(09/29/03) We have our first somewhat usable ship model!!! It still needs textures, but it's MUCH better than the other crap I've been churning out...
(10/01/03) New texture-based particle renderer... much prettier:)
Also we have sprite-based "decorations" in our starfield, good for things like planets and (assuming we're artistic enough) hopefully nebulae.
We also have a HUD now. Well, not a HUD, but the ability to draw one at least. Or maybe we should stick with this one after all... It worked for Yoshi's Island, didn't it?
(10/02/03) First cockpit model, we'll probably scrap this (very simplistic, something like 25 polys total) but maybe it will look nice with some textures on it.
(10/03/03) First model for a semi-large ship. This is probably going to be some kind of War1 freighter or something, not sure exactly what yet.
Larger ships are going to need to be able to shoot without actually having to turn and face their targets. Guns like this will be easy to animate (no model deformations!!) and look pretty spiffy too:)
My friend Tony drew this up for us, seems pretty cool but difficult to model. The surfaces on this ship are a mix between solid panels and smooth curves. Definitely a very cool ship, might have to wait until our modeling skills improve a little bit though. Also something to note is Tony drew this whole thing BY HAND with no ruler or anything. And he didn't even fold the paper to get the symmetry right. Impressive.
Not to be outdone by Tony, Rob drew this one for us. The vertical lines are there as a copy-protection scheme so LucasFilm or ILM don't come and steal our plans. Either that or Rob drew this on the back of his Psych notes (maybe a step up from Tony, who drew his picture on the back of one of my resumes). Anyways this looks like a very cool fighter, not sure which race yet. Also of note is that he actually hinted at some texturing (like on the engines in back, and the grille at the back of the cockpit.
While we're at it, my friend Jon sketched out some ideas for music for the game and sent this to me a few days ago. It will be awesome to see what he comes up with...
Ted's been working on his 2nd ship now, really amazing considering he had never even seen a 3d graphics package like 3 days ago. WOW! Anyways, I'm getting less and less worried that we'll have a lack of ship models in our game:) Now if only we could get some textures...........
(10/04/03) So it turns out hitting the ``smooth'' button in Maya on Ted's ship from yesterday (with a few minor changes...) gives us this awesome-looking ship. The poly count is up around 5800 (heh) but we can work on getting that number down I'm sure.
So what did YOU do with YOUR Saturday? Ok so I got a few other things accomplished, but they pale in comparison to this I think. This is the ship that Rob drew up for me a few days ago, but now in all its 3D glory. Rob, this ship is very cool. (He says a space station is underway... oohhh.. aaahhh..)
Added in awesome laser code and changed the jet exhaust effects a bit. Yes, the bonfire was impressive, but this is space. And with any luck the bonfire-type effects will be reappearing as explosions (if I can ever figure it out..) The engine stuff still needs some work, probably a cone of sorts that gets drawn in addition to the particles, but I'm still tossing around ideas.
(10/10/03) Ted sent me this ship he's been working on, seems like it would fit well as a medium-sized fighter for the trade faction, though I'm not quite sure what the trade faction's "ship style" should be quite yet. Cool ship though.
So in addition to modeling, Ted and I have been working a little on figuring out how we want to define the ships and other entities within the game. So far the plan seems to be something XML-ish, but specialized for exactly what we need. For example, here the ship can have only one "physics" section, but any number of "weapon" specifications. As of now, we have a perl script that generates C code that reads these files and puts them into the right classes. Very cool, but a bit worrisome...
(10/14/03) So there haven't been lots of updates on here lately, but that's not to say that work has not been done. Our physics engine is now in good shape, minus collision detection (but how tough can that be? ;) ) The definitions from the last post are also implemented, and very easy to specify and add on to as well. The picture to the left shows the ability to actually fly the ship around a bit, subject to the physics, and also the engine particles (with infinite life for the purpose of this picture).
Well it's not as colorful, but it beats the Yoshi layout.

(11/11/03) Ok so it's been a while since we've put anything up here. I assure you this is certainly not because work has come to a standstill. Almost everything in the back end is in place, including a full Python interpreter to use on console and as our mission/game/menu scripting language. The world implementation is coming along nicely, and input is MUCH much cleaner. Menu system classes have been written, and entity classes flushed out quite a bit as well, and much much work has been done (and then promptly thrown away and started over from the beginning) in missle and general navigational AI. Thing is, this is all back-end stuff that doesn't make very good content for a screenshots page, but very necessary for the game itself. Anyways, collision detection is almost a reality! We finally have it working in the one-rectangle case, which is actually (more than) half the battle. Now we just need to reproduce this about 1,000,000 times and we're set. This screenshot is a composite taken over 10 frames showing the collision detection in action.
The collision detection is very exciting stuff, though not nearly as exciting as our extremely useful and elegant menuing system showcased in this shot.
And finally we do have a few aesthetic additions, as you can see in the picture on the bottom to the left. Of course these are all custom-drawn planets and NOT photos taken off of a random website.

Also, Matt (our new artist) just sent me these images he made in (I presume) 3ds max. Very cool stuff to start with, and they actually have textures! Not sure how much our 3d engine will like bump mapping, but I guess we'll see about that. Also if you haven't seen the concept art he came up with last week, check it out. Very cool stuff!