Ready for release!

Checkpoints now work in a portal system, so you have to fly through an invisible sheet to trigger them.

Lap times are given to 2 decimal places and stack up.

The grass and mud textures have been replaced by my own, which are closer to the graphical style of the game that I was aiming for.

The next thing I’ll be doing is putting Flyin’ Irons on the Internet. Awesome!

Air resistance, cel shading, working laps

The track now works in a circuit, and the player receives their lap time (sadly, currently in whole seconds) after each lap.

Gravity is increased to make it less floaty, and make the iron seem smaller. Thrust is increased concordantly.

Cel-shading now works for the iron. This is slightly less stable in Windows than non-cel-shading.

Adjustable air resistance now exists for all moving objects (ie, just the iron at the moment). It certainly helps dissipate some of the energy!

Next thing to do is to get the checkpoints to be set off when you fly through the gate, and not when you fly within a radius of the centre of the checkpoint. Other than that, there’s not much to be done before it’s time to wrap it up in a preview release and start announcing it!

Windows users, prepare to rejoice!

While I’ve been working on making the test track work in a circuit, with proper laps and everything (which it very nearly actually does), Mark over at OpenLander is well on the way to getting his game nicely wrapped up in an all-inclusive Windows .exe, which is admirable indeed.

Of course, given the close-knit nature of the two projects, that means I’ll soon be trying this with the preview release of Flyin’ Irons! The next thing for Flyin’ Irons is for me to port my code across to Mark’s latest OpenLander version, which will most noticeably add air resistance to the iron and other moving objects, as well as making a few changes in the way some of the code is structured.

Here’s another screenshot to make this post slightly more interesting.

Edging towards a release…

Ladies and gents of the iron world (I hereby coin the term “ironosphere”), Flyin’ Irons is progressing steadily towards its first preview release.Present in the release will be:

• Hilly test track with checkpoints
• Phelps TT iron
• Time Trial mode with lap timer

The entirety of the OpenLander consortium and I are considering building a Windows installer for Flyin’ Irons. I’m currently using Windows, and we want to ensure that OpenLander and its mods and conversions enjoy a wider audience than just Linux users. Big releases will hopefully be built into a  Windows installer package.

Most other development versions pushed to the Flyin’ Irons sharesource repository, when that exists, will be unbuilt versions that will require Python, Soya, Blender and an assortment of other small downloads to be installed, so if you’d like to follow its development closely, I’ll be posting a list of required stuff to install and a brief how-to guide for getting them up and running.

It’s unlikely Vista will be supported just yet, but I’ve had 95% success with XP so far (all that doesn’t work stably so far, compared to Linux, is shadows cast on the ground), and I want you, XP user, to have that success too.

Flyin’ Irons: Full Steam Ahead!

“Flyin’ Irons: Full Steam Ahead!” will be an open-source iron racing game, written in Python using Soya3D and Mark Williamson’s OpenLander engine. It will (hopefully) feature:

Irons that fly using Newtonian physics thanks to Soya, ODE and OpenLander
Single-player racing against AI opponents
Network and split-screen play
Cel-shaded graphics, giving it a distinctive visual style
Lots of real-world-style irons to choose from, each with its own handling characteristics
Several lovely courses to choose from. These might be based on real-world locations too!

I’m currently getting ready, with great help from Mark, to release the first demo version of Flyin’ Irons, featuring a single iron and time trial course, into the open-source world. Then you’ll be able to follow its development as it progresses, downloading and playing it all the way.