So lots of updates on the engine recently. Heres’s the new link. (see controls at bottom of post.)

Again, this is a work in progress! It probably crashes.

I’ve been working to make ships upgradable through a component system. This began with making it so all ships now have 4 different sides for armor. Also ship components can also have their own armor — ie a carrier’s fighter bay may be an attached component that could be destroyed without having to cut through the ships main hull armor. Big ships also have command centers where their captains and crew work and those can be vulnerable as well. The current carrier ship has one in the middle of its sprite–but it doesn’t have art yet. Knock out the shields and you can take down the carrier fast if you aim into the command box.

The AI is being revamped a lot.

• Ships can now patrol
• go on search and destroy missions (patrolling and scanning for targets)
• chasing and attacking is there
• They react if another ship attacks them.
• cap ships find a target, come to a stop, and engage their turrets
• they figure out what to do next once the objective is complete

Tactical flying and stuff are yet to be implemented. I’d like to add some good behaviors for the ai rather than just chase and fire. Like:

• get behind target and fire
• evade when getting hit
• objective weighting – does it retaliate or focus on taking down the main target?
• switch to missile or other appropriate weapon when shields are down etc
• carriers / space stations launching new fighters
• more decision making as a group / strategy
• formations

I am currently working towards building battle scenarios. The current one is a defend the base from an enemy attack. Thats why a new ship model-space station is sorta up and running. Its now capable of firing turrets and being destroyed. Eventually I will script it so that destroying it is the enemies main objective and the player and friends must stop this from happening. The cap ship turrets are randomly dumped on it at the moment and its a formidable beast. Currently its an enemy – for fun.

Controls for the current version: Arrows to rotate, thrust and brake. Space to shoot. Numbers or ~ to toggle through weapons. Z to target missiles. Tab lets you look at other ships. W brings you back to your guy. Plus minus to zoom.