SolarTournament – November 2012 Update

After some busy months I published a new version of SolarTournament to Azure. The public git repository was updated, too.

Under the hood it’s a massive rewrite of the client-side code. I would like to thank Ingmar Wietig for his great work. He is definitely more skilled in math and general game related concepts than me! :-)

Improvements of the physics engine:

• free 360° movement; it’s now possible to fly a loop
• the spaceships model gets a tilt when changing direction
• new collision detection that calculates the intersection of meshes
• third-person view

All WebGL shaders were replaced with own code, which results in some great graphical enhancements:

• one global light for all objects (phong shader)
• rocket drive with light – affects the asteroids
• improved textures

Technical improvement

• require.js for client-side modules
• jamjs for external js libs
• node is now directly started in a Azure WorkerRole (real WebSockets!)

What’s next?

There is still some client-side stuff that requires attention, eg. a full screen mode or a radar to spot other players. After that I’m finally going to implement a real multiplayer experience where people can shoot on each other! ;-)