground underneath it. Therefore it probably won't be a suitable method for the dirt roads. I would add that the native road system is fine for small areas, it's perfect for small FPS style levels but non-instanced geometry will always have a huge performance hit if there's a lot of it.
     
    Using static meshes for the road system makes it easy for collision testing to flag "onRoad=True" and the model can use this value to adjust sound and emitter properties. For example, running across sand will sound different to running across a road surface. More dust will be kicked up. Those things are more complicated to do using texture splatting or a giant texture overlay to represent these kinds of features.
     
    Here are some pics of the roadworks.
     



     
    Source
  20. Flexman

    Drivers again

    By Flexman,

    Seem to be having performance issues with the new nVidia drivers 257.21
     
    I noticed the reported OpenGL version has done up from 3.2.0 to 3.3.0
    Repeated launching over an hour will sap the frame rate to around 1, yes one. No apparent memory leakage. But other games are fine. Also the editor will remain unaffected unless importing the Apache model where it will sometimes exhibit a black skin.
     
    So there's some combination of factors I need to understand, the current Apache model with it's recent material updates and animated wipers and the new nVidia drivers.
     
    I wouldn't mind so much except it's keeping me of adding new content right now.
     
    I also spawned an LE 2.32 build to test, which on a small map runs 50% faster, on the full sized Afghan theater it actually runs slower. I'm at the point where I'd like to take a shotgun to my PC. The laptop has almost double the performance of my desktop PC which makes no sense, same build, engine and 257.21 drivers.
     
    *sigh*
     
    Source
  21. Flexman
    Dave's been busy building the unsung hero of Afghanistan and other operations around the world.
     
    Rolf: Can you tell what it is yet? ;-)
     
    It's a non-flyable but will feature prominently in the game as you'll be tasked to provide armed escort for supply, insertion and extraction missions.
     
    Much time has been spent correcting smoothing errors. Brilliant work. We'll be adding the same functionality to the rotors and rear door using LUA scripts. This morning we were looking at the various flavours of cockpit, of which there are many. Never the same cockpit twice. I thought the Apache tandem cockpit was complex. The amount of work required to make this a flyable is out of the question right now. It's a level of complexity rivalling the Apache and a candidate for future expansion.
     
    Source
  22. Flexman
    Fingers crossed the weather is not too bad tomorrow at Gilze-Rijen air force base. Our man in the Netherlands is prepared for a day of audio recording for the Apache and Chinook.
     
    Good luck Reck. Weather is pretty lousy here, high winds, low temps and rain, sat images and forecast is so-so. Expect wet weather and don't forget the 'dead cat'
     
    Source
  23. Flexman

    C-SCOPE

    By Flexman,

    While Dave is away hopefully keeping his head above water (all those Bear Grylls survival videos should come in handy) I've got not much else to do except worry and get on with my to-do list.
     
    C-SCOPE was something I remember saying wouldn't make it but turned out to be a freebie since everything was available to simply drop it in.
     
    [C-SCP] button on the FCR page overlays FCR target symbols on TADS video and HMD. Makes finding those hard to see vehicles a piece of cake.
     
     



     
    C-SCOPE FCR symbols presented on the HMD
    ref: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/ah-64-mfp-1-33.htm
     
    The High Action Display is currently getting an update for the ACQ interaction (I've tried really hard to work through what this does and how I can gamify it to make something both usable and understandable by normal people).
     
    Also I'm overjoyed at getting news of our ATC audio recordings and looking forward to playing with that.

     
    Source
  24. Flexman
    Just wanted to report this to the blogosphere. I'm not a Wow player (I have an account but I don't play very often) but my wife friends across several raiding guilds play from time to time.
     
     
    They've all been subjected to hacks. And I think the leak is at Blizzard.
     
     
    Over the past few weeks, everbody we know, including friends of friends have had their accounts hacked. Including mine, which was inactive, but had an "authenticator" (a hardware device that generates a new 6 digit number every minute). I presume when my account (that was inactive as it wasn't used) was hacked, they didn't take anything as I guess they didn't want to pay money to reactivate it. But they did attach one of these authenticators to it. And I'm not the only one.
     
     
    Once again, this morning a friend had his entire account hacked and cleaned out the family guild bank. In the years I've know people who play there's been a slow increase of attempts and successful account hijackings, but just in the last few months that rate is off the scale. I've never know so many, so fast. And there's no commonality in the people I questioned, everyone I've talked to knows someone who has been effected recently.
     
     
    On this scale I can only conclude that Activision Blizzard has someone working in the organisation leaking account details or a client list has been compromised in some way.
     
     
    You only have to check out YouTube about GM hacks to see how bad things are.
     
    So I'd recommend deactivating your wow accounts or use an authenticator until they decide to do something about this.
     
     
     

     
    Source
  25. Flexman
    Before I code the address book, what do you think of this arrangement?
     
    I'm trying to keep interface items as simple as possible as I hate coding fiddly bits. But these things are mandatory for modern multi-player games.
     
    Source
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