Combat-Helo dev blog

Data Export - Debug and Multiplayer Ops (using xRTML)

2013-04-20T23:08:00.004+01:00

Another quick update.

Thanks to Sergio's efforts we have a working prototype for a potential online 'war-room'. Using XRTML and a proxy application dubbed RTCH (Real Time CombatHelo interface?) which listens on a local port. Combat-Helo and tools pushes data in and out of proxy. The proxy communicates with the XRTML server farm which distributes data to and from all listening browser pages. We'll be working on a HTML5 Canvas tool so we can render more complex data such as vector graphics. This potentially allows players and their friends access to their game sessions - in real-time - through a browser. I've also sent aircraft and avionic "state" data from the helicopter which would allow for browser based instrument repeaters. By adding code to certain base classes that use "reflection" I can now view debug data remotely which is going to be a huge time-saver for me.

This has been created as a development aid and proof-of-concept. With such a system, players across the world don't even need the game running to participate in planning and execution.

Just started on Mission editor and Event Manager

Nexus 7 Google Chrome being updated by game data real-time.

The proxy app could also be interfaced with FSX via SimConnect and pushed to browsers in the same way.

Over the coming week, mission code and mobile units will be migrated from the test modules into the game so I can begin integrated testing.

New sprint cycle - Data extraction

2013-04-13T13:52:00.000+01:00

This week saw me starting on a new sprint cycle of development (I've been contaminated by Agile "terminology" at work). I fixed some outstanding shader bugs and will be updating how the game launches this week. After a bit of an absence from the main build, coming back to Combat-Helo's cockpit was "wow", someone should really finish this and ship it. What more inspiration do you need?

It also highlighted the problem in that I couldn't remember how to operate the sensors, accidentally stowing and powering off the FCR in an attempt to switch back to ground FCR mode :/

I've never been happy with the stand-in grunt to run around in first-person mode to get to game functions, jumping back to the original design of the 'gods eye' view of the base, this seems both faster, more intuitive and (lets face it) a lot less work.

xRTML Debugging

To speed up development I'm integrating some remote debugging features in the form of IBTs xRTML (Extensible Real-Time Multiplatform Language) technology courtesy of "Spac3Rat" and technology evangelist (also known as Sèrgio). I was finally persuaded by a combat-helo moving map demo he wrote and sent to me. Much impressed by this map in a web-browser (works on tablets too) I've added JSON functions to combat-helo which will push out pretty much anything we want from my instance of the game. So all flight model, AI and waypoint data will eventually be pushed, just to see how far it will go.

SpaceRat's browser based real-time data app

One of the problems I've had during development is getting at simulation data while the game is running. Mostly this is a display issue, real-time watching of HTR and sensor variables on screen tends to make everything hard to see. Putting it onto a kneepad real-time seems like a win-win as this can be used in the released game for all kinds of cool stuff I can leave end users to play with.

I hope to bring you a link so you can watch test flights around the map in real-time in Google Chrome real soon. Won't be thrilling but at least you'll know when I'm working, or not working :)

Enough chatter. Back to the sprint.

Book Plug and moving on.

2013-02-20T22:02:00.001Z

My book was published on the 18th of Feb. This is a companion guide to anyone wanting to learn how to use GROME. It also covers plugins and scripts for exporting to other game engines. GROME is kind of like Photoshop for terrain.

Now available from Amazon US: http://amzn.to/UCXeQH
And in the UK: http://amzn.to/12GRoRZ

I want to quote from the forward at the beginning of the book as it's addressed (in part) to you guys:

Finally, a big thank you to the simulation community, SimHQ, and various individuals that continue to be supportive in the face of my endless and annoying prevarication and distractions (of which this book is but one of them). Sorry!

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

You can also buy direct from the publisher which may still have it at the pre-order discount here:
http://www.packtpub.com/grome-terrain-modeling-with-ogre3d-udk-unity3d/book

GROME is a product of Quad Software and available here:
http://www.quadsoftware.com/index.php

It uses the Graphite Engine which comes as an SDK with every GROME license. Streaming and paging comes as standard, originally designed for use in an MMO.

Now that project is over and done with, Combat-Helo development will now resume in earnest. Watch this space.

p.s. Thanks again all.

Book end

2013-01-27T23:25:00.004Z

Finally, time to post.

Crazy amount of work with three crunch times on the go. I just sent the final parts of my book, Grome 3 Terrain Modelling for Ogre3D, Unity and UDK (or whatever order it ends up in) to the publisher "PackT". Publication won't be too far away. Thanks to awesome technical review work at the guys over at Quad Software (www.quadsoftware.com) they kept me busier than I'd hoped :)

There was a CombatHelo development blog update scheduled to be auto-published in 2 days time but I've now delayed this till mid-February. Since I'll have time to complete some more development work this seemed prudent (as I didn't complete the AI material in the blog after falling ill over Christmas). I've once again trimmed the game feature list, removing the first-person on-foot component (until the Afghan campaign). Currently the game is going to feel like an in-depth Novalogic'esque production but manageable given current time constraints.

If you don't follow my occasional ramblings on LinkedIn or Twitter, I'll be spending the next few months focused on assembling playable build which I'll be taking down to the Weston Super-Mare flight-sim show this May. Although I should warn that I'm only going there to hang-out with my pals from Komodo Simulations and just soak up the atmosphere (and maybe a few brewskies).

Parting shot: When you put crew speech into a game, annoyingly it means the crew models have to lip-sync otherwise it looks weird.

