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[Stainless]

I've been working on getting an animation system working that is simple for you guys to use.

What I have come up with is a new menu on the mod tool. Fox One.

In that you have an option to add animations.

Click on that and you get a list of animations I have set up for you.

Add as many as you want to the list, setup the variables, and the job is done.

For example. Adding an animation system to an AA gun is two clicks.




From that you get an example animation in the mod tool like this.

[Stainless]

This week has been about animation and a few changes to the mod tool.

The idea is I can start using the mod tool to check animations, both for IL2 and my flight sim.

As a test I added animations for ship's turrets and guns. So you can click on a mesh node, add a turret animation, tweak the values, add a gun animation, tweak the values, and see the result real time.
This allows you to fine tune animations. Making sure you don't end up with gun barrels going into geometry.

To check how easy this was to use, I did every gun on the Tirpitz and timed myself. 8 minutes 22 seconds. No bad.

I also added a mouse sensitivity setting for the HIM viewer, and the option to focus the camera on a particular mesh part as requested.

This is all part of my Entity Component System research for the flight sim.

The idea is I create a tool that let's anyone add objects to my sim.  No java coding required.

To illustrate how it will work, let's consider an AA gun.

Boot up the tool and create a new file.

Drag a "GameObjectResource" from the menu and drop it into the main view. 
      The game object resource is the thing that holds all the information about the object. It requires a single field of bespoke information which will be displayed in an input window on the right.
      That is the name of the object. Fill that in and the object exists, though at the moment it is invisible and does nothing.

Drag an "AvailabilityResource" from the menu into the main window, connect it to the GameObjectResource.
      This one has a bunch of field to fill in. Nation, start and end date, etc.

Drag a "HIMMeshResource" into the main view and connect it.
      Point this resource at the HIM file. We now have something to display, but where do we display it?

Drag a "GameObjectTransformResource" into the tool and connect it to both the GameObjectResource and the HIMResource.
      This places the object in the world and will be the thing modified by the map editor.

Drag a "AAGunAnimatorResource" into the world and connect it to the GameObjectResource.
      Now we know it is an AA gun. We can now add the values you tested in the mod tool into this resource so we know how to animate it.

Drag a "AAGunResource" into the world and connect it to the GameObjectResource
     This sets the caliber of the gun.

Drag a "DamageReceiverResource" to the world and connect it up.
     This let's you setup how much damage it can take and so on.


That's it.

You have now created a fully functioning, animated AA gun object which will be added to the game the next time you run it.

Sound easy?

[just champi]

Sounds AMAZING! 
Thanks for all the work you are putting into this, mate, you talk about things we could hardly imagine, but then you just make it happen... 

[Pursuivant]

Remember this will be faded in by sidereal time, so during the day it will be invisible. In the middle of the night it will be brighter, but modified by the atmosphere.

Something that might be easy to do, or really hard, is have "light pollution" from the ground affect celestial objects. For example, in a dark sky clouds appear as dark patches against the stars and even the faintest stars are visible. In a badly light polluted urban area, clouds glow with reflected light and all but the brightest stars are invisible.

For flight simming, light pollution has two effects. First, it affects your ability to use celestial navigation, which was occasionally used during WW2. Second, big fires or searchlights will light up clouds (or smoke clouds), both illuminating the ground below and silhouetting passing aircraft. That aids bombers, and as well as flak and intercepting fighters.

The equation for light scattering over distance is simple, and there are simple categories to determine degree of light pollution. But, since it's a lighting effect it might make unacceptable demands on computing power.

[Stainless]

Disappointing day.

I decided I needed to test my prototype terrain renderer, and it's got horrible artifacts. It's fast as feck, but I'm not happy with the display.

[Oscarito]

With the excepting of those grooves, the terrain looks very good!
Loved the bucolic aspect of the roads...

[hello]

Yeah, that looks really good, especially far away from the POV! Are those mountains in the background really generated by the renderer too? The artifacts up close do need some smooth lovin' but apart from that: WOW!

[DarkBlueBoy]

Very impressive Stainless.

[Stainless]

I think I may be looking at this.

I don't know if it can be made freeware yet, but it's worth a look

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2016-02-09-amazon-launches-free-aaa-game-engine

[Stainless]

Interesting week.

I'm back working on the mod tool, but I also had some news at work.

The bad news is I have been made head programmer on the project I am working on. Which means I will be working on it until it is shipped and signed off. Bummer.

The good news is that I will be moving onto the unreal engine.

So that means I will be able to move my development for the flight sim to Unreal and use the skills I learn at work to speed up development.

So good and bad news.

[Nonsenseonpaper]

WOW Stainless Unreal engine that is absolutely amazing this flight sim will look better than most out there. Keep up the good work its getting more promising every week.

[hello]

Congratulations! ... huhh not so good ?    

Lets hope at least some of those commutes an still be spend coding