European Air War - The Gen

Hi Maverick, (unofficially as Mav)

Hope the joining procedure went smoothly, and welcome to the room.
When you get familiar with the workings of this area we will start to organize ourselves and see about getting a project up and running.

sydbod, Syd, Sid, Siddy, Syddy (any one of them will do)

Hey Sibby! ( You give me a nickname and I shall give you one as well. :] )
Everything seems fine except I cannot access my profile. It's not a big deal really.

I await patiently to see where we go and how far we get in whatever we may do. :]

First thing so we all have the same reference tools.

For any graphical editing
http://www.anim8or.com/main/index.html

Probably one of the best FREE modeling editor that is actually EASY to use.


Also have a look at the free version of this game library
http://www.truevision3d.com/

This is their forum
http://www.truevision3d.com/forums/

Here is a link to some tutorials that will give you an idea about how to use it
http://www.bartkuipers.com/index.php?id=27
The 24 odd tutorials give a very easy intro and understanding of the various aspects to develop for this library, and it is well worthwhile to download and look at them.

I was actually thinking of using irrKlang-1.1.3, it is one of the easiest sound libraries to use, and I much prefer it to the built in sound library from within TV3D itself.
http://www.ambiera.com/irrklang/
You will want to look at the tutorials for it as well as download the SDK for it.

Of course we will be using VC++ 2008 and the FREE version of it can be downloaded directly from the microsoft itself.

Likewise the very latest of DirectX SDK called (DXSDK_Mar09.exe) also from the microsoft site.

I will provide the networking SDK from my sources, it is an earlier version of what is now called "DarkNet".

Looks like this will keep you busy for a few days until we can start on the project.

Any questions or comments, I am all ears.

How is it going Mav? I hope by the weekend to have my development machine up and running again (will just have to change the power supply and reload the operating system).
It is a bit too high end for my liking (I am getting FPS around 8,000 or more on some of the simpler rendering tests) with a dual core CPU and a HD4850 video card, but every other machine is basically committed for other tasks.

What are the specifications of your development machine?

Early next week I hope we can start on the project, so I will flesh out the game profile for you to look at during the weekend when I am up the coast for a few days.

I had the SDK set up and studied the documentation. However my graphics card isn't worth crap. It doesn't even support pixel shaders. Sad, I know. So I'm going to need to install a better one to work on this project. Rather than that, everything runs smoothly... just nothing shows up on the screen right now.

Are you sure it does not support pixel and vertex shaders or is it just that it does not support the later versions of the pixel and vertex shaders.
Anyway, video cards are so inexpensive now that maybe a cheep mid/bottom end card might be a good idea.
It would be nice to create a low overhead animated ocean for the project.
I have been playing with one last night .... a very simple one that is animated but has no terrain/sky reflection, and now refraction/transparency either, but it runs fast on low end cards.
It is an area I want to get into a bit later.

Seeing as you have it up and running, what graphics card would you recommend?

Should it be an AGP or a PCIE video card.
What CPU are you running.
What country are you in.
How much is your proposed budget.

Only then can a recommendation be made.
It should be a SM3 or better card so it should be from these
ATI: HD2xxx , HD3xxx , HD4xxx series
Nvidia: 8xxx , 9xxx, or the current series.

Hey Mav ....... how are things progressing?

I am getting a bit impatient to get started on the project.

I haven't had the time or spare change yet to get a better card. I understand about being impatient. :]

If you need to, just start without me. I'll monitor any progress made here ( or even chatrooms ) so when I come around to getting what I need, I'll be on top of it. I'll continue to study the documentation as well.

OK then, I will start the ball rolling tomorrow night when I get the time.
Will start a new thread, and TV3D will be the engine.

There should be no reason why you can not do some programming as the framework will be using NO shader operations to start with.
The fancy stuff will be integrated at the very end, so a new flashy video card should not be required straight away.

That's good news then! Looks like I may be able to help out afterall. :}