Phase 1 progress

2012-11-04T21:47:00.001Z

An update on where I am with Phase 1. October was crunch-time at my day-job, 2 am late nights were regular at one point. Catching up on the work-item list, as of this weekend I have completed:

Event Manager
Triggers
AI Behaviour (steering core)
AI Waypoint paths

Individual Steering behaviours are in progress, these are the bits of code that describe individual states such as fight or flight, wandering and obstacle avoidance. These constitute the bulk of the core-game features that were outstanding. Currently these are being assembled into a test harness for unit testing. The goal here is to have everything needed to build a set of simple scenarios for the cockpit experience.

Other news

We looked at how much work is required in DCS World add-ons. Extensive LUA work is required but we don't have the resources (man-power) to commit. If the opportunity arises we'll do it but the current priority is seeing through our current project.

Thanks for the comments, feedback and general chit chat on the blog. I promised fewer blog updates and more code time.

Filing a new flight plan

2012-09-15T16:21:00.000+01:00

I can't believe it, no blog update for a whole month! Time flies.

The book is almost done at my end apart from reviewing the second drafts and peer review. If you're not aware its called "GROME 3.1 Terrain Modelling for Ogre3D, UDK and Unity". Despite the title it's more of a short guide on using GROME with notes on how to export terrains to Unity and other game engines. Squashing it down to 150 pages is challenging. Ideally 200 pages would cover all functions and allow for more in-depth exporting processes, but it's a fixed number of pages. Time moves on, one project is winding down and now we're into September, as promised it's time to take a look at the Combat-Helo project and give everyone who's still following this blog some news on what's going to happen....probably.

Because I'm working full time for a medical software company, combat-helo will only see after-hours work when I resume development. As a result the road-map has to be adjusted accordingly, there simply isn't the man-hours required to complete the existing one, to this end I've broken it down into more reasonable phased releases. This was always the intention however I've reduced the scope of the releases.

One of the ideas David and I toyed with is a spin-off helicopter game for the action market featuring Maximum-Overkill'esq game-play but retaining some of the avionic toys we have in our Apache implementation. The advantage of doing this was getting some credibility, to say we've released something (even if it is not much more than a fancy demo with 'splosions). Some people just want to see some of the stuff we've been doing first hand. Frankly it's not the game I want to make but it's one we could build on. Once that is in the wild we would continue development on the full-spec game in stages. The action-game would have been targeted for Steam and Origin stores with some brain dead title and trailer. However someone already beat us to the brain dead trailer part.

Valve's Greenlight project has deflated my enthusiasm for this plan, regardless I'm committed to seeing it through. But then I'm less than thrilled with how long Combat-Helo has taken; going from a full-time project to part-time, to no-time, now hedging back to part-time. My will focus will be on getting it ready as a cockpit demo with basic game-play and releasing it as a re-branded game. Once this has escaped I will work on finishing the rest of the features. To make it formal here's an announcement.

Work on Combat-Helo resumes on Sept 29th.

The road-map for game releases is looking like this...

Phase 1 - Cockpit demo and shooter
Phase 2 - Multi-player update and fixes
Phase 3 - Editor
Phase 4 - Gunnery Trainer
Phase 5 - Overseas campaigns
Phase 6 - Addon aircraft (CH-47)

It will remain a donation project until we procure a new host 3D engine that can handle the terrain size needed for historical campaigns. The software architecture of our Apache will continue to remain as engine agnostic as possible.

One Week Only - Augmented Reality Project

2012-07-31T15:00:00.002+01:00

As I'm on holiday until Thursday with some old friends visiting from Denmark we decided to do a kind of "invention exchange". We're geeking out and building a "Bullseye" table. Let me explain, Bullseye is some proprietary research software used in some museums and exhibition stands, it's image tracking software that runs on the GPU and can INDIVIDUALLY track hundreds of little paper targets on the surface of the table in real-time.

It's written in Java and outputs the data via a couple of common multi-touch formats so it can be used by game engines such as Unity3D.

The hard part is calibrating the cheap and nasty camera equipment since we're using cheap stuff we can find around the house but as this is a prototype quality isn't an issue.

Today we're converting an old MAME cocktail arcade cabinet to use as the table. We'll fit a relatively inexpensive projector (around 200 UKP) under the table to project the game onto the underside of the table.

The little paper Bullseye targets are glued under objects (LEGO works fine but you can use model tanks/Battletech/Star Wars figures etc). The web cam under the table sees the shadow of the target and the Bullseye software sends the filtered camera image to the shader on the GPU. This scans the image for the geometry of the targets and writes the information to a small texture. Each target has an ID, position and rotation value. Fingers and other shadows will be tracked as objects with NO ID or rotation. The rotation is worked out from the shapes on the outer circle. The inner circle contains a binary representation of the target ID.

Tracking over 64 objects at 10 fps using a $10 camera is reasonably OK so long as the calibration is fine. As you increase the camera resolution and frame speed you can track more objects. One of the tables built already by the Bullseye developers is fast enough to run a virtual air-hockey game using some very expensive cameras.

For our prototype we're going to try and put together a simple Apache helicopter arming table and send that data into Combat-Helo. Failing that a simple snake or sound game. As time is running out we need to get a move on. More updates as we go.

Information on TUIO protocols and multi-touch displays can be found here http://www.tuio.org/

We interrupt this program.

2012-07-15T22:03:00.000+01:00

Had planned and written a blog update to go out this weekend however some of the details I anticipated would be in it are still to be confirmed.

