Blurb
Airlock is a 3D multiplayer space trade, exploration, combat, and business simulation. It will be an immersive experience that will allow you to own and pilot any class of space craft, including space stations, trading cogs, fighters, capital ships and luxury liners. A supply/demand system will be implemented to drive the persistent universe in persuit of profit. Cooperation between players will be encouraged through trade, business, cooperative craft operation, and community spirit.
Introduction - Tech. Demo v1.0
Welcome to the little universe I am building. Airlock is a space based 3D combat, trade, exploration, and business game. This release is a technology demo of the work done so far. While the final game will be based on multiplayer, the tech. demo is single player only. There is little in the way of gameplay. You can trigger various objects controlled by artificial intelligence to fight you by shooting at them. You can conrol a fighter or a capital ship (Destroyer). Nominal docking support exists, but leads to nothing as yet. Note that most models don't have textures only because making them is time consuming, and I'd rather be writing code (I am a programmer, after all). The physics needs a lot of work - I want to eventually have a Newtonian model. The explosions are no-where near what I want, and the planet is pretty sub-standard. I gave it a 256*256 texture so it would show up on 3DFx cards (will make options for it in future). Please feel free to provide feedback to me at astro@tne.net.au Get the latest news and downloads at the Airlock webpage
Credits
My name is Tim Auld. I'm responsible for the existence of this game (design, programming, most of the art), but there are some who have helped me. Apologies to anyone I have missed. Nick Young - Logo and Icon Photon - Collision Detection Library Valve - Skybox Textures and Sound Effects (Sorry!) Redstorm - Explosion textures (Sorry!) Tim Beckingham - Testing Robyn Whibley - Testing Nigel Whibley - Testing
Key Bindings
Eventually, you will of course be able to assign your own keys, but for now, the key bindings are as follows. Note that the spin views and free camera require the use of the mouse for direction, and left and right buttons to move forward and backward respectively. You can also use right mouse button/drag to rotate objects in the model gallery.
Flight Control Keys
Left Arrow/Right Arrow | Roll
Up Arrow/Down Arrow | Pitch
Plus/Minus | Thrust Control
Backspace | Zero Thrust
A | Docking Authorisation
E | Docking Escape
H | Enter/Leave Hyperspace
Weapon Control Keys
1 | Particle Laser
2 | Plasma Laser
3 | Beam Laser
Right Control | Fire Current Weapon
T | Next Target
M | Launch Homing Missiles at Target
B | Ion Beam (Destroyer Only)
Ship View Control Keys
F1 | Fixed Cockpit
F2 | Rear
F3 | Left
F4 | Right
F5 | Virtual Cockpit (Mouse)
F6 | Chase Camera
F7 | Relative Spin (Mouse)
F8 | Fixed Spin (Mouse)
F9 | Look-At Camera
Dock and Turret View Control Keys
F1 | Fixed Cockpit
F2 | Front View
F3 | Relative Spin (Mouse)
F4 | Fixed Spin (Mouse)
V | Focus On Next Turret (Dock Only)
Game Control Keys
F12 | Take Screenshot (In-Game and Menu)
Left/Right Angle Bracket | Control Focus Previous/Next Object
Left/Right Curly Brace | View Focus Previous/Next Object
P | Pause/Unpause
Keypad Plus/Minus | Increase/Decrease Time Speed
Escape | Exit Game (Press Again to Confirm) or Navigate Back in Menu
Planned Features
The goals of the final game are summarised as follows: Support for large numbers of players in a persistent world via TCP/IP Ownership and operation of any game object including fighters, cargo vessels, space buses, luxury liners, space stations and capital ships Cooperation, diplomacy, and conflict between players Communities and Corporations simulated to create a dynamic and living universe with real demands Simulation of real life - the need to eat and sleep, and mundane living expenses Law inforcement and government - break the law and become a fugitive, get a permit to fly a class of ship Exploration of and interaction with the interiors of space stations using a portal engine Exploration of and interaction with planet surfaces and cities using a terrain engine
Progress
The work done so far is summarised in the following list: 3D Studio Max model export, and import into game engine Rendering of vertex colour blended, flat colour, translucent colour, textured, and alpha textured 3D Studio models Directional lighting 3D camera movement (cockpit, rear, left, right, external, rotating, free floating) Six degrees of freedom using quaternions (no Euler angles!) Input via DirectInput (keyboard, mouse and joystick) 3D Sound Effects and MP3 music using the fmod sound library Particles, Sprites, and Stretched Sprites Particle Sources Text display Skybox and sun (with occlusion bloom) Projectiles Event passing architecture GUI control heirarchy and page stacks Space station docking Planets and asteroids Level of detail (LOD) for objects Virtual cockpit Specular Lighting Environment Mapping Hyperspace Tunnel Effect Starfield Target brackets, target direction indicator, inertial target tracking system Steering AI/Guided missiles Simple finite state machine AI Capital ship mounted laser and missile turrets that lead their target (mounted at any orientation) Fast triangle perfect collision detection using Photon's excellent library Laser reflection (for a bit of fun, but will make them reflect off particular surfaces) Engine trails, flames, and directional glow Beam lasers Animated lights that are obscured by ray collision tests (photon again) Permanent or fading decals caused by projectile or beam impacts Debris sparks from explosions Setup utility supporting multiple screen resolutions, window/fullscreen, audio settings
Compatibility
This is a Windows OpenGL game, currently tested on win98, winME, win2000 and the following video cards: Diamond TNT Viper V550 Diamond TNT2 Viper V770 Diamond Savage2000 Viper II ASUS GeForce2 MX MSI GeForce2 MX Unknown 3DFx Card
Valuable Resources
The following pages have helped me to make this game: Flipcode GameDev Gamasutra Photon's Collision Detection Library Inverse Kinematics and Physical Modelling

Copyright 2000+ Tim Auld