News

This is the complete news archive for 2006.

4th September 2006
I've been making some modifications to the visuals for the game just recently and have updated the current builds to reflect that. I've also made it part of the automatic update process as although these changes are relatively minor, I wanted you guys to get the latest changes to the background music processing. I was going to delay this automatic update until the music tracks that we're writing in-house have been completed, but that seems as though it's going to be a little way off right now.

The changes I've made this time are related to the way the menus are rendered and also some of the explosion effects within the game. Nothing earth shattering, just an iteration of polish to make it shine a little brighter.

27th August 2006
Ultra now has customisable music! I've released an intermediate version of the game with a much improved background music processing engine to pump up the audio. This engine supports MP3, OGG, WAV and AIF audio formats, covering most of the audio that you would ever wish to play. This engine now seamlessly joins individual music tracks together to form a complete background music track list for you to listen to while playing the game and really get into the zone.

Not only that though, but you can now customise the music that is to be played too! Two track listings are held; one for use in the menu system and one for playing the game itself. Visit the Options->Audio menu in the game to start defining your own music and take a download now to share the audio joy.

A full release of the game will be made (which automatically updates) just as soon as the music that we are currently rewriting for it has been completed; which should be in just a handful of weeks.

8th August 2006
Updated Ultra is now available for download! I released a new version of the game today, mostly with general rendering improvements, but also with a new enemy type - the Bombadier! This new guy comes along from level 15 onwards to try and spoil your day by taking a bombing run at you. I've also improved the heads up display so that the components for the player's secondary weapons, the side arms and the ion splitter, are more clearly defined.

Take a download and check it out.

Coming up next ... customisable music tracks!

9th July 2006
Bug-fixed Ultra is now available for download! I released the bug fix that I spoke about in the last news article today - along with the changes to the difficulty curve that was also discussed. New demo and full versions of Ultra have now been released with this new fix in, and the product update procedure should automatically pick this up for existing users.

There was also a minor change in the way that multi-core CPUs are used within the game. Previously, some multi-core CPUs spread the processing of the game over multiple cores, which in turn caused pretty drastic problems with timing and made the game completely unplayable. Now though, the OS is instructed to run the game's process on just a single core, thus ironing out those timing problems.

6th July 2006
I've had a bit of trouble recently - having to reformat my machine due to unacceptable degradation in speed, and changing day-jobs which has absolved me of my copy of Visual Studio 2003. So, I've had to reinstall everything from scratch and downgrade my source to Visual Studio 6 (no mean feat), which of course has taken a little time.

A by-product of all these shenanigans? I've managed to find and fix a very elusive bug that made itself much more apparent in release mode in VS 6. I've been trying to track this for a few weeks but it was just so damn difficult to detect, as it never showed itself in debug builds and just crashed the entire machine in release builds prior to now. Still, it's nailed now - a subtle fault with the collision detection system as it turned out.

So, I'm going to implement those difficulty curve changes that I spoke about in the last news article and then release a new version of the game sometime over the next few days - so keep an eye out.

26th June 2006
Bug-fixed Ultra is now available for download! So I released another bug fix for Ultra today - this time to do with particle rendering as discussed in the previous news article. In the end, this fix turned into a bit of a workaround for what seems to be unusual goings-on with ATI display drivers. New demo and full versions of Ultra have now been released with this new fix in, and the product update procedure should automatically pick this up for existing users.

Following some user feedback, coming up in the next few days is an overhaul of the difficulty curve. It seems you guys are just too good at this game and the first few levels are turning out to be a bit boring while you wait for the good stuff to come atcha. So, I'm going to bring it all forward a little and make it so that the game is hot by the time you get to level five, rather than level ten which is where it stands at the present time.

On a similar note, the new spiker projectiles that we introduced recently are making the game just a little too hard, and subsequently spoiling the flow of mass destruction that you can wreak. So I'm going to pull them back a bit and make it so that they are destructible further back down the arena.

These game difficulty issues should be resolved and implemented sometime over the coming weekend, with appropriate game releases once that work has been done.

Following that, I'll be looking at the music options for the game. It was always envisaged that you could define your own music track list for the background music in Ultra, but until now I've been putting it off because it's going to be a little tricky to code up the UI for you to be able to do this. But now I feel, the time is right.

Not only that, but the music that currently accompanies the game is soon to be replaced by Loonie - our in-house musician. At the moment, Loonie has donated some fairly old music that has never been used before, just so that we could release Ultra with some musical content rather than pure game sound effects alone. Although this music is pretty good, it's not a patch on what is to come - so watch this space music fans.

