Happy Christmas! New logo!

It’s Christmas at last here in Australia, and Flyin’ Irons has a brand new exciting logo! Happy Christmas to you all.

New logo!

Ghostly goings-on in the Vertical Steam Championship!

The latest revision of Flyin’ Irons includes a new, exciting Ghost system in Time Trial mode!

When you set a new lap record, the path you take around the track is saved as a series of points for the Ghost Iron to follow.  Then, when you next play Time Trial, the Ghost Iron (currently a Kensworth Drake but soon to be a unique Brawn Ghost) will race you along your record-setting path!

Head over to Sharesource to download the newest revision!

Here’s a screenshot or two of the ghost iron in action:

Self-righting irons!

I’ve made a big step in development: the control system now allows self-righting, that is, your iron will automatically tilt itself so that it faces upwards while you are flying it. This makes hovering a lot easier, and controlling the iron using the Pilot Camera and Chase Camera is now a lot easier as well.

Here’s a screenshot of another development: the Debrief screen, which will appear after a race.

Debrief screen as of 20/12/08

Getting back on track.

The Aussie road trip has ended, and it’s time for me to think about how to continue programming Flyin’ Irons.

There are a number of fundamental things that still need to be changed before the game can be “released” as even a playable proof-of-concept, and foremost is that it needs to be a hell of a lot more accessible to Windows  users (like me!).

Mark has suggested the next step to be upgrading the version of Soya3D we use to the latest, 0.14, to take advantage of its bugfixes and so on. Our terrains need to be much larger, and we need some kind of level of detail code to reduce the quality of visible items and significantly speed up graphics rendering.

The fun has just begun!