So here instead is a 30 second video of waves in Leadwerks engine I recorded earlier while working on water in various 3D engines. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

(Actually I leave this scene running while playing Art of Noise in the background)

Weather clearing up - sunny spells in the afternoon

2012-06-12T22:24:00.003+01:00

Last month I didn't have a clue exactly what was going to happen with regard to the project and work etc. As it happens I'm grateful things worked out as well as they did. My book is well under way and on schedule, new job starting shortly and thank goodness; not one but TWO replacement couches. If you didn't know I've been sitting in a hole padded with cushions for two years, a glamorous life but on the plus side visitors didn't want to stay long. However come the end of July I have some guests from Denmark coming over to show me how to build an AR table. Using a piece of target tracking software called "Bullseye" and Unity3D here's some footage of a music table in action courtesy of LEGO.

As it's going open source soon and I have a TON of painted Battletech figures and helicopters sitting in a box I'm hoping we can jam a prototype AR tabletop mech game in a week for not much expense. I haven't told him yet but it's too late for them to cancel the holiday. Sorry Lena :)

He's also quite keen to get some stick time on Combat-Helo so it's a good opportunity to get it fixed up for another public outing. Dave and I have been working on a rescue plan which I'm happy with. Currently I still only have a few hours during the week to work on the project, this will increase around mid-July.

Gunfighter6 just stepped and delivered a script full of stand-in speech files. So big thank you for that. What I did for the script was generate a cut-down version for the gunnery range and have just 3 parts, the range officer and two crewmen. The trick is to turn unfiltered speech into multiple parts by mixing radio noise, if that doesn't work then I'll have to batch process noise into the audio fragments using Audacity. It's now capable of running scripts.

Audacity 2.0 - great program.

The Leadwerks Community Project is picking up pace but some of the guys working on it have pulled out all the stops to put in some awesome work and I'm learning a thing or two from every update. Here's the third video blog of what's going on behind the scenes. Roll the tape Johhny....

I just watched Indie Game - The Movie (www.indiegamethemovie.com/), a highly emotional experience and my heart goes out to all developers out there who feel the same level of frustration and conviction. In the darker moments when the pressure is on and you can only see the problems, that's when you want to give up. Some of those guys were working for 5 years, without support. As a movie it's beautifully shot and scored. If you want some insight into what it's like being the little guy trying to code your 'big idea' this is spot on...except for most it doesn't have the good bit at the end.

I'm thankful for Dave's patience and continued support from folks. Next update will be in about two weeks, until then have fun.

Flying a desk in bad weather

2012-05-21T13:30:00.000+01:00

I don't like this new "blogger" interface at all. Nonetheless. This is a post I kept putting off but it's not all bad news so I'm comfortable making it now.

As some of you are already aware my funds for this venture expired at the end of March when it ceased to be a full time enterprise. All time on the project is whatever I can scrape together (and justify) between other work. Currently I'm under contract to finish a book on terrain modeling for programmers and artists using GROME 3.1 for Unity, UDK, iPhone and Ogre3D. I have to say it's been a blast working on this. A wise man one put in his forum sig "Best way to learn is to teach others."

In it I'll be covering diverse topics such as world scales, FPS engines, terrain tiling and LOD, procedural generation of topography, textures, importing DEMs and exporting terrain so it will run on Unity iPhone and more.

Asynchronous terrain tile loading was something I was researching for the next iteration of the Combat-Helo engine which is why I ended up being asked to write the book. Hopefully I'll be in a better position to put it into practice (beyond the examples in the book) later in the year. Expect publication around end of August/September, if only for my terrible puns. Too bad nobody seems to be hiring to do this stuff.

Watch out for: Grome 3.1 Terrain Modeling with Ogre3D, UDK and Unity3D
ISBN# 978-2-849529-18-2

Coming to a bookstore this Fall.

But what about Combat-freeking-Helo?

Only getting a few hours a week to tinker is not enough. The problem is interest from debts incurred during development can no longer be supported out of my own pocket. Costs of hardware and licenses not to mention time (Dave didn't get paid at all, I owe him a massive beer tab and a luxury foot-massage - at least) need to be addressed. In addition legal costs of releasing can't be met, and they are necessary today, more so than ever.

It is a frustrating situation. Kickstarter has been mentioned by some readers. They are popular atm, seems every man and his dog is funding re-makes on it. Unless I can find a business development manager to set-up a US based entity it's not going to be an option for us. I don't have the time or experience of US business law to set one up. One UK developer (Carmageddon) recently had to do just that, I envy them.

From the start I clearly said I wouldn't work on the project unless it was funded, when that funding didn't appear I went ahead out of my own pocket but knew time was limited. If we could literally kickstart this thing and give it what it needs (business development, professional audio, animation library, second programmer, Dave's beer tab) to the tune of about $20,000 we're good. That's the sit-rep. When I get current commitments out of the way I can devote a little more time to fix pressing issues.

As for the work that is being done:

I redeveloped the audio script for the Firing Range. It would be nice if we can at least get the minimum amount of voice work done to bring life to the cockpit.
LUA scripting of mobiles is partly complete. Need to create nav-grid data, still outstanding.
Flight model still down, forces are not getting updated and attempts to debug have not met with success. Will be something simple but like finding needle in a haystack, time intensive. Came up with strategy to deal with this thanks in part to the Leadwerks Community Project guys.

Mossie - "Victory Stings the Loser"

Paolo has been busy with his own family commitments and found time to finish off the game's mascot, looking excellent in my opinion. I hope to have some made up into squad patches for a limited edition release (if only because I want one on my jacket so I might as well get a bunch made up).

He's been brainstorming game-play record keeping ideas, some of which will make it into the game as they are way better than mine and as it turned out, easier to implement from an art point of view.

Moving on to other things. It's my personal blog so I might as well indulge myself and write about what else I've been doing.

