Hi all,
Been busy in the past few weeks implementing different algoritms to make the game faster and able to have bigger ships, so far I've seen many similar games to Junkcraft Armada using BOX2D or similar solutions while those solutions provide accurate physics the end result sometimes can be slow or not fast enough for very large number of ships with large number of modules, so a lot of magic has to be done to do the same with less to get an accurate representation of a space battle. In the next few weeks I will post the first video showcasing some of the features of the game, like space fight, escort missions and exploration.
One of the AI features that got me stuck for quite long time, was the AI aim function, it may sound trivial but actually is not, rotating ships in space while inertia affects your movement brings a lot of challenges accelerating in one direction will take the ship pointing closer to your target, but there are many more factors to thing about, like when to stop acceleration and accelerate in the opposite direction to stop the ship at the right angle to shoot your enemy while at the same time moving in any direction. Seems trivial but spent like 4 days trying to get a solution that delivers this without having ships that over steer in both directions over and over until they reach the desired angle. Doing the same with atmosphere with air resistance it is easier since the friction slows down your movement and the over steer is not that noticeable, but in space it looks very bad, other games I saw do have drag and resistance even in space but in Junkcraft Armada you will drift forever until some force stops your ship.
