Hey Everyone!
Sorry for the delay in this update. Last month I took some time for myself, which I think was very well needed. It gave me the opportunity to get a few other personal projects taken care of, and has helped me focus in on the work going forward for Pacific Fury. I’ve recently had the realization that I’ve been part of this community, and Pacific Storm/Pacific Fury related projects for a long time now, almost 10 years. I very much want to continue working on Pacific Fury, and being a part of this community, but sometimes it’s ok to take a break. If I intend to stick around for another 10 years (which I hope to do) I need to make sure not to burn out.
With all that being said, I did some very cool engine things, so let’s talk about it!
Things we have done:
I focused on turrets for this month. Up until this point, when a ship went to shoot, it’s turret would fire once, regardless of how many barrels it had. We could change the particle effects for the turret to show multiple barrels firing, but then that wouldn’t allow for multiple “real” shots where multiple projectiles were fired, so I spent most of my time reworking how the turrets worked. Now the engine treats turrets as guns that rotate, and guns are comprised of multiple “rifles” (barrels). These rifles are purely logical, meaning they have no model, only data to define how they work. In each turret’s GameParam entry you can now define the rifle configuration and tell the engine when exactly each barrel fires. This means we can re-use rifles for multiple turrets/guns, but also things like particle effects can be re-used for multiple rifles. It’ll save us a lot of time and hassle down the line.
I also made an adjustment with our particle effects. They now produce light that can be reflected on the hulls of ships. The particle system has always supported this, but I haven’t tested it until now. The effects themselves, and timings of the light produced all need work, but as always, core development has to come before refinement. I’ve recorded a short video demonstrating how all these (and the new rifles) work in engine.
I also have finished setting up the hit locations for the Mogami and Fubuki. Their scale may change as we refine that part of the engine and models, but the fact that we can with a single export produce working hit locations and gun locations is fantastic.
Things we are going to work on:
This month I have two main things I want to work on. I want to continue working on the turrets, and more specifically I want to make it such that the barrels raise to the proper height when shooting. This is going to take some time to figure out the best method and code it, so don’t expect this to be completed this month, it may be done next month. Thankfully, once this is done everything turret related will be completed and we can move on to unit targeting!
The second main thing I want to do is clean up the day/night cycle for the engine. This is more of a refinement, but I don’t think it will take very long, and it’s something I’m currently interested in working on. Right now the transition between sunlight and moonlight is verry jarring as the lights pop in and pop out. I also want night to look darker than sunlight, which is currently not the case for the light reflecting on the ships. This will also allow me to do some cannon reflection testing at night once this is complete.
Things we are having trouble with:
Nothing to report on!
Thank you all for your continued support and I’m excited to continue working and sharing our achievements on Pacific Fury!
Let the Storm Begin!
God Bless,
WWJD
