Imagine a world where the villages of humans were scattered along mountaintops, and the world below was completely blocked off by an impassible wall of clouds. In a world like that, advancements in air travel would precede both land and sea. This is the kind of world that Aero Empire is set in. In this world, the player can rise through the ranks, from a lowly gunner manning a turret aboard an airship to the commander of several airships, ordering the crew of your own airship and the captains of the airships in your squad. Aero Empire is a cross-genre game, incorporating elements of role-playing games, shooters, flight simulators, and squad combat. Production on the game started November 25th, 2008, and is scheduled to release by the end of 2010, and a potential sequel focusing on nation management may come later. The single player version will be free to download and play, with no restrictions.
A video showing rain and snow particle effects in the engine, as well as decals which allow for accumulation of snow and wetness on the ground.
looking awesome, although i think that city is floating
Yes. The marketplace is floating right now. Eventually, we'll have pillars holding the buildings up (hence the platform), as the mountain is often too steep to build directly on the ground. Most of Aero Empire's buildings will be suspended a little above the ground using poles like in this concept art: Indiedb.com , but we haven't added them yet.
looks great, very nice work
Looking fabulous!
Really amazing and atmospheric. Have you planned real drop-effects, yet? So a little splash when rain hits the floor... no matter if it's a real splash being made by every particle, or a simple textur being placed over the current ones (animated texture, using such for my mod, works fine and saves performance).
If we did add a splash animation, it would probably be an animated texture placed on the ground (like the snow and wetness accumulation now), as that is a lot cheaper then computing when the rain particles hit the ground for every particle. That could look quite nice, although we'd have to be careful where we placed it or else you could get water splashes inside.
Its good, but I think it should be more dense to add a greater sense of atmosphere. If you made it 3 times as thick, I think you would have a better feeling of snow or rain.