Dungeon Crawlers

I started a small series on "Procedural Content Generation". A tutorial on building an old-school dynamic Dungeon crawler in LUA. When creating the combat-helo vehicle scripts I realised I was missing some subtitles of LUA, this has been a good opportunity to explore it. Here's links to the first 3 parts. The final two parts will be posted after I get my current book chapter off to the publisher.

- Procedural Content Creation Part 1
- Procedural Content Creation Part 2
- Procedural Content Creation Part 3

Proland 4.0 goes OpenSource

Back on the subject of terrain, some great news this month as Proland 4.0 went opensource under a dual commercial GPL3 license. If you're not familiar with Proland it's the work headed up by French researchers Eric Bruneton and Fabrice Neyret. While they were at the time reluctant to license for militaristic applications we were quite interested in using it for a Search and Rescue application (the project later became tied to Unity and using GROME as a world data import tool).

Here's the text of the announcement:

INRIA is pleased to announce that Proland has been released in Open Source:

http://proland.inrialpes.fr

Proland is a C++/OpenGL library for the real-time realistic rendering of very large and detailed 3D natural scenes on GPU. It is capable of rendering entire planets from ground to space. Proland is released under a dual GPLv3/commercial license. You can try it by downloading the precompiled Windows demo at http://proland.inria...r/download.html.

ZOMBIES

The Leadwerks community recently got together to start building a Zombie FPS. I'm not doing much of anything except this time I'm doing it in C++ and using TinyXML to do all the game loading and saving. Just watching some of the guys put down animation code here, subway level designs, weapon code. Quite inspiring. Everyone seems to have something to bring to the party, even if it's just my two tins of Dutch lager.

I think the "Worst Case Scenario" game idea is a good one. Giant ants, a 53.5ft tall woman, amorphous blobs, zombies, walking plants and secret nuclear tests all thrown into one bad day in Smalltown USA is a Steam classic waiting to happen. Did I leave out the alien robot and killer rabbits? How foolish. I look forward to playing the LCP (Leadwerks Community Project) game which is already taking shape.

Parting Shot

As usual, if there's any major announcement it will be made here. My twitter feed tends to have a high signal to noise ratio.

Mobiles, mobs and states

2012-04-04T18:03:00.001+01:00

While waiting on fixes for the flight-model and control inputs, putting some game into the game we talked about ranges and how performance measuring was going to work. In addition we wanted to add a little variety which required working mob AI.

So nothing fancy but I managed to rustle up a simple finite state machine FSM to get some tanks and cars running around. Our design uses a group formation system (a group is a number of individual units that share common logic, e.g a tank platoon) and if you've ever used Missioneer you'll be familiar with the concept.

Currently tanks are driving around a small test tool I'm using to test the module, switching formations, revving engines, exhaust smoke. Performance is king so updates are interlaced, no vehicle physics are required so animation suffices.

Each group member has a goal pivot, when the formation changes the individual vehicles seek their pilot according to their driving behaviour. All the pivots are parented to a master pivot controlled by the group. This way you just need to update the group position (e.g movement orders to x/y) and the rest takes care of itself.

We can look into expanding the states later when we want them to do more complicated things, and do that on a per unit basis. Tank gunners will want to turret to target when attacking, manpads will simply turn to face. Same state but slightly different logic per unit. And this can be done in LUA level by setting the models "fsm_mode" key. That makes less work for me and gives Dave the artist some nice toys to play with. At the end of the day I at least have a tile based tank engine to play with. I'll throw up a video.

For the gunnery range we don't need anything demanding; some AI road following traffic, people in groups and the odd vehicle following a set of waypoints. Nothing spectacular or difficult there. That hardest part is turning the 3D geometry of the road network into a navigation grid. Then your mob groups need to know if they are supposed to be following the road or their own formation (switching as they move from one to the other).

Roads

The one problem I have in getting AI traffic running around is putting together a nav-grid I can work with. Our roads are large models (2 or 3 assorted) that are built in 3D Max using a height deformation modifier (the same height-map used to build terrain layers). And it mostly fits. I think we need to flatten it out so only the surface triangles can be read and turned into usable data.

Speaking of art, "Mossie" has been given some love.

Further reading:
FSM gate scandal - Why they are old hat

Mossie Mascot update...

2012-03-23T10:12:00.001Z

Meanwhile in Comknat-Helo...colouring update for Mossie...

In other news

Caught this video a few days ago but made it to the BBC today courtesy of Military.com

A demonstration of the dangers of thin mountain air in Afghanistan. Someone should check oxygen levels and how it can effect judgement at those altitudes. Performing a "return-to-target" turn in low density air.

More vintage helicopter material and custom dynamics

2012-03-13T14:05:00.000Z

Struggling to find some progress to demo, the past week has been picking up threads and licking Combat-Helo back into shape with a HTR flight model update and repairs from my aggressive (frantic?) debugging sessions from a while back (mostly sorted now). Almost done with the HTR update, some small things came out while doing it which I might as well share.

During a recent visit into the attic to dig out research material I came upon some of the more interesting clippings from World Air Power and assorted journals. Including one glossy sales leaflet from Boeing which I've scanned in and posted below (showing rear page). Bypassing the somewhat aggressive tone, if you examine the "Baseline Performance Specification" table it does illustrate the effect of temperature on performance. It's worth noting that published data like this varied greatly especially after upgrades to engines and rotor system. This leaflet from an air-show is a little old.

One of the cool aspects Helicopter Total Realism (HTR) for FSX is it enables pilots to tweak and test how their helicopter flies in a simple manner. For example

[Helicopter] 
helicopterType= 1
simType = 0
length = 50.74
velocityNeverExceed = 172
emptyWeight = 10670
simEmptyWeight = 10670
maxGrossWeight = 14415
meanAerodynamicChord= 6
emptyWeightCOG = 0.48
...
...

