Wild Shadow Studios

Parallax Scroll

Last week I was experimenting with parallax scrolling in GameTwo. Parallax is the effect a moving observer notices when viewing objects at different distances. In this case, the roofs of the red and blue buildings are closer to the viewer (the overhead camera) than the ground is.

After I move my tank to the left a bit, GameTwo draws the roofs in slightly different positions relative to the building footprints. This pseudo-3D effect is subtle, but it makes the buildings seem much more real.

I'm thinking of using this parallax effect for lots of things: rocks, buildings, trees, mesas, canyons, crevasses. Can you think of other uses?

Vehicle Editor

Yesterday I built a rudimentary in-game vehicle editor for GameTwo. It's a dialog that pops up in the game client, with sliders for changing the various parameters to the tank-drawing code.

When finished, this tool will help me generate new graphical assets quickly. A more advanced version could be used by players to customize their tanks.

Dreadnought

After a playtest session with a friend today, I decided to add a much tougher enemy tank to GameTwo. The new Dreadnought class tank has three times the hitpoints of the previous heavyweight, the Destroyer. It's got two powerful laser beams, one in its turret and one mounted on the bow. It also has a missile launcher which fires a superfast orange homing missile every two seconds, with a 180-degree forward-facing firing arc. Standing in front of this thing is not a good idea.

The graphics for the Dreadnought and its missile were easy to add, using the procedural art system I built last week. But a tank this size could use a few more details. Maybe some antennas?

More Procedural Art

I did some more work on GameTwo's procedural graphics, replacing all the hardcoded enemy tanks with new versions created at runtime by the server. As with last week's missiles, the new tanks are all drawn by the same piece of client code, based on parameters provided by the server. The parameters include:

hullcolor, treadcolor, turretcolor, width, length, nosewidth, noselength, tailwidth, taillength, treadwidth, treadlength, treadlateraloffset, treadlongitudinaloffset, muzzlewidth, breechwidth, barrellength, turretwidth, turretlength, turretlongitudinaloffset, turretnoselength, turrettaillength

These parameters yield a decent variety of enemy tank types, but I look forward to expanding the available parameters and adding new vehicle types as well. Maybe planes?

This screenshot shows my tank getting completely worked by a screenful of the new baddies. The red lines are the enemies' lasers, caught in mid-animation. The mostly vertical laser was fired from the large tank at top center. The other two beams haven't hit me yet, but they are about to finish me off.

The smallest enemy tanks are the Fighter type, which have a short-range turreted laser and the ability to fire bright red homing missiles. The medium-sized grey tanks are the Cruisers, which sport front-mounted medium-range lasers and fire yellow grenades from their turrets. The large Destroyer tank has a powerful long-range turreted laser, in addition to hull-mounted rockets and grenades.

The dark red enemy tanks are a new type (Gunship) which launch large numbers of twin-nosed homing missles. The new procedural art made it pretty quick and easy to get both the Gunship and its missiles into the game. I'm hoping that the art system, when fully deployed, will let us rapidly insert many new types of enemies, allowing the live team to evolve the game over time in response to player actions.