Today has been a very productive day in Star Hammer World!

Dan suggested that the way autopilot worked needed some adjustments, so I’ve adjusted it. Actually, re-written is a better term.

Previously, missions were spread over vast areas of space. Each area of interest was termed a ‘nav point’, and to perform a mission meant visiting a nav point, doing stuff like blasting aliens, then moving on to the next nav point. So there were phases within each mission. It was ok, because the breaks in action are good for pacing, but admittedly, they made the missions feel a bit disjointed. I’ve also observed that people don’t always ‘get’ the autopilot functionality.

So, it’s all been changed.

Now, the missions have been redesigned so that the various points of interest are closer together, and it’s not necessary to have to skip vast areas of space to get to the next nav point. There is still an autopilot function, but it now just turns your fighter towards the next nav point. This means that at any time, if a player is not sure where to go, they just press the ‘Y’ button, and they’ll be guided back into the action.

On yeah, and I added support for mipmapping. For the non-technical reader, it’s a technique that improves the appearance of 3D models, especially when they are far from the camera.

The image on the left has mipmapping turned off. Notice how is looks more pixelated, whereas the image on the right has smoother transitions of color across the model surface.

It’s amazing how easy turning on techniques like mipmapping are in XNA. It was literally 1 line of code in a shader, and one option change on the texture maps, and it Just Worked!. Awesome!

Lots of other smaller improves today too, in relation to balancing. Good times!