The dynamics of each helicopter are edited easily enough with HTR by changing values in the .CFG file that lives in each helicopters "dynamics" directory. As this file is likely to updated at our end and therefore updated during any pushed game update it was prudent to add a check for a "aircraft_user.cfg" file so any edits should be saved into this file which should remain untouched. Good news if you want to plug in WHA-64 specs.

It should be possible to hot-swap between the two in game via the chat/command console to make comparisons.

A quick shout out to "Pixel Perfect" who has been working on his own flavour of lip-sync in Leadwerks (Facial animation test) which I think would be a really nice touch for our crewmen and seems pretty simple enough once you have the datafile containing all the phonemes and timing data. It does require some extra bones in the heads (Leadwerks does bone animation not vertex). That hard part I think is sorting out the model conversion but the concept seems to work. And it has to be slightly better than flapping heads. Although I'll have to run the details past Dave since it's his dept. see if we can't shoehorn that into the roadmap somewhere.

And now, from Fort Rucker a sweet introduction film (and rare in that it's been encoded in HD)

United States Army Presents: Sikorsky H-19 Helicopter Flight Training (30mins)

Parting Shot

Thanks for the feedback on last weeks video, the mini-tutorial on using the KBU Keyboard Unit (I keep wanting to type Unity which is another 3D engine I use from time to time). I've since found FOUR functions for it, the altitude bugs low and high, manual range input and .... barometric pressure. Which is right next to the bug settings. See the default pressure of 29.92 which represent inches of mercury inHg at sea level. You shouldn't need to set this at all as boarding the aircraft sets the value to the ambient pressure outside (we use the standard atmospheric model in Combat-Helo).

Also in the video I set the high bug to 3,000 feet. I realised a couple of days later that this setting is for the RADAR altimeter....and at what altitude does the radar alt disappear? (AH64 trivia question there for you Janes junkies) Answer, about half that. So 3,000 didn't make a lot of sense however if you want to enter silly values you can. I decided to leave it unless I find data that says otherwise.

Mossie concept art

2012-03-07T08:11:00.001Z

Just a short post since I'm busy being pulled in a dozen different directions; I got roped into helping someone create a short health and safety film, drafting a project proposal, raising finances and even managed to fix a long standing bug in Combat-Helo. Now the sensors, line of sight and all that guff is now WORKING again, Hooray. A quick background on that, an engine update needed to fix some occlusion issues slightly changed the Model hierarchy in a subtle way that changed how actual filenames of models were retrieved, long story short, they no longer matched the ones in the vehicle database as they had "lod1" suffixed to everything . But hey it was a quick fix once traced, I digress as usual.

Talented Paolo, creator of many a fine mascot has been working on some fictional nose-art and patches for the squad mascot in Combat-Helo. We knew we wanted it to feature a mosquito, the mosquito is the nickname allegedly given to the AH-64D by Taliban forces. Incidentally it was also the aircraft my father was attached to during World War II so I felt it had a double meaning.

The character will be visible on squad patches and eventually be available as nose-art.

Below is an earlier draft of "Mossie" to help decide on nose style, the nose later became the Apache's signature Bushmaster cannon.

Please post your thoughts and comments on "mossie", suggestions for what he can hold in his left hand are invited.

*edit*

Finished adding additional features of the KBU, namely auto pop-up and closure of the unit when you click on an MPD function that requires entry; setting hi and lo bug. And manual range entry. Now comes complete with blinky cursor and key highlight when you move the mouse over the keys. All command entries are pushed back into the TAvionics message handler, there's an optional message history buffer (currently inactive).

US Army presents "Mast Bumping"

2012-02-24T18:14:00.005Z

I know it's a little late for Valentines Day. Excessive flapping, bumping and separation is discussed in this priceless US Army video from 1980. If only they had "RotorCam (tm)". The Apache has a fixed rotor, mast bumping isn't an issue but it's all part of helicopter theory.

I've been forced to continue hunting for other employment to deal with a mounting debt crisis. As a result work was put on hold the past two weeks (hence the lack of updates). I apologise for letting my post slide, the project really is taking a toll. I've been ordered to get back to Combat-Helo ASAP (taxes and all that business stuff needed to be done too), I'll be updating as well as I can. There's an engine update to finish rolling into the project (I started on that earlier in the week, this fixes a problem with terrain and I hope the EntityUserData and hierarchy problem).

A Twitter follower suggested I post some Gun Cam footage, I had a look at that and found vegetation range/LOD issues in the MTADS camera need dynamic adjusting (not sure what the most efficient method will be yet).

I'll just round this entry off by stating that raising funds in the UK for technical entertainment projects is very difficult if not near impossible. Bank staff/accountants take one look at video of Apache cockpits and give you funny looks like you're some kind of gun nut (that actually happened).

In the meantime, enjoy the technical detail of the above video.

Another Example

Here's a great example of ground resonance, link provided by reader Christian.

Stuff you thought was going to be simple but wasn't

2012-01-19T21:49:00.000Z

Swimming was one.

Setting up controllers in XPlane is another.

Yes the things you thought were going to take a few days which turned into a week and a bit (you could almost say 'two weeks'). Josh at Leadwerks gave me a leg-up on how to put an MMO style launcher together and I've almost done wrapping up all the security for the necessary database, key code generation, CVS style updates and all the stuff we need to match individual content to clients. We'll make available downloadable content (DLC) such as new maps and the occasional helicopter (the planned CH-47D), not to mention the odd mission pack.