23rd June 2006
Released a bug fix for Ultra today - to do with HUD rendering. I only discovered this bug yesterday - after weeks of flawless testing on a GeForce 6, I installed an ATI 9800 in my machine and found a major problem with the HUD polygon clipping code. This of course has now been fixed and updated versions of Ultra uploaded to this site.

There seems to be another outstanding bug with particle rendering too that never appeared before I put the ATI card in my machine. This is a little less benign, and I'll release another fix for it just as soon as I've managed to locate the source of the problem.

20th June 2006
Primary release Ultra is now available for download! Yes, finally, Ultra has made it all the way to version 1.0! Take a download and get some playing action in, it's ready and waiting for you right now.

A few things have changed since the last pre-release, mostly to do with the way the spikers behave and the design of the arena webs. The spiker visuals have now been improved, and they also emit projectiles towards the player in later levels of the game in order to increase the difficulty curve.

I've also revisited the collision detection system and implemented a few improvements. As far as I can tell now, and it's been given a real good testing, it'll need no further work on it as I can't find any holes at all. It's made the game a little harder, but also more predictable, and that was always the key requirement.

So get in there and be part of the show - 50 levels, 4 enemy types, 3 weapons - and whole shed-loads of fun right at your fingertips.

14th June 2006
Updated Ultra is now available for download! All of the things discussed in the previous news item, plus some minor bugs fixes, are now available in the latest download. Check it out for yourselves and rip it down.

I've also added some new tasty screen shots to whet your appetite while it's downloading.

As we're working towards the first active release which is just five days away now, nearly all of the mechanics for the initial version of the game are now present. The work that's to be done between now and then will concentrate almost solely on improving the spikers, both in terms of gameplay and in terms of visuals.

There are also some issues with the collision detection system that need to be resolved as it's missing collisions on the outer rim of the play arenas. I've tracked down why this is - a by-product of my earlier optimisations, and it shouldn't take very long to fix at all. So get some practice in while you can, because you're not going to be able to get away with those close-shave manouevres for much longer!

13th June 2006
Having spent a considerable amount of time working on the control system for the game, I feel that I've now taken it just about as far as it can go. Almost everything that you can imagine can now be configured within the control system - in fact I don't think I've seen such a flexible system in any other game. For Ultra though, we really do need it as the speed of the game gets really hot a few levels in, and without accurate control, you're going nowhere.

Before I put out another release though, there are a couple of things that I want to change with the gameplay. When I first started working on Ultra, the pace of the game was quite slow and this affected the way that I thought about using secondary weapons. The "Ultra Plasma" secondary weapon works very well in the first handlful of levels by helping you clear spikers out of the way. On subsequent levels though, it's about as much use as tits on a fish. So, I've decided to drop it.

Similarly, when the pace of the levels picks up a bit towards level 10, I thought the idea of a time distortion weapon to help slow things down a bit when they are getting too hectic for you would be a great idea. In practice though, you just don't seem to use it. The effect that the weapon has in the game is really impressive though and I'm loathed to lose it altogether, so I'm temporarily going to drop the weapon and use the effect elsewhere later on in the game's development.

Despair not however, you've lost two weapons, but you've gained one too. I'll not spoil the surprise here, but suffice to say, it more than makes up for the loss. Expect another development release in a couple of days ...

9th June 2006
Ultra is now available for download! It is currently in a pre-release phase and out for user feedback, but essentially it is ready and complete for its first release. User feedback is absolutely welcome at this point, so please take a demo and then contact me if you've got any niggles or thoughts about the game that might improve it for subsequent releases.

Currently, the official release date stands at the 19th of June, so I want to try and get any real problems sorted and out of the way before then.

Recent additions to the game include a reworking of the mines that the flippers leave behind. It was not obvious to some players that these mines could be passed by the player when at certain points in their motion (much like you could shoot flippers on the outer rim of a web at certain points in their motion in the original Tempest). This fact has now been made more obvious to the player by changing the way in which the mines move and also changing the HUD information to reinforce the point. A case of bad game design to begin with I think, but it's all better now.

The 3D models for the game objects have gone through another redesign. Nothing too spectacular at this point, but just enough changes to them to prevent Atari getting anxious about me abusing their intellectual property. I've also added a nice "engine" effect to the player as they transition from one arena (or web in Tempest parlance) to another. It was quite simple to code, but is a nice addition all the same.

I've also added some more lighting effects to the player. Whenever a shot is fired off or the player's engine is alight, this is reflected in the lighting of the player itself. Only a small addition codewise, but again making a nice effect on the screen and bringing the game to life just that little bit more.

Next up is the whole issue of control. It seems there are a few people out there that would much prefer to play Ultra with a keyboard or gamepad rather than a mouse, so we need to do some more work here on making the game more playable when going down that route. That'll be my weekend taken care of then!

