Greetings! This is my second post about my ongoing project: Galactic Warfare: Rise of Drones (GW:RoD). Introductions are not needed, so let’s get straight to the milestone achievements and review!
Milestone 2
There are 4 milestones during the semester wherein the third milestone is a live presentation at the Shawnee Game Conference (SGC). In preparation for that (and inline with my aforementioned Milestone 2 goals at the end of Milestone 1), I wanted to achieve rendering of 3D Graphics Library Transmission Format (GLTF) files and finish texturing the player spaceship. Consequently, if both of these goals were satisfied I would be able to render the player spaceship!
In addition to these goals, I wanted to achieve Physically-Based Rendering (PBR), basic collisions with simple bounding volumes (Axis-Aligned Bounding Boxes, Bounding Spheres, etc.), and an input system. I also wanted to create the 3D model for the enemy combatant and asteroids.
In bulletin points, here were the formal goals of Milestone 2:
Programming
- Render GLTF files using PBR.
- Implement an extensible system for input handling.
- Implement a basic collision system (Axis-Aligned Bounding Boxes (AABBs), etc.)
Art
- Texture player spaceship.
- Model enemy combatant.
- Texture enemy combatant.
- Model asteroids.
- Texture asteroids.
In hindsight, I realize that I over-scoped: I not only underestimated how difficult and/or time consuming some of the tasks were, but I also miscalculated what I could reasonably get done during one milestone. A lot of these goals were all heading in the right direction but were also contingent on each other. For example, collision detection is hard to do without a solid system for parsing and storing the GLTF file contents (which is a consequence of rendering them).
Despite this, I did make reasonable headway. I achieved rendering of GLTF models in engine (with minor texture mapping errors) and began the UV-ing process for the player spaceship. These are especially good when I consider I also had front-loaded my semester, so I would be extremely busy during the first half and freer in the second half. So, in reality, I had done lots of good work, but compared with my milestone goals my performance was dismal at best.
Perhaps this milestone came at the turn of the tide: the week of the milestone deadline was the same week my two half-semester classes ended. To make up for lost progress in time for SGC, I will need to apply my newly increased work time to completing my goals for next milestone. Since what I am working on is crucial to progression, my goals remain similar.
Thank you for reading this Milestone post! Feel free to leave me a comment below!