Learning Panda3D, Revisiting an Old Warmup Game
Akake on 2010/08/01 18:58
of Gloryhound Rising
I'm going to be revisiting one of my (Rather short-lived) warmup game, though only in a rough way.
Beta Gunner Warcry was a game I set myself to finishing in 2 weeks quite some time ago. Performance issues (Granted, I'm on a netbook) cut that off.
The game was supposed to be a side-scrolling shooter with procedural levels.
I've decided to recycle the idea, but making changes. Instead of a side-scrolling space shooter, it's now a tank shooter. Instead of a side-on view, the camera will be attached behind the turret. (It takes ~2 lines of code to do that in Panda! ^o^) I will be using the fact that having a camera behind you instead of above you limits your field of view to my advantage. My level generator will place plenty of obstacles in levels, which will block your line of sight and often hide baddies.
Levels will still be procedural, though, and I'm still giving myself 2 weeks to finish it. (Since I started yesterday, that means that I have until the 14th, but I'm not holding myself down to minutes or even hours here)
I've currently got a model of a tank body, a model of a tank turret, and have gotten to the point where I had a tank driving around. I would have a screenshot, but I forgot to take one before I broke things to get a data manager and a factory put together.
Panda3D is a dream to use. Simple and easy, great performance, and excellent packaging tools. I think I've found something that makes me happy.
Folks, you can look forward to a Panda3D game from me this PyWeek. I'm not going to specify further until the theme voting begins (As I've no idea until I know what the theme might be), but Panda3D is a guarantee.
--- Akake