I'm stuck with a tough decision. With the release of Alien Swarm, I could make the mod freeware, not requiring any half life games, with the same graphical quality as an orange box mod. Moreover, the user interface would benefit much from switching to Alien Swarm codebase. But, this would mean more work to create basic props, textures, and sounds, since we won't be able to use those from hl2's resources.

Both Alien Swarm and Half-Life 2 Ep2 run on the source engine, which mean that porting is very easy.  However, I don't know the limits of the codebase for Alien Swarm yet. I don't even know yet if I'll be able to use the multiplayer feature of ASW, because of the quirks of the current release of the sdk.

I guess I'll have to find out by testing ASW's limits.

I'm currently completely rewriting my concept docs. I wasn't happy with how vague some things sounded. Because, when I tried to implement those same things, they turned out very badly, because I hadn't thought about every little details like I should have.

Another problem I've got is, I tried to do lots of unrelated parts of the project at the same time. That was a very bad idea. I thought I would be saving time by doing multiple things in parallel, but it turned out that the little I had completed needed to be redone or dropped because I found a better way of doing something.

Oh well, at least I've learned something. I think I'll start from the beginning this time.

By the way, the last source sdk update during e3 pretty much got me stuck for 2 weeks, all this only for Mac compatibility!

Yay, summer vacations

All right, I will be honest with you, I haven't even looked at the mod for over two weeks now.

But, during those last two weeks I was basically living at school, trying to get that stupid matrox image recognition library 7.5 thing working!!! And I was choosing my final project, for next year's computer exposition thing, and let's say my project wasn't easily accepted by the teachers.

Anyways, nothing new, but for now I'll be able to put much more time on the mod!

May update

I'm a little late, but I had to make a better banner! :) Even if the damn layout doesn't like it, inserting a margin on the left of it >:( .

I'm still experimenting with the arwing's controls and on-rail shooting and all-range transition, and made satisfying progress, however I'm at in the last weeks of college before summer, so I'm really busy.

I haven't recruited any team members yet, and I'm wondering if I should submit the mod on moddb, to be more visible for recruitment purpose, however that would essentially make the mod a little too visible for it's current stage. I mean, in most post mortem I've read from other mods, they all agreed it was a mistake to go public too early, and generate unwanted (at this stage) hype. But they all did that mistake and turned somewhat successful...

April update

Added a little pic in the media section. Currently fixing the fighter entity, because of alignment and control problems.

March update

Nobody's reading this, its all right, anyways this blog is mostly a test for now. I've got the basic ship code working but it need some polishing. I completed an important feature wrap-up document. So it's progressing nicely.

Moved

My old host Extrovert host seems to have removed my sfr website from existence. It was only a matter of time given the fact that I signed up back when they offered free accounts... So I decided to create a simple blog here, it's easier to maintain anyways.