Greetings! This is my fourth post about my ongoing project: Galactic Warfare: Rise of Drones (GW:RoD). This may be the last post of the semester, so let’s make it a good one!
Milestone 4
With the crunch and hype of SGC behind me, I could take time to reevaluate my game engine, my game, and what my best next steps were. There was a lot for me to research and address.
From a technical standpoint, my next goal would be implementing a physics engine: perhaps the last component keeping my work-in-progress engine from breaking through to the v1.0 designation. However, with most things, the important thing is starting right, not necessarily always starting. I was able to ask a speaker at SGC about their thoughts and where to start, and they pointed me in the direction of quaternions. I had heard about them, but they were something that would definitely be added to my researching list.
Taking a step back from the technically correct next move, I had other issues to address such as code that needed to be refactored, or system designs that were now depreciated or unintuitive. There was also the matter of what I should target during Winter Break: should I spend the time refactoring the code, or should I cement some systems that are not necessarily feature-complete? Should I switch to Vulkan and C++, or should I make progress in creating a physics engine?
SGC was a fun time, and I got to engage in a lot of interesting and helpful conversations with presenters and other game and software developers!
Below were the goals for Milestone 4 (note: there were no art goals):
Programming
- Enhance player movement.
- Enhance camera placement relative to the player.
- Add a UI element for proof of concept.
- Add more objects of interest.
Research and Evaluation
- Research improvements to the graphics engine (conversion to Vulkan, ray tracing, etc.).
- Research suggested improvements to game engine workflow from SGC.
- Research best practices for implementing physics (use of quaternions, algorithms, etc.).
I was able to complete all of my goals for this milestone! Sweet!
I also got my hands on some great resources to aid in my development! I was able to find free resources for both advanced PBR rendering and quaternions.
I enjoyed this semester! It was a lot of hard work, but I was able to learn so much and achieve much more! I am not 100% certain of the direction I will take over Winter Break, but whatever I do, I am excited and ready to learn even more!
And, of course, get some down time!
Thank you again for reading this Milestone post! Feel free to leave me a comment below!