It’s just a bit of the first level, so no surprises that - background aside - it doesn’t look hugely different from Target; 2006. Also it’s just me playing, and the AI is being surprisingly friendly.

So, my plan to give Target; 2008 a proper run-through has fallen through, not least because I’m still not done with some ‘minor’ issues. Tch, eh?

For the technically-minded, here’s what’s happened - Target; 2006 treats weapons as people with no AI. Target; 2008/DS treats weapons as completely separate entities. That’s because the DS doesn’t have much memory, and a simple object takes up less space than a person. This is itself isn’t a huge deal, but integrating two opposing ways of doing things is at least a medium-sized one.

In terms of a play-through, this means that level one is blimmin’ fantastic. I get run down, my ass kicked, and all with some neat new sound effects (you can hear the motorbikes now, at last!). Level two needs a couple more sprites - bullets and guns. Not to be drawn, of course - I have those already, and the AI for using them is done too. It’s getting the graphics into the game using an arcane process that I came up with two years ago, and, to be honest, I’m a little scared to try it. It might just smash up all my neat, working data files and scorch the earth behind it.

So I’m going to go out and have a drink, and then I’m going to come back and see what happens. If we’re lucky then I might just be pasting in a new level by the end of the day. Yes, new levels. (Probably.) Here’s a mockup of the one I’ve been wanting to put in, ooh, since the beginning.

Okay, so I didn’t quite hallucinate everything in the AI code at the end of last month. But it did turn out to be a lot more difficult to make it work with more than one player. Still, it does work now, so I’m going to spend a little time this week fixing up all the minor bugs that the DS code merge introduced (like disappearing characters and no weapon animation). And then at the end of the week I might just be able to do some limit testing - I’m going to try to get six players running through the whole game.

I don’t know of anyone that actually played Target; 2006 with the maximum number of players, which was a little disappointing. I’m a big fan of multiplayer games, especially all-in-the-same-room multiplayer, and that’s the main reason that I put in six player support. Personally I’ve never managed to get more than two other players to try it with, but controllers are an issue for just about every PC user. Assuming I have no problems with the gear I ordered this weekend, I’ll be putting up links to decent (and cheap) PC compatible controllers.

If I get time this week, I’m also going to see if Target; 2008 compiles (and more importantly works) on Linux.

Well, there’s been some interest. Thanks to Sslaxx and CJ 2xSaI is the way forward, keeping that retro look. I’ve actually got around to going over the old code today, after getting bored with The Tenth Crusade’s model animation code. I’m still in the process of carefully blending the last version of Target; 2006 with the incomplete (but still better) DS version, and that in itself is throwing up a whole bunch of new bugs.

I’ve also merged the menu code from The Tenth Crusade, which means that Target; 2008 now has totally redefinable controls at last. The big hold-up before I release anything else, though, is the AI. I rewrote it from scratch for the DS version, and it’s a big improvement; enemies surround the player and mercilessly beat the crap out of him. The only trouble is that having been ported from the DS it’s all focused around player one, and players two to six are just ignored by the mob. With a spot of luck this won’t be a difficult thing to tweak.

Of course, it’s almost five in the morning, so there’s a non-zero chance that all the code I just wrote is gibberish and I hallucinated the testing. Erk.

…I’m shuffling around my projects to make the Desert Strike remake The Tenth Crusade a higher priority. It’s now an OpenGL game rather than all sprite-based, and I’ll be trying to have at least one release a week for it. (I’ll never be able to keep up with the first week’s ‘release a day’ thing - I have too much to do as it is!)

So stuff here is going to slow down. (Has already, in fact.) But development isn’t suspended! Oh no, there’s still stuff that I’m learning from remaking Desert Strike that I can adapt for Target; 2008. (And from there to Contact; Sam Cruise, eventually.)

Not long after I released Target; 2006, I started thinking about what other games I’d like to remake. (I even made a list.) Somewhere around the top was EA’s Desert Strike. Well, I thought, how hard could it be?

A couple of weeks of graphic-ripping later, I realised that despite the extensive design notes I’d made, ripping all those sprites was still going to be the most time-consuming part of the project. And then I decided I wanted to do Contact Sam Cruise instead.

Now, of course, I’ve already got two projects actively on the go - Target; 2008 and the other one. But, well… after getting some interest from the Desert Strike demo yesterday, I spent today messing about with that instead. Tch, eh?

So here’s another demo - you can now pick up the soldiers who wave at you and drop them off at the landing zone on the coast.

In the meantime, I’ve also been considering the graphical style of Target; 2008. All that pixellation’s a bit blegh, and while poking around I stumbled across the Sonic 2 High Definition project. And then started to wonder - what would a High-Def Target; Renegade look like?

I’ve just found a pencil, so expect something truly awful-looking soon.

I’m fairly set on the 3D polygonal version at the moment. The only downside is that the sprites turn to a horrible pixellated mush as soon as they start scaling up, sort of like Doom. So I’ve bunged in a little full-screen antialiasing, which has cleaned it up a little bit, but I’m not sure whether or not it looks better or worse than Target; 2006’s 2xSaI blending. So, here’s a couple of pictures for comparison:

The old, 2xSaI blending…

…and the new, full screen antialiased.

Bit of a toughie. I might just try combining the two. But not today! Today I have to spend some time on my other, for the moment secret, project. I can tell you that it’s vaguely related to the Desert Strike remake I haven’t made yet, but also isn’t a remake. All will be revealed, eventually…

I’ve not just been coming up with little mock-up graphics. I’ve also been working on upgrading the existing Target; 2006 code to use the improvements I made while coming up with the Nintendo DS version. (Which isn’t quite ready yet.) There comes a point, though, when you just can’t upgrade any further, and you have to throw everything out and start again. Which is what I’ve done.

Alright, I haven’t thrown out everything. That would be silly, especially since at least half the code is specifically designed to be reused. But I am rebuilding it all from the ground up, rejigging all the game logic to a more modular form and actually commenting my code this time around. Because of this I don’t have any new screens to show you yet, and this post is purely to let you know I’m still alive.

I’ll have something downloadable soon, I promise!

I’m off on another holiday tomorrow. But in the meantime, here’s what I’ve been doing…

Swainy’s mock-up; introducing Matt, in the flesh! (Well, pixels.)

One of my mock-up pictures, using vector graphics generated by Inkscape from the originals.

Another of my prototypes, this time using OpenGL to render a 3D environment.

So, in one form or another a new version is coming. But what do you guys want to see in it?