2nd June 2006
We're now on the final furlong with several new pieces of code being put in place over the last few days. We have put several high score tables in place, one for each difficulty level, recording your details if you manage to attain a score high enough to enter one. These high score tables will eventually be integrated into our web site here so that you can not only view your own local high scores, but also the universal high scores for all Ultra players. That is going to be sooo cool.

I've also added load and save game facilities that will allow prolonged play into the game. Only scores from games that haven't been abused by the save game system will be allowed into the high score table. When you save a game, you cannot reload it after subsequently losing a life and expect your score to be accepted into the high score system. There will of course be warnings about this when you attempt to reload the game and give you the choice of continuing or otherwise.

Lastly, we now have a fully automated release process. When the game is ready to ship, we just press a button and upload the resultant installation program onto the web - job done.

So, just a few more pieces of tidying up to do and we're ready to rock!

27th May 2006
The 3D models for the objects within the game have now been designed, albeit designed to a simple specification just for the moment. I'll revisit these at some point in the future as my modelling skills improve, but just for now I want to get the game out and being played and I don't want to hold that up while I'm messing around in a 3D editor. So, we're good to go on that front.

I've also been improving the graphics effects for explosions this week, and they're now looking pretty hot. I'll continue to do some more work on these over the next few days to get them looking even better, but only because I love doing that kind of work and not that it necessarily needs to be done.

The arena designs for the first release of the game have now all been finished. There are 50 levels in all, with a surprise last level that really gets you moving around fast! I won't say anything more about that and let you enjoy it for yourself when you get to play it.

Finally, I've succumbed to the temptation of posting up some screen shots here on this site. So just click on the screen shots button to your left and check them out!

21st May 2006
Much work has been done on performance optimisation and checking the rendering code for errors and consistency over the last few days. This caught a couple of problems with the renderer that would almost certainly have made the game fall over on some graphics hardware, even though it functioned perfectly correctly on my own. Performance has been improved by a noticeable margin, although to be honest, it was already pretty well optimised before I began so there wasn't too much that could be done in this area.

Other work on the graphics effects took up a little time - tweaking parameters here and redesigning textures there. The graphics now really are looking hot and practically ready for release. About the only thing left to do on the graphics front before a release can be accomplished is designing the player, flipper and tanker 3D models. At the moment we only have rudimentary placeholder models for these objects within the game, so that it can be play-tested properly. These 3D models will be recreated over the next couple of weeks, after which the game is then practically ready for release.

Lastly, some work has been done on the creation of a distributable version of the game, rather than the development versions with development data files that I have here. So when the time comes to create a version of the game ready for the playing public, it shouldn't take more than a few hours to get it into the installer program ready for it to ship.

So things are looking up people - only a few more weeks to go!

6th May 2006
I've finally got back into the swing of things now and development on Ultra has well and truly resumed. Since the last time I reported, several pieces of code have been added to the game and the visual effects are now looking sweeter than ever.

Firstly, the Ion Splitter (or Super Zapper of old) has been given a makeover and the on-screen effects are truly awesome. Enemies are now blown away in a predictable and more logical way than the way they were before, which essentially was just random. The whole thing with the Ion Splitter just looks much more coherent now, and it's certainly a weapon you don't want to be without.

Secondly, I've added code to urge the camera to point towards the player to help you focus on where the action is. This was a bit tricky at first as the camera is already under other control to give the game some animation as it rolls and sways as you play. So, a mixture of the current camera view, and the view towards the player was required. Not wholly one or the other, just somewhere in between.

The movement of the camera as it follows the player was very, very disconcerting at first. But that's the thing about camera animation - you've got to keep it extremely smooth, otherwise it's immediately apparent and very jarring to watch. So now, the camera glides as it follows the player and sudden movements on the camera are disallowed. As a result, it's all looking very good indeed.

Lastly, I've added a little surprise to the spikers as you progress to the harder levels. I'm sure you will all love this, and it gives the game an extra tension factor as you get further into it. You'll have to wait and see before you can find out what this is all about!

28th April 2006
Well, it's been a long, long time since I updated the site here. Life, unfortunately, has gotten in the way and taken my time away from the game for the last few months. However, I'm now back on track and production of the game is now again underway.

Before I had to take time away from the game though, a lot of work on the head-up-display for the game was completed. It was important to me that the game have a strong techno feel to it, and this is reinforced by the nature of the head-up-display with its visual quality. Equally important though, is that the display not interfere with the gameplay or get in the way of the visuals as your mind cannot spend too much time processing the scene with the speed of the game being as fast as it is.

The work done on the display resulted in both of these goals being met, with a great look that only really pervades the periphery of your vision when playing the game.

Next up - the Ion Splitter (Super Zapper) visual effects.

Complete news archive for 2005