Camera working!

Ok guys so I haven't being doing much game programming lately. I have been busy building up my website.

Although tonight I have managed to get my camera working. I did this by using matrices. Firstly I created a camera rotation matrix using the following lines


Matrix rotationMatrix;
            Matrix.CreateRotationY(MathHelper.ToRadians(cameraYaw), out rotationMatrix);

as you can see I first initialize the matrix using Matrix rotationMatrix then I go onto create a value for how much I would like to rotate. cameraYaw is a const variable set to 2.0f.

and using input I then determine whether or not I would like to set this rotation matrix into effect.
Like so...


    if (keyboardstate.IsKeyDown(Keys.D))
            {
                cameraYaw -= spinRate;
              
            }

So thats all working. Now I am going to work to make it so that the camera goes in the direction of the target. Hopefully that shouldn't be to hard.

Anyway once I get that up and running I will definitely get some missiles firing. I have decided that since this is my first 3D game I am not going to go into to much detail and just get the thing finished. For instance I was going to split the tank model into 2 models so that I could rotate the top of the tank like a turret on a real tank would but that would be too much work. And I am probably going to change the model again as I am not quite happy with it. Anyway right now the missiles will only fire towards whichever direction the tank is facing.

After getting this set up I will find a way to make the terrain solid. And set up some collision boxes around the tank and the terrain. Having done this I will find a way to add gravity to my game to make sure that my tank is constantly on the ground :D

Anyway back to work!

weekly tasks

ok guys so i am going to post a weekly task list that i will hopefully complete by this time next week.

here goes:

Get a basic layout of my website down
Buy a decent domain name
Buy webhosting
Get some of my reviews down on the website
Get my blog up and running.
Get all of my website set up so that its online.


programming task list

implement some jumping physics into my game
get the model loader up and running so that i can import a car model or placeholder.
develope a decent car model with blender3d
try to texture it
implement camera translations that correspond to the movement translations(aka get camera to move with the model)
look into collision detection so i can get solid terrain working.

thats about it for this week as i do now have school every week day. I think my top priority will be the website and then the model loader. Getting those up and running will be a huge step forward in terms of motivation and progress. If i don't manage to model a decent car model ill just use a placeholder model.

But to update you on what i am doing right now

i just finished implementing a game timer. which now gives you how many seconds you have played for. and also a pause feature which toggles on when 'P' is pressed.

thats all for today but tommorow i should have some good updates. cya