No, this key won't work, it's a fake

So there was a lot to do to make a simple one shot MMO style launcher. The back-end server stuff had to be built from scratch. The launch .EXE calls home, applies on-demand updates and preps game settings for launch. For simple security sakes I layered server-side scripts for handling the updates, admin and audit. Auditing is handled by triggers, SQL injection is futile since only one procedure is exposed to clients.

Any DBA will tell you Auditing is an important part of any security. If you build any kind of database exposed to the internet and you don't build your own layer on top of any default transaction logging then you're kind of asking for trouble. The database engine used here is not known for keeping detailed logs so it was necessary to build one anyway. Things you might want to think about if you ever need to create systems like these are making log indexes suitable for frequency analysis (this one method Twitter uses to spot spamming), fake open doors and keys and silent alarms. My favourite trick in the past was a fake database that gives the intruder a high and makes them believe they have walked away with the crown jewels while evidence is collected. That sort of none-sense is not required here, I kept this one functional with a tiny footprint.

The Pilot ID we'll be sending out is the key to your content; install once, play as you like. If you share copies around on your network you can launch 'offline' no worries, no need to be connected to the internet until you want to update. It's nice if you want to buy multiple copies for your network and support the effort put into this project but I'm poor too so I know how it is.

Little bit of script consolidation and testing to do before we let this loose in the real world.

Nothing serious but one reader sent in this...

2012-01-06T11:11:00.000Z

From an Australian gaming mag (and those guys are tough cookies) at the bottom of a review of Take On Helicopters...

Thanks for the mention guys :) the picture is a bit out of date though, but what the hell.

New scratch built industrial buildings

2012-01-02T16:49:00.006Z

It was over a year ago we were notified that some of the models we had purchased from Dexsoft might possibly have been stolen. After a period of investigation the probability was quite high this was the case and Dexsoft contacted customers to offer new packs. However months later I was unable to get a reply about these replacements and only in November when doing a review of outstanding assets and licensing we had to either press again or do a re-build.

Dave elected to take it upon himself to do a rebuild and not wanting to have to reposition every building adopted the same dimensions with the exception of adding much needed 'basements' (a basement is just an extrusion of the exterior wall so that it will sink under terrain so no gaps are left if the centre of the model is positioned on uneven ground.

Originally the models were made for use in first-person games and LOD0 had details such as railings and girders. Dave completely built (from scratch) versions complete with new textures and made them more efficient at the cost of some detail. An original building had 5213 polygons, after a rebuild only 728 polys (which is iPhone territory).

Original stolen model on left, rebuilt from scratch on right

Scratch build on left, original on right

Any small indie developer takes a leap of faith when purchasing models from 3rd parties, you don't know where they came from or their history. In this instance we got bitten as did the 3rd party which handled the situation well (but it would have been nice to have the replacements anyway). No harm was done, anyone using or releasing games with 3rd party content be aware.

Thanks Dave for once again being on the ball.

Update

Started work on the updater again.This is based in part on the Leadwerks SDK downloader which is pretty much everything I needed given a little twist and a slice of lemon. Hopefully some of you will be seeing this in the near future. At some point we'll add user names and a regcode system prior to any content downloads (these will not be required to play).

As much as you might want to click on it, you can't yet :(

With any luck the 'one click' update system will let us add rolling improvements at the cost of occasionally annoying you with a download when an update is available. I just want to be able to push one button, get the latest changes to any content I own and go.

Support for different builds (content)

Happy New Year - Another year older...

2011-12-31T22:39:00.003Z

I (Richard H) take the opportunity to indulge myself in a little year-end editorial and pick out some of the personal highs and lows of the past twelve months. Warning: may contain rambling, digression and woeful inaccuracies.

Is it over already? What happened this year?

2011 a year where the most wanted man in America was shot (along with 4 other people that nobody seems to remember) by US Navy SEALs. A year where governments attempted to convince themselves they have any kind of control over economies despite the billions spent on technology and infrastructure to remove people out of the loop. I call blasting away mountains to improve packet travel time by mere milliseconds pretty compelling evidence of the forces being thrown into this new hi-tech computer based trading war. When the speed of light is too slow to make money over the competition and shortening your cable by removing hillsides is the difference between profit and loss what chance do governments or people have in this trading scenario? And it's all happening without much talk or opposition.

The 'adventure' in IRAQ was laid to rest with US President Obama announcing US troop withdrawal. The British army was there in the first half of the previous century and didn't fare much better, although the suggestion that using poison gas on rebels in the north was not acted upon, that was one of Winston Churchill's bright ideas curiously. Always seemed ironic that.

Freedom swept across the middle east, starting with Tunisia as despot after despot was felled in popular uprisings. You'd be forgiven for thinking it was some sort of Facebook game.

Earthquakes and devestation

Japan moved 20 meters westerly and horrific scenes of coastal devastation were broadcast live as the resulting tsunami from the massive undersea earthquakes swept away generations of familes, homes and soon after any remaining nuclear power comfort zone.

Japan has never been a stranger to holocaust, scenes and stories of annihilation and devastation are popular in Japanese culture, see the opening scene of Akira. This is something they have lived through time and time again. My late father-in-law was a Hiroshima survivor, sponsored by US scientists after the war he became a US citizen and then a notable scientist and Quaker. He told me once of thanking Oppenheimer (at a conference) for ending the war in his country, how awful must things have been when getting nuked and loosing your family was in retrospect the better option? It's something I can't even begin to think about without breaking down in tears.

Game devs want more pie

It was the year every game studio and his dog decided they wanted a slice of the Mincecraft pie without any consideration of what makes it so popular. The phrase "just like Warcraft" was replaced by "just like Minecraft", or if you're an unethical developer, "Just like Farmville".

