Hey everyone. I've got pretty some info on Barnstormer: 1920, because big progress have been made. The first level is nearly finished [:)].

What I will start with is the

Shadow System

I (Jesper) started on a 3d shadow engine for the game, which was supposed to be easy to use and with as few polygons as possible. After 8 hours of work, the engine, and some other shadow things, are working. The shadows look very smooth and it also supports fence shadows, so you wont see a black rectangle when you draw the shadow of a wooden fence (which you can see-through).

It uses a total new engine, and something like it has never been made with game maker. I won’t tell you anything about it, because it is now only for being used by the Reunited Game Development Team, or, as you could also call it, classified [:D]. The only thing I will tell you about it is that it uses only 4 vertices to draw the complete, smooth, shadow, while it is still calculated, and not just a sprite we made before. The shadow stuff is based on the position of the sun. The shadow engine is for static objects only btw.

Something we haven't like for a long time, has also been changed. Yes, I am talking about the

Smoke Trail

The very ugly and dodgy, un-smooth smoke trail, is no longer in the game. It has been replaced by a line-trail, which looks a lot better. Some small improvements are still to be done on it, but the main thing is there. The line trail is a bit more futuristic, which is not excactly what was the plan, so we might change it to something else later on anyways.

What do all biplanes have and what is it that ours hasn't got? Yep, the

Propellor

A propellor has been added as you can see in the screenie in the paragraph “Landingâ€?. It hasn't got a texture yet, that still has to be made by somebody. But we do have the rotations fixed [:)].

Realistic smoke and fire are the things you want when the plane crashes. It also has to slide further. Yeah, edge has made it more fun [:D]:

Crashing

Edge made a very good crashing system, with nice textures for smoke, flames, a trail on the ground when you slide through the sand, and more realistic aspects on the crashing. It now looks very cool, and you will slide further when you've hit the ground. Also the camera will shake, making it even more realistic. I'm very happy that edge is on the code dept. too [:D]

Which plane is on-ground standing still with just it's 2 front wheels on the ground? No plane is, of course. What we also changed is the

Landing

The landing has not changed for physics stuff, but it changed for the graphics. The plane now has an added angle to it, which depends on the speed and the speed it’s changing. So when you land, it will now have a good angle where 3 wheels are on the ground. Here is an image to show you how it was before, and how it is now:

When you turn the rudder on a plane, it will of course also affect the bank. Therefor, we had to do some changing on the

Turning

Also, we added a better system for turning with the “Aâ€? and “Dâ€? keys. We found, after some research, some nice stuff about plane handling. One of the things was that, when you change the rudder, it will also slightly change the bank/roll, and that it won’t turn as fast as it does now. It doesn’t work completely, so some change will be made to the turning.

The first level was pretty empty, wasn't it? Therefor we also made some changes in the

Environment

The changes in the enviorment are not very big, but they do make the level look less boring (not that it was really boring, but there could just be more things added.. Little bumps have been added in the terrain so the terrain looks less boring, and 2 models have been added too. A shed model and a rowing boat model. The shadows are also something that makes the level more complete, and a lot less boring, even tho you might not think of that when you think of things to make the level complete or less boring.

A game without music is nothing, and how can a game get music without musicians? After the stop of Tgg Teams, it was gone. What was gone? Well, the

Audio department

After some time, edge suggested us a very good musician, called DJ_GLiTCH. We now have an audio department again, even tho it only has one member [:P]. He has been on #1 as best musician on several sites, and he even has his own music-site. We are all very happy to have DJ_GLiTCH on the team [:D].

Things that are to small for a whole paragraph, will get a paragraph together. These are the

Other changes

- made some changes in the zeppling exploding script, so that will now cause less fps loss.

- added a little bit of delta-time for the plane where a little bit means that it only apply’s to the speed.

- the plane it’s shadow is now based on the position of the sun too.

- added a compass (only the idea behind it, not the grahpics [:P], just like with the fuel meter.

- probably some more things I forgot about [:P]…

And now the thing that you probably all wanted more than all the text and stuff:

Screenshots

Regards,

Jesper (Reunited Game Development Team Leader)

Reunited Game Development Team