[UPDATE] AVRO 0.2.9 - The Jet Fighter Game. TheToddfather

[chili]

Yeah, like lux says the best performance can be achieved with GPU acceleration. You can optimize a software rotating blitter to be crazy fast with SSE/AVX and multithreading and such, but it still won't be able to beat a decently high-end video card.

That being said, I'm going to be covering it in the tutorials (software raster rotation) because it will be a great way of briding the gap into 3D graphics.

The GDI rotation should work nicely. Faster than an unoptimized software routine and probably free of bugs/artifacts.

[bobloblaw]

Just finished playing Avro 0.1.2bg Love It! Your rotation works smoothly and the background plates really sell it. I noticed you changed the music, not sure it fits while playing the game but I love it as an intro menu screen sound. Before I selected my controls I sat and listened to the guys communicate back and forth to the tower, Really set the mood, excellent choice. The ground plane fits the game graphically, same style and feel. I kept hovering right over the ground seeing how close I could get before crashing. I REALLY want to land the plane. If you did an aircraft carrier version the ground being water and a little strip of runway to hit. Brings back my NES memories playing the frustratingly fun Top Gun. Thanks for the fun times.

[LuX]

Or perhaps you have to drop bombs on enemy camps and AA guns all while being chased down by enemy jets.

[bobloblaw]

One question I forgot to add to my previous post, I noticed you didn't have a graphics folder other than the font; where do you keep the images for the background and the ground plane, in the resource file? I am curious how you linked them in the code and that process in general. I like making my files as neat as possible, never liked having the art assets exposed as I am containing them in a graphics folder at the moment. Hoping to gain some knowledge on keeping my file as compact as possible.

[thetoddfather]

Lux, bombs are in the game now, that version will be upped to the forum very soon. Spoiler Alert: They are a whole lotta fun and it's going to get you excited for the finished product I think!

Logan,
So glad you're back! Thanks for all the positive feedback! I hear what you're saying about the music. Hmmm. Maybe some other folks could chime in? I'm picturing it in the final game and you start your mission (Yes Logan, you're landed at your base ). The music THEN turns on. And your radio is beaking off at all the chatter of the battle ahead. Kinda adds to the tension I thought. You kick the burner in and lift off to the sound of panicked air-air combat and sam launches, but you've got a mission to do, so you push on. That's what I was thinking anyway. But I see what you're saying and maybe it is just better as menu music. Love the mood of that music though. It is exactly what I'm trying to build into the game.

This whole thing is building toward the first mission. Which will be fairly easy. Drop bombs on ground targets. Early on you'll only have unguided bombs, and the M117-750lb bomb is in the game currently and works beautifully. Honestly got chills when I started dropping them. You will earn money for targets destroyed, but it will cost you to buy new weapons for the next mission. Unguided bombs will be cheap though. I plan on having a 500lb, 750lb, 1000lb and possibly a 2000lb ordnance list. Then guided bombs. Then Air-Air missiles. MAYYYYBE a small-yield nuke lol. Over time you upgrade your plane's avionics, for example, enemies won't show on your radar early on. Then upon upgrade they'll show within a certain range, more upgrades - more range. Other upgrades will be Maneuverability, Engines (I feel the need, the need for speed!), weapon capacity (how much weight in bombs you can carry), number of M-61 Vulcan rounds (20mm Gatling), Fuel Capacity. So, when all is said and done, your little plane will be pretty bad ass.

It's pretty likely there will be water missions. You may indeed relive the old nes top gun days one day if all goes well. Water level would actually be a nice second level for the fact that the graphics would be pretty easy. Gotta get content into this bad-boy so people can play some levels!

Which reminds me, ANY help anyone can provide on how I can do the backgrounds without loading large images? Running right into my scaling issue again, so for now I have to load these massive backgrounds, which means the final product may only have two or three and I won't be able to put it on the forums cause of the 10Mb max.

All of my graphics are loaded from a resource file yes. It is a modified GDI loader function that loads them into the game. It's a bit messy. You have to bring your image into a resource file, save it as RC DATA, then load it into the game from resource. I could help you out for sure. Do you have dropbox?

[Pindrought]

This is going to be the best damn 2d airplane game ever. Keep it up man.

[LuX]

Since the background isn't rotated, does the images have to be large? And are you using .png or .bmp, since a compressed format ( png ) will of course take less memory. I think the sounds will make up most of the data. You could always upload the game on an external site if the file gets too big.

Another idea would be to have these vertical strips that are seamless, and can be put together in multiple ways ( like have for example 10 different strips, each with 5 different variants ( basically the left and right side would be identical with each strip variant, but the center could be different ) ), plus vegetation as separate images, so you can pretty much randomly generate the background.

For better feel of depth have multiple background layers. The last layer would have mountains and moves slow, front layer has small vegetation and moves fast, etc. You get the idea.

The game idea sounds great so far! You could even go historical and have missions and planes themed of different battles and ages. Final mission has got to be dropping a huge atomic bomb... Haha. That might be a big project tho.

[chili]

The parallax scrolling looks really nice on this. Love the ground shadow too.

[thetoddfather]

Ok kids, after much toil the skeleton of the first mission is done.

Dossier would basically read:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
blah blah... A caravan of four military transports is making it's way for the border. This job just rolled across my desk and I hope you're crate is fueled and mission-ready. These trucks are carrying munitions that cannot cross that border. Get this done at any cost and you will be appropriately rewarded.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So tons of new stuff here. 750lb bombs(5), your guns are limited, fixed a ton of stuff. There are four trucks making their way for the border. Take em out at the dossier demands lol. Currently, you can't 'lose' the mission, as nothing will happen if one of those trucks makes it past the world's edge, but it should be pretty obvious how the mission will play out.

The plane (at low altitude - meaning with the ground in sight - should feel a lot more realistic now. The old implementation had the ground layer as a foreground (closer than ground) layer. Bullet collision is currently limited to bullets hitting the ground (so you cant hover at 1ft and gatling the trucks to death one by one. Other missing collision would be bombs have no effect on your plane (you're welcome), and bomb explosions won't kill you (this will change soon).

Lot of work went into getting it from the last stage to this stage. Hope to hear from you all!!!

[Pindrought]

Looking great man but noticed a couple things.
The speed seems to randomly change of your plane when flying parallel to the ground. Is it supposed to be like this?

The bullets don't effect the trucks, only the bombs.

Awesome to see you got this in though man its fun.