(Historic Post: April 14th 2007)

Well its been a while since I have been working on my project.  But I have some surprises for everyone who is interested.  TREES!  Wow, the possibility of making the world feel more three-dimensional.  Currently the car cannot collide with the trees so instead you fly right through them but the visual effect was worth the effort.  Since the trees are transparent they need to be drawn to the screen in a special way.  Basically needing to be drawn last and in a special order from farthest away from the camera to the nearest.  So I needed to write a function to sort the list of trees.  I decided to use MergeSort since it is faster then QuickSort on the worst case, and uses less memory.  Though this proved troublesome.  Miguel De La Cruz helped me for the last couple of hours debugging the code, reading it carefully and finally I found that I wasn’t adding the trees to the end of the list; instead I was adding them to the beginning of the list…  So that was the bug for the day and trees are now on the screen.  I plan to work a little more on the interface and possibly networking or physics code shortly.

(Historic Post: April 11th 2007)

Well I updated some screenshots of the RacerX project.  I now have acouple of in game shots.  The first one the car just started moving across the finish line and the second one the car is drifting around the corner.  Of course these screen shots don’t show the full effect of the car moving but I wanted everyone to know.  There is also a screenshot of the current RaceSetup page.  Obviously using place-holder art for temporary purposes but the functionality all works.  From the top to the bottom you will be able to select you engine, tires, suspension, weapon, battery and generator for your car.  Soon I will make it show the actual parts and with a little more code the ability to use only parts that are unlocked should be implemented.  The next thing I am working on is the ability to add trees to the level and then walls.  Both of these items will not be collidable at first but the effect of them in the game will make more immersive.

(Historic Post: April 7th 2007)

Well, I am still working on the little racing project.  I am hoping to get the menus to a semi complete state by the end of this weekend.  Semi-complete is meaning that they are full functional but with graphics that will be changed when an artist joins the project.  I am putting a picture of the current Main Menu screen.  And will keep up to date on the progress of this project.

(Historic Post: April 3rd 2007)

Still working on the RacerX project.  It is coming out decent, I have the level editor up to the point of changing tiles, saving, and loading files.  I have been working on the car a little bit and even the design document for the game to give it a direction as I may have a few friends join me in the coding in about a week or so, still undecided.  Also I am undecided whether I should make the project network-able or not, and I realize that this should be planned as early as possible.  I hope to have the car moving within a week, and then it will be time to work on the track some more so that some Artificial Intelligent drivers can race around the track.  Competition!  Yay, isn’t that the whole point of a small combat/racing game in the end?  I will post an update and possibly a download-able version of the game when I get the AI cars moving and the player car running as well.  (No that doesn’t qualify as a complete project either).  Please note: I am a
programmer, not an artist.  If any artist people are reading this, please don’t hesitate to offer help on the project if you want to.

(Historic Post: March 29th 2007)

Working on a new side project.  You all know me and my side projects.  I am always doing one or two of them.  The of the project for now is RacerX, but when more time is spent on the project a better name will come up.  I am hoping to have the game done within a month or so, and if I am still liking to work on it, probably longer.  It will be a 3Dimensional game, and currently, due to lack of art and models, tanks are the chosen vehicle.  The point of the game is to race around the track.  When the driver is not racing they are upgrading their vehicles engines, tires, suspension, weapons system and armor as well as other various aspects of their car.  Hope to see this one finished!