Programming lightning was way too much fun, so it would be silly to not give it a blog entry. Plenty of games have lightning, but the style and quality varies a lot. I wanted mine to be as realistic as possible. Later on, if I don’t think it fits with the style of the game, [...]

In order to get Retrobooster to testers I decided to learn more about packaging software. I ended up making an installer for Windows with Nullsoft Scriptable Install System (NSIS) and an RPM for Linux. NSIS was an easy choice because I had already used it to make an installer Really Slick Screensavers, but RPM was [...]

It has been a long, slow journey, but Retrobooster finally has a decent system for loading data from zip files. This was particularly challenging because it uses OpenSceneGraph for graphics, which didn’t have the ability to access zip files for resources the same way it could access file system paths. I wanted them to be [...]

As mentioned in my Thrust Ship Flight Dynamics post, the fun in Retrobooster hinges on flying around and blowing stuff up. So it was clear from the start that the particle effects needed to be as beautiful and interesting as I could make them. In particular, I wanted bright, loud, organic, swirling explosions with unique [...]

Here is a trick you can do with shaders to remove common ugly artifacts from your specular highlights. You might have seen it before–the Microcosm screensaver uses this technique to good effect. I’m sure other people have thought of this, but I haven’t seen it written up anywhere, and it’s a simple enhancement that can [...]