Project 137: Star Commander First Look, and progress report

I have made an excellent start on this project. As can be seen from the videos below, I have created character models and textures for two Teams (Red and Blue) and implemented a simple orders and movement system. I have also created a weapon model and some animations for it which I think look quite good, as well as a “Fire” order.

There is still some modelling and texturing work to do on the character models, and I have yet to add additional weapons, and grenades. The user interface also needs a lot of work. Context-sensitive pop-up command menus, like the one shown in the videos, are only really effective for small numbers of commands. This game will have a large number of possible commands, meaning a conventional permanently visible GUI menu will be required. The problem with this is the issue of focus in T3D. If the on-screen gui has focus, IE, if the mouse cursor can bne used to interact with this gui, then the mouse cannot alos be used to control or influence the game world. With a context sensitive menu I can give the game world focus, and then switch focus to the on-screen gui while it is visible, then switch back.

There are resources available to extend and modify  torques mouse select and gui systems, which I will have to use, but I will leave that for slightlt later in the project.

I hope to have a playable (alpha) demo of what I am working on by the end of the month. Such a quick development time should be possible due to the milestone based approach I am using, with iterative releases gradually adding features to the project.