I’ve been meaning to update this blog for ages. Here’s a bit of back story. I originally created this as a simple little “developer’s log” static web page. The idea was just to post occasionally when I had updated Rift a bit. That was fine enough, but after talking with a friend of mine I thought maybe it would be good to turn it into an actual blog. You see I LOVE babbling on about Rift, graphics, physics, and game programming in general. And I guess my friends and co-workers are probably sick of hearing about it. So why not make a blog? Then I can babble on to myself and not bother anyone. Also there’s the slim chance that other people might find it useful. Also, if the blog manages to be interesting enough times in a row, maybe people will get interested in Rift. Okay that last one’s a long shot, but whatever. So anyway after all that I decided to create a blog.

Since then I haven’t posted once. In fact I’ve barely done any Rift development. Instead I moved to Japan. All in all it was a good move, but Rift did suffer a bit. However now that I’ve settled down I’ve started finding time to get some work done. In fact I think I might be approaching a bit of a release. So I thought maybe I’d pick this blog up and start with the babbling. So without further ado…

In the last couple of months I’ve been working on 2 major parts, ship models and steering. The ship models were just REALLY necessary. Up until now I’ve had 2 models, one for the casket type ship, and one for a simple frigate. The casket model wasn’t bad. It didn’t have a paint job, but it did have a normal map, which makes it look pretty cool. Unfortunately you rarely fly around in a casket. The frigate was horrible. I created it ages ago and was very proud of it until I showed it to a teenager who took one look at it, burst out laughing, and told me it looked like a puppy. I was a little offended until I realized he was right. So a few weeks ago I decided it was time to spend some time with Blender and see if I could make some ships. I had a general idea for the style I was going for, but I didn’t really know how to do it. In the end I figured it out enough. These days I have 2 frigates that I’m happy with. Neither of them look at all like puppies… I hope. I also came up with a paint style for all three ships. It really ties them together, makes it obvious that they’re from the same manufacturer. It’s yellow with black stripes, but not like a bee. It’s actually based on the yellow paint job for the Ford GT from Gran Turismo. You see these ships are supposed to be fast, created by a company that focuses on fast ships. So I needed a paint job that looked fast. The Ford GT is definitely fast, so I used the paint job. I’m happy with the result.

The second major piece I’ve been working on is steering. I’ll probably save the bulk of this for another post. It’s safe to say that my AI never did a good job of turning. It did okay, but not great. The result was that my guided missiles weren’t very good at hitting a moving target. The AI was okay when the turning rate of the object was sort of slow. But for a missile, which can turn very quickly, the result was sloppy. To fix it I had to fix my integrator as well as a bunch of parts in the turning methods themselves. The end result was pretty sporty. Unfortunately I recently found that it was also still a bit stupid. So these days I’ve been working on a better system. It’s much faster, but has the similar problem when the object turns quickly. So I’ll keep hammering away at it. I’ll post specifics later.

For now, I might get ready for a release. I’m thinking I can put in the slow turning stuff and call it a day. The steering isn’t great, but I can compensate by giving my ships faster turning rates. If I can clean up a few other bugs I think I can post the thing. At least then I’ll be able to show off some of my new models. If nothing else it will help the “Screenshots” section of this page.