Category: Sector13

[Sector 13] has been given green light status on Steam. [KS]

[Sector 13] is now live on Kickstarter and Steam [Greenlight]! Check out the live [Twitch] stream. [Kicktraq] shows the potential trends.

I had a chance to record a gameplay video for the IGF build that we submitted. There is a bug in my audio driver that explains the audio noise.

Caligari interviewed Drew Clark about our upcoming game Sector 13. You’ll find a [detailed story] about how we used Caligari GameSpace to create assets for the game. Visit the [download page] for links to the most recent playable demos. Also check out the [Gameplay Videos].

Over the past 3 years, I recorded 43 gameplay videos. To backup these videos, I uploaded them to youtube. Enjoy the [Sector 13 playlist]. I haven’t really captured any gameplay videos since we sent a build to the IGS and IGF. So you’ll see one coming soon…

We sent our final IGF build to the [International Games Festival] just two hours before the deadline of Oct 1st 11:59p PST. I spent all day trying to upload, but because of DNS problems had to keep resending our 431M build. We have a really good chance this year. I spent a good three months just focusing on bug fixes, performance, and memory leaks. The game runs super fast now. The game is stable. There shouldn’t be any crash to desktop bugs. There are improvements to the installer. There are enhancements to the skybox, including animated textures on the station and other platforms. There are more ships, more explosions, and more music. Anyway, check us out at the IGF and [vote for us].

Sector13 has been entered into the [Indie Game Showcase]. Vote for us! Here is a [Direct Link].

Here is another type of explosion timer, the flame trail. The effect uses a set of billboards with varying alpha values.

I mixed in a little mesh data into the new explosion timer techniques. I added large gibs and minor gibs. The only thing missing is some flame trails.

For the last week, I have been creating an explosion editor that allows the content editors to name a series of timers to control explosions.

After the explosion is created it can be assigned to a ship.

This week I’m working on stars and the lens flare effect that is seen when looking at a bright light with a camera. When drawing the star billboard I plan on doing a hardware occlusion query to adjust the intensity of the lens flares. The exact opacity of the flare elements will be based on how many star pixels are shown.

The arena design is coming together nicely. Lighting is working. The planet has some nice geometry while using a billboarding technique to produce the atmospheric glow. Asteroid materials now use LOD levels.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with procedural asteroid fields along with lights and shadows.

A planet thermosphere work in progress…

Here is an effect produced by using 60 or so Billboards using 4 BillboardSets. A work in progress…

Hera is a nebula cloud that you can fly thru:

Screenshot taken from the Rings of Vegir.

Check out [our featured article] on GameDev.net to find out all about Sector13. Feel free to [comment] on the story. Ryan cached our [gameplay video] at Google.

I added a nice lens flare effect on the back of certain engine types. Basically the alpha is based on the dot product between the engine mount vector and camera angle.

This is the GCDF Capital Ship “Defiant”. I just added the collision logic where you can shoot off its turret weapons.

This is a capital ship in progress. Not its actual texture yet…

This weekend I’ve been working on Squad formation AI. I also recorded several game play videos and integrated a new GCDF ACMC into the game. That’s short-hand for “Atmosphere Capable Mini-Carrier” for the GCDF manufacture.

I setup the installer for Sector 13 (Internal Release 3) using [Inno Setup]. I was completely blown away with how simple the process is!

This is a screenshot of an effect that I am reproducing in my next task for [Daetrexx engine glows]. The Ogre version will be slightly different, different color, length based on speed, and more concentrated. That is… if I can pull spare time out of my hat.

The original effect can be achieved by adding a solar flare, using an animated texture for the exhaust, adding some volume with funnel textures (4 axis aligned billboards), and a face texture (as seen from the back). Now the face texture actually needs to be just behind the solar flare, otherwise it would appear as an out of place artifact.

The effect in action: