"Zephyr Wing" (working title)
[C++/OpenGL] 3D On-rails Shoot-'em-up
I had to fling together a demo for a recruitment agency on fairly short notice, with the following criteria:
- 3D
- C++
So basicaly, in 2 days I jury-rigged the terrain generator's code into C++. Most of the transition pains were to do with the fact that C++ (the cheeky scamp) doesn't let you return an array from a function. Or a float[][], for that matter. Oh Java, how absence makes the... anyhoo.
I had to also piece together as much coherent OpenGL as I could remember into a working demo. I had ordered The Red Book off amazon at the start of that week... but, I cheaped out and went for super-saver delivery, so it wasn't arriving any time soon. For the demo itself, I set the following (over-ambitious) goals, to be completed over the course of that weekend:
Goals:
- Scrolling mountain-scape
- Loaded 3D ship model + arrow controls for moving within a bounding square (in x and y - while the scrolling landscape simulates forward motion).
- Possibly: Simple patterns of enemies appearing and "coming past" you.
- Possibly: ability to fire.
- Possibly: sprite maps with alpha, arranged so as to have fake foggy clouds to pass through.
The first objective was done successfully. The rest wasn't. I had the player ship and one type of enemy ship, modelled in 3DS Max for the Zephyr Echelon project, ready to go. I converted both models to Milkshape format because NeHe has an old tutorial about loading that format, which I thought would speed things up enough to actually finish. But it turned out the references for model-loading code didn't work. I spent the whole Sunday trying to get my Milkshape format reader working, but it wasn't to be: not in that timescale.
I aim to return to this project in the future, as I have a lot of decent ideas for it. I'm glad I knuckled down and did it in the time I did, because I learned a lot. Unfortunately, the recruitment agency concerned claimed afterwards that they never got this demo, and from there didn't get back in touch.
Some ship renders for the Zephyr Franchise© 2005/2006 :D are in the gallery.
The 'Wing' C++ demo is not currently finished, but I'll post screenshots shortly.
One other thing that I put together (after the affair with the demo) was an all-singing, all-dancing kick-arse animated logo, rendered in Max.
Check it out here (I think you'll need DivX Codecs of some sort, and it's probably best to right-click and 'Save Link As'.