One word – Busy… busy, busy, busy. Ok, so I cheated on the word count, but that’s how life’s been lately.  So much has happened since my last post. In work, play & personal life.  I’ll cut to the chase though.  Here’s my latest and greatest release of “Air Legends”.  You can download it from here.

There are major changes in the version. 

• Firstly it’s all converted to XNA 2.0 now, so you’ll need the XNA 2.0 runtime installed (or XNA Game Studio 2.0).
• Added basic Scoring, and stats.  Currently shows Score + accuracy for each player/cpu.
• Added a change View feature (to help you find the enemy). This changes to a view that focuses on you, but keeps
    the other player in view.
• Gave the aircraft different performance characteristics.  The Spitfire has a slightly better rate of turn
    but the BF109 is a little faster. It’s subtle, but should add to the variety.
• Added an Uninstall shortcut to the Start menu folder.
• Fixed cloud culling, so clouds no longer instantly vanish while still in view (as they were prone to do before).
• Improved cloud, smoke and explosion rendering to use proper Billboard styles (always facing the camera).

Go grab the new version from the Latest Build page here.  As always, it’s free!

As promised, I’ve just uploaded the latest work-in-progress, so feel free to try it out. Get it here.

The main addition in this release is the Special Maneuver feature I talked about earlier.

When the Special Maneuver control is pressed, the  plane will perform a move appropriate to the direction it was flying.  Currently these moves are either a vertical loop (climbing or diving), or a horizontal bank & turn.  Very handy for avoiding mid-air collisions, or when trying to shake the foe off your six!  It’s a lot of fun when you get the hang of it.  The game play is a lot more dynamic, and 3D feeling now.  Especially fun with the 2 player multiplayer (the computer opponent has a very small brain).

I’m very happy with the new feature.  As often seems to be the case, it was a lot more complicated to implement than I ever imagined.  It exposed a lot of my “smoke ‘n mirrors” techniques, so I had to revisit quite a bit of the core code.  For the better I think, and I certainly learnt a lot.

The biggest problem is now in my skybox implementation.  So as to not expose its flaws too much,  the planes can occasionally leave the visible screen, but will bounce back eventually.  I’ll be working on resolving that next, but I thought it was worth releasing anyway.

Hope you enjoy it.  Your feedback is always welcome.  I highly recommend XBOX 360 (for Windows) controllers to play this  However keyboard is still supported, albeit a bit cramped with 2 players.

Get the new version from the Latest Build page here.

Update: Note that this release requires the latest version of the XNA framework recently released. (v1.0 “Refresh”). You can get that here

That’s right. 2 player splitscreen multiplayer is here!

Go download it.

Greeting earthlings.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while actually.  Ultrahead’s provided me personally a lot of feedback, help & ideas for my own XNA adventures.

Check out his “Do as I say, not as I do …” blog.

He frequently blogs answers to things I haven’t even got round to searching for.  But there’s more to it than just XNA stuff.  Animation, movies, shameless pimpage of Sharky’s blog! 

This one particularly caught my eye…

“TIP: Deploying games to the 360 without sharing source code”

Once again he’s saved me the trouble of actually reading the forums!  Now all I need is a 360!!!

Thanks Ultrahead.

Yes, I’m still here.

The relative silence is because lately I’ve been far too busy at both work & play.

I’d like to say the “play” has all been XNA, but I’ve been enjoying Battlefield 2142 a bit too much for that.

What I have done is add the “skywriting” feature (my 6 year old daughters idea) to my “Air Legends” game. Basically the plane puffs out red smoke trails while you press a particular button, so you can do lovely pacifist pictures in the sky.

A very easy feature to do with some tweaks to my existing smoke particle system.  So a nice quick win on the progress front. 

It’s certainly not a historically accurate feature, but that’s why it’ll be presented like a seperate game mode with no enemy aircraft. (actually it should probably be a different themed game altogether).  Anyway, doing the menu for it is taking longer than the feature itself. Go figure.

XNA news

It’s December at last.  So not long to go now for the Full release of XNA.  December 12th, I believe.

David “LetsKillDave” Weller posts some exciting news that the migration of code built on XNA Beta 2 to the Full release, should be relatively painless.

Those of you that are fearing the RTM version of XNA will result in the same kind of pain as the Beta 1 to Beta 2 transition, take heart.  There are VERY few API changes this time around.  All the “beta 2″ code that I’ve tested so far has worked without needing code modification (or very minor modification).  Those of you that have invested time in writing Beta 2 games or tutorials will most likely find your code works perfectly.

He also introduces us to another great XNA resource. Michael Anderson’s blog is putting out some very cool info with source code included. 

Check out “Manders vs. Machine“.  Definately one to follow.

Bit of a mouthful, but here’s the deal.

Evidently an earlier Microsoft Security Patch (MS06-051) broke the just released BF2142 for a few unhappy souls.  Jeesh,  talk about bad timing, eh!!!

So the good news is Microsoft have just released a new hotfix that fixes the problem.