Unethical is a strong word to use but I'll use it for any type of game that preys on innate human weaknesses to make you play them rather than well designed gameplay. This can be aimed at a lot of games that exist in the social arena. I blame a large part of this down to the adoption of the "Monthly Active User" metric being used as a key performance indicator (KPI) for IP acquisition and exploitation.

Another example of game success passed around developers is "Angry Birds". What they often don't realise is Angry Birds was not an out of the blue success, the creators had built up experience working on around 50 games between them prior to launch. The game mechanics are stupefying simple, any programmer or user of Little Big Planet can put such a game together. It is no more sophisticated than Gorillas (shipped as BASIC source code with MSDOS 5 see wiki), it is a single player artillery game. But everything surrounding the mechanics is a finely tuned presentation based on their collective game experience. It takes experienced designers to make Angry Birds, not programmers.

Indie because we say so

Somehow the meaning of 'indie' became fluid, when news of companies like EA announce the formation of an indie studio to engage social and mobile spaces it has one reaching for my "WTF?" stamp. In what way is this indie? Indie is folks trying to democratise games in a way big studios have been blocking for years, indie is independent thought in the game-space or some pretentious twaddle like that. Indie is not trading on skin deep looks, big bucks advertising budgets but game mechanics and freedom to experiment. Freedom to fail.

Start-ups being handed hundreds of thousands of pounds in government grants could be said to be independent. Certainly this year saw many studios spring forth from magic money with little to show for it, and some priced beyond reason. It smells of the dot com boom bust of the early 2000s. Studios are good at being handed funds (in the words of Lord Stark) 'when it's safe'. Hey investors, how about taking some risks on real projects? We could have done this bloody game in half the time, does that smack of enough bitterness? Yes I'm bitter. OK that's enough, better now. Moving on to some of the personal gaming highs this year.

Video game highlights of 2011

Shogun 2 - Creative Assembly
Magika - Arrowhead Game Studios
Assassins Creed Revelations - Ubisoft

Most of the games I had time to play this year (and that's not many) were a mixed bag. To be fair even Assassins Creed was a face-roll fest (not much skill required) but managed to keep one going through sheer story and production value. At the opposite end is Shogun 2, Creative Assembly's triumph combining many elements they've tinkered with in previous games and spades of neat game elements into their two tier strategy game packed with historical facts.

Magika is a hilarious indie action game where blowing yourself up in interesting ways seems par for the course. It came out of nowhere and fair to describe the tone of the game as something you'd get if you threw Reservoir Dogs, Lord of the Rings and Monty Python into a blender. Thanks guys for the laughs.

Honorary mentions: Battlefield 3, Portal 2. and Kerbal Space Program. That latter being great fun if you're into building your own monstrous launch systems and killing space crews in spectacular fireballs.

Video game disappointments of 2011

I bought 'em, played 'em, felt gutted.

Test Drive 2 Unlimted - Eden Games

Wow, after the brilliant but only slightly flawed first game they didn't need to do very much to make the second game a winner. It was like the anticipation of a new Star Wars film (The Phantom Menace), in the words of Harry Plinkett, how hard is it to screw up? It's like mashed potato, just add water. Well they managed it IN SPADES by populating the game entirely with really awful people. I don't want to play these characters, I don't want to interact with these characters. One forum poster dubbed it "Douche-bag simulator".

Skyrim

An honorary arrow in the knee because Oblivion with a face-lift seemed cool at first, erm how much was spent on this? Disappointment still ringing from the hours I put into Oblivion only to find the openness of character development can result in halting any progression after xxx hours. They filmed this live action trailer which could be for anything, my step-son suggested that it could work as a dandruff commercial, see for yourself...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1AenlOEXao

Let me know if you hit the same wall in Skyrim.

Batman Arkham City

I finished the first Batman game a total of FIVE times. I can't think when I've ever bothered to do that with any other console game. Finishing ONCE is a rare thing.

Arkham City lost me after a weekend of play. Too much freedom and visual clutter spoiling an otherwise masterfully visualised city environment. Riddler on the Roof, he's painted dayglow green crap everywhere to solve his collection meta-quest. And worse, there's really no logic to some of the puzzles, (the rooftop chicken run with the magnetic ball for one), I can absorb bullets but I can't rip open a chicken run to grab the ball and stick it in the hole? Put me in the game like you did with Arkham Asylum please, but ill-considered content like this kept taking me out. Sometimes less is more. The artwork is amazing and the laser effects best I've ever seen, a real visual treat with jarring game elements that kill pacing.

Combat-Helo

I had to mention this. Still not out yet and my internal build seems so close yet needs more cowbell. I was really looking forward to seeing a beta released around now and spending my time apologising in public forums and working on improvements. What happened is a series of poor choices on my part which I wouldn't choose to do again. Problem that a normal team could rally around is too much for one programmer to deal with (such as the much needed engine occlusion bug which broke a key avionics sub-system). Another mistake was getting pressured into announce a release period which was just setting myself up for disappointing people when problems arose. I broke my own rule and paid the price. While I still feel bad about that I love the team even though they probably hate some of the choices I made, I can't disagree. Will the release meet expectations? Probably not. Will it fly? You bet. Besides my wife said she'll cut off my bollocks if I don't release it soon or get a decent paying job. Can't argue with that either.

Video and film highlights of 2011

Everything is a Remix

If there was ever a documentary that shows how ridiculous, damaging and outdated modern day copyright and patent laws are, Everything is a Remix is an entertaining documentary series in 4 parts. Everything around us is a remix of some tool, idea and material. Without the freedom to copy, transform and combine existing ideas and technologies creativity is stifled and with it western economies. How different our world would be today if the same level of litigation was around at the time of the industrial revolution.

