Deutsche VersionHubschrauber Roadmap
Now Hubschrauber Release 2 or whatever you call it is out. If you don’t have it yet, you should get it, like soon. So, what am I going to do now?
Mainly, I plan two releases in the foreseeable future. How and when, I’ll have to see. But first the abstract.
Release 2.1
That release is meant to polish things up. Sound (which is already in my development version) and better graphics, maybe a chat, and that’s about it. The main point of 2.1 (and, possibly, any future 2.x release) is that it’ll be fully compatible with 2.0. That means all models created for 2.0 will work with 2.1 and vice-versa (although they might not be able to make full use of all features), and you’ll be able to freely mix them in network play.
Release 3
That one will mainly be incompatible. With this I mean that I’ll redo stuff whenever I feel like, without worrying about network play with 2.0 clients or supporting older objects.
The point of this is mainly changing network code so I can add actual game mechanics. I’ve got a few ideas, but I’m not certain yet which one’s I’ll implement. Maybe all of them. You never know.
At the moment
My current focus is on 2.1. As I mentioned above, I already have sound. For this I use Ogg Vorbis and OpenAL. It’s extremely easy to get good results with it. Surround-sound and hardware acceleration even under such obscure systems as Windows Vista are free out of the box, too. At least I guess. I neither have the hard- or the software to test either (and I don’t really miss it, too).
At the moment I’m implementing an effects system for better graphic effects. For this, I’ll raise the system requirements. From Hubschrauber 2.1 on, GLSL Vertex Shaders will be a must. At the moment they are optional (they are used for the mirror effect in the main menu).
I have to finally finish the documentation for modders (and I’ll add description of extensions for 2.1 right along).
When I’ll start with 3.0 is something I don’t know yet. I might do it in parallel with 2.1, or I might start it later. Wait and see, that’s what I’m going to do.
Written on April 12th, 2007 at 08:18 pm