Get it here.

Well, the official word is the 5th, but that is for EADownloader pre-order customers only.  Plus, it seems GameSpot members have an early peak too.

For the rest of us, this is the most detailed info I could find…

On BF2142Fever they are reporting:

First on Thurdsay the 5th October 9am CET, the users who preordered with the EA Downloader will be able to download it.

On Friday the 6th October 9am CET, subscribers to Gamespot compelte will be able to start downloading it.

On Saturday the 7th October 9am CET, everyone else will be able to get the demo and play it.

By my calculations, well TimeAndDate’s actually – the ”everyone” release in New Zealand time would be Saturday 7th, 8pm (NZT).

Or, if you like countdowns, here’s one!

I see on the grape vine, there’s rumor of the Battlefield 2142 Demo coming out this week.

Nothing official as far as I can tell, but the unnamed sources sound reasonably solid.  The timing would be about right too, as the full game comes out this month.

See this thread at Total2142.

My wife has been having issues with a Ventrilo (VoIP) server she uses while gaming with her buddies.  As you can imagine the whole space time continuum is in jeopardy here.

It’s based in Australia, but the performance was always fine until a few weeks ago. It used to ping around 200 ms, but now it’s more like 5000 ms+ and totally unusable.

We have reasons to believe it is only affecting people using “ihug” as their ISP.  After weeks of silence IHUG are now claiming they’ve done all they can.  I don’t know enough about this stuff, so before we go switching ISP’s I’d like to see how the other ISP’s fare with this server. I’m wondering if perhaps it’s not only ihug, but all the ISP’s that rebrand Telecom’s wholesale ADSL deal.

All I need you to do is this.  From your home connection, at the Command Prompt:

• ping vent.anzgw.net
• tracert vent.anzgw.net
• copy & paste the results to me as a blog comment, along with your ISP name, type (adsl/cable/wireless) & City. 

Thanks in advance.

p.s.  I have actually been really happy with ihug’s features, price & service to date.  But this one thing is a bit of a killer if the grass is greener elsewhere. 

I saw over at Total Battlefield 2 that the much anticipated BF2 v1.4 patch has finally been released.

Usual story.  A full patch and a smaller incremental one.  Traditionally, general opinion has been that incrementals can cause “issues”.  I’ve never had a problem myself, so if you can be bothered go for the full patch.

Lots of places to download from, but I plan to go straight to the source and get it here.

Here is the Changelog…

New content

• New level: Road to Jalalabad (Conquest 16-32-64, Singleplayer, Co-op)
• New Server Option: No Vehicles mode

Fix List

Front End:

• Front end – Fix server browser issues with updating info
• Front End – Multiplayer & Co-op – Players on server list can include Bots instead of human players
• Multiplayer Internet Server maps size filter not working
• Fixed an issue in the front end where pressing tab twice in the IP window would cause the cursor to skip to wrong box

Game Server:

• Increased server stability
• All levels – Co-op – Crash after reviving player without a kit- 1st attempt Server – Linux 32 Dedicated – Server crashes when trying to rotate maps in Special Forces Co-op Mode (fixed on SUSE only. Still present in Red Hat and Fedora)
• Adjust the minimum number of players to start the round.The new values for 16, 32 and 64 players are 6, 6 and 8 respectively.
• Re-enable unlocks on unranked servers
• Ranked server forces unlocks i.e. have to have unlocks selected.
• Coop – Local Server – If Server Host is kicked and banned although they do not actually get kicked, no other players may join the server after that point.
• Fixed a dedicated server crash which was occurring when the user held “CTRL” and “SHIFT” while selecting a map
• Fixed a crash which would occur when c4 was placed on a flag pole and the server rotated maps
• Vehicle drop crash related bug (missing icon)
• Co-Op bot console commands do not function on local servers.
• Client / Gameplay:
• Red/Blue nametag bug –Fix to the issue where players would show up with the wrong color name tag
• Introduced a delay from proning to standing to help reduce exploiting
• Adjusted C4 to make throwing more difficult
• Fixed the issue where a red distance marker appears on the ground
• Fixed the issue that caused players arms to become invisible after switching weapons when using throwable items
• Made adjustments to reduce the damage taken by vehicles when driving
• Adjusted the tire material on the muscle car to reduce the issue with this vehicle taking too much damage.
• Commander options no longer available whilst dead.
• Fixed the issue with a spawn point showing up as selected when a player has spawned in during preview round
• Fixed the issue that would cause infantry players to be revived with no kit.
• Fixed several rare graphics crashes.
• Fixed issue with players crashing while clicking “Join Game” in the front end
• Car-Drop: Made adjustments to the car drop feature to prevent players from exploiting into buildings.
• Discovered and repaired an issue tied to projectiles which would sometimes allow tanks to fire two shells, support to fire multiple rounds, and other issues (all maps).
• Fixed bug where after 2 rounds on the same map, the top player stars are awarded to the wrong people in the menu
• Transport Helicopters – Increased the armor of all transport helicopters