Sons of Guns - Discovery Channel

Once you get past the gratuitous 'gun porn' flag waving aspect what I love about this series is the sheer love and enthusiasm from the employees of Red Jacket Firearms featured in the show. Sure they love to blow shit up and you might question the sanity and choices made (as do the employees from time to time) but the company is not run as a democracy (insert discussion here). Now airing the third season it's perhaps the most popular show on Discovery HD. It had me yelling, "I got a guitar GUN!" Cracks me up every time.

Cowboys and Aliens (imdb)

The film was better than the title. Reminding me a little of an old b-movie Valley of the Gwangi (imdb) it was a reasonably fun and gritty take on the what-if monster genre.

Super-8 (imdb)

A charming revisit of what an 80s Spielberg movie would be if made today....set in the 80s. Yes we wore those clothes in school. And if you have a 5.1 surround system then the train crash scene will terrify your neighbours. Written and Directed by J.J Abrams.

Cool science stuff

Energy from paper, discovery of hundreds of 'earth like' planets around nearby stars, the possible discovery of the Higgs Boson and Mentos in diet coke. Granted the last one is a bit late but is the only practical experiment I actually conducted in the kitchen. I did clean up though.

Here's hoping that next year science will bring us phones and portable computing devices that can keep a charge for more than a few hours.

Oh and the amazing new bulletproof liquid armor from BAE systems would be handy in the field. Currently it requires 10 pints of Newcastle Brown Ale to feel bulletproof and lightweight however field tests show the subject to be less than agile.

HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE
(or I'll hit the UNDO button at midnight and we'll have to try all over again)

Parting quote:

"Goodbye. Goodbye to all the 87 software houses who are no longer with us . . . hello multinationals with your contract lawyers and your cut-price rotten little programs ..." - The Pi-man's end of the year message to fans circa mid 1980s

Bogged Down - Chin Up

2011-12-12T10:08:00.000Z

I apologise for lack of updates, long time since the last one (weeks it seems although I have two unpublished ones which are no longer relevant). I've been avoiding online spaces during this time, work has been bogged down with the multitude of tasks not just relating to the Combat Helo game.

I'm working on the flight model again this week so don't expect any updates in a while. I did get started on an updated FAQ and will publish that ASAP. Lots of things happen around this time of year with concerts and church services, when you have a musical family there's a lot of evenings taken up with those.

So I don't know when we'll have something to show for all this work. It'll happen when it happens, there's no budget to finish and I've got huge debts that require me to stop at some point and take time off to do other work.

On the plus side I did get a nice pressie from one of my brothers which is going to buy a nice cheap car (sensible, used K car but importantly has a working HEATER, a nice to have feature for UK winters). Something to be said for being happy just by virtue of being in a car that's warm.

"Do you know what’s killing Western democracy, George? Greed, and constipation. Moral, political, aesthetic. The economic repression of the masses institutionalized." - Bill Haydon from John le Carré's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 1974.

Quick update - optimisations

2011-11-17T12:41:00.000Z

Last week I identified one issue relating to UserEntityData introduced with the last engine update which prevents consistent update of Enity data due to some change in the hierarchy and no documentation on what was changed.

So I'm faced with having to re-factor (meaning to changing code but same behaviour) core sensor code. It's the sort of thing that is utterly frustrating and makes one want to throw everything out of the window. It's not as if there aren't enough things to do.

There's 4 major issues I'm not happy with:

Flight Model bridge refinement
Ground dynamics
Horizon gapping and other asset problems (licences/legal, audio)
Events / Triggers

I know I can rush some of these things and end up with something I'm not happy with. And if I'm not happy with it I don't see why anyone else will be happy. The majority of potential customers don't follow this blog, they don't care about how much work or team sizes, finds and lack-of, how or why, and often they don't care about the word "beta". To do what's right in the long term means having to not cut corners and do what needs to be done.

Sucks though.

Who would have thought building a stand-alone study sim of the most advanced attach helicopter on the planet would be so difficult? What gives?

Lest we forget

2011-11-11T11:00:00.001Z

11/11

Random pics of the Day

2011-11-11T00:51:00.000Z

Some pics of the day.

Battlezoneesque - eerie (debug stuff)

Shadow puppet time.

Planning terminals awaiting attention

This is how I start every day

US Army showcases AB3 - Apache Block II to Block III in video

2011-11-06T11:21:00.001Z

US Army released video showcasing the new Block III Apache in a virtual training environment.

The video covers in a nutshell...

Weight reduction
Improved software upgrade pipeline
Increased engine power 701-D engines and improved drive system
Better digital battlefield intergration
UAV commanding
IFR certified instruments
Reliability and servicing improvements
RFI range triangulation
Maritime classification
Awesome new logo

C-SCOPE

2011-10-26T17:24:00.000+01:00

While Dave is away hopefully keeping his head above water (all those Bear Grylls survival videos should come in handy) I've got not much else to do except worry and get on with my to-do list.

C-SCOPE was something I remember saying wouldn't make it but turned out to be a freebie since everything was available to simply drop it in.

[C-SCP] button on the FCR page overlays FCR target symbols on TADS video and HMD. Makes finding those hard to see vehicles a piece of cake.

C-SCOPE FCR symbols presented on the HMD

ref: http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/docs/ah-64-mfp-1-33.htm

The High Action Display is currently getting an update for the ACQ interaction (I've tried really hard to work through what this does and how I can gamify it to make something both usable and understandable by normal people).

Also I'm overjoyed at getting news of our ATC audio recordings and looking forward to playing with that.