Importing was easy

Cool. I picked up the Electrical and Pipes pack from Dexter - nice easy transaction, good looking models. Importing them into Blender was a snap, which is great. Did some renders in there and it looks really good. I need to install the blender->mesh (mesh is the OGRE native format) and make sure that works, but it looks promising thus far.

Some progress

Some progress today. I tore the input routines out and replaced them with the buffered ones. Documentation was a bit lacking, but I found some good sample code. And then I replaced the simple camera with one attached to nodes (eventually, the camera will be attached to nodes that also hold an entity - the character in the game - that way if there are reflective surfaces / shadows / etc the player’s character will show properly)

And then, using the combination of the new buffered input and the camera nodes, I got the camera to pitch and yaw based on mouse position - mouselook! Next is movement based on the mouselook, but the tricky bit there is that I have to ignore up/down pitch - player is a human and thus can’t fly. Gets into vectors and quats and it is too late in the evening for that headache.

No screenshot tonight - no visual difference from last night.

Doing some research today, I think I’ve come up with a scene load system that will also help with collision detection, etc. I’m trying to avoid a real physics system - or even a fake one - since the movement in the game takes place in 2d, effectively (no up/down movement), I can store a list of rectangles that players / objects / npcs cannot pass through (including themselves) and use that for local steering and collision behaviour. That’s the plan for npc movement within rooms - I’ll use A* to let them plan how to get from room to room.

Jay from Rampant Games gave me some tips for some 3d model sites. Found a good combo pack that I’ll probably pick up - a good ship model for the freighter Kyle comes in on, a couple of good planets that I’ll need, lots of good textures and computers and such for interiors. Plus a good industrial - pipes, etc - set that I’ll pick up first. In fact, that’s what I’ll do now, go pick up that pipes set to see how it works in Blender

Speaking of Blender - books coming. Coming tomorrow, I hope - package tracking wasn’t that specific, but they are less than an hour’s drive from me at this point.