The Warehouse

This is just a brief info…

From now on, Limit Load will also be part of Just Gameware indie studio-warehouse:

Just Gameware

This warehouse will be a home place for any new games that happen to be developed.

This doesn’t mean that I am abandoning Limit Load, just that while I am waiting for main code guy to catch up, I will be making new games :)

Regards,
Stefan Ilic

Scripting Manual

A detailed manual about scripting of missions and campaigns is now available on the new page — resources. This manual will come with all future packages, and now it can be downloaded from:

PDF: http://limitload.org/resources/scripting-en.pdf
RST: http://limitload.org/resources/scripting-en.rst

The manual consists of two examples. The first relatively short one, in which the basics of scripting are covered, and which should be enough for making simple skirmish missions, and the second one, much longer and much more complex, which is about scripting of whole campaigns and usage of advanced techniques in making of a mission. These two examples combined make for one very long, but I hope intuitive, manual, and anyone who reads it and understands it, should be able to practically immediately make his own missions. Of course, under the condition of basic knowledge in Python programming.

Also, I took some time to do a major cleanup among various 3D models that I adapted and used so far in the game. The place where I kept all raw material (3D models in various formats, textures, hightmaps, sounds, etc.) was in total chaos, so I wasn’t too surprised to see that I managed to shrink ~8 gigabytes of all source files of aircraft models and textures to a mere ~370 megabytes. So, now, at the resource page also available are the individually packed source files of aircraft 3D models in format of Blender files, and all textures of those models in format of Gimp files. The same was done for vehicles and weapons, although this content that is not related to aircraft requires more work and cleaning. I also went on to contact the authors of the models I adapted, whose e-mail addresses I managed to dig up, and especially those whose models have no clear licensing, and I have to say that I was met with a warm reception. Once again, thanks to all the authors! :) Names of the original authors, as well as ways of licensing, are stored within each model archive.

That would be all for now. Regards!
Stefan Ilic <stef@sezampro.rs>

New Version 0.20

New version of the game is available. You can download it from:

Windows: http://limitload.org/package/limload-0.20-windows_x64.zip
Linux: http://limitload.org/package/limload-0.20-linux_x64.tar.gz

It took a while, but we finally managed to resolve the biggest problem of previous version, and that is abnormal amount of time needed to create and load the terrain which some players have reported. Creation of terrain and clouds is now over 25 times faster, so even the weakest hardware on which we tried (A10-7850k) did the whole job in just 4.2 seconds. On this same hardware, earlier it took around 2 minutes for terrain to be created for the first time and cached. This also means that terrain caching is not needed any more. A side effect of this improvement is that we have halved the usage of system memory.

In the meantime, a lot of things in the code was replaced, improved or added. Of the reported issues and the things that players may notice in general, we point out:

– Creation of terrain and clouds is now 25 time faster, caching removed, and system memory usage halved.
– Caching system for objects and textures is improved so the game should be more fluid in general (without tiny pauses, hickups or stuttering).
– Added binary package for Linux.
– Fixed support for fullscreen mode in case of two displays.
– Tweaks in skirmish “Incoming”. Players now have a little more time to catch a breath between waves.
– Added new skirmish “Avalanche”. It is about attacking ground targets.
– Included in the package two additional 3D models of vehicles: M1 Abrams and M2 Bradley.
– Somewhat improved satellite terrain textures.
– A bit improved 3D model of cockpit.
– Added three new types of rockets in the code as well as their 3D models: Roland, Rapier and Osa.
– Added sound for air-brake. When the air-brake is extended, the sound of airflow is noticeably different and that way the player can tell if the brake is out or not, without needing to look into instrument panel.
– Added sound for raising and lowering the landing gear. Lowered gear has a similar effect on general performance of the plane like that of the air-brake, so it also changes the sound of airflow.
– In previous version, fly-by sound should have been triggered every time a jet flied near the player, but that wasn’t the case. This bug is now fixed.
– Added sound for using countermeasures.

Video of beating the new skirmish:

Unlike the previous skirmish which belongs to harder challenges, this one is easy.

Campaign “Broken star” is advancing nicely and soon there will be more news. Until then, regards! :)
Stefan Ilic <stef@sezampro.rs>

A New Game

It lives! Well… more or less…

Congratulations, you have strayed into the place dedicated to the new computer game, Limit Load, as you may have already noticed from the surrounding scenery. Our intention is that limitload.org becomes the center of all things related to this game and its further development. For this first entry, we will only mention some basics regarding the whole idea.

Limit Load is a cockpit flight game, more arcade than simulation in character, starring modern military jets. It is built on the free Panda 3D game engine, using OpenGL as the graphics backend, and runs on Windows and Linux. The first version, sufficiently prepared for demonstration, is finally ready for publishing, and you can download it here:

http://limitload.org/package/limload-0.19.zip

This demo version is around 204 megabytes in size, while the current full version of the game, which includes all the content created so far, is over 2 GB. Until we figure out how to distribute this amount of data, the demo version will be available. It contains the full source, and the most essential audio-visual content needed to get acquainted with the game mechanics. More concretely, it contains one skirmish mission dealing with aerial dogfight.

Finally, if someone is curious who “we” are, the game is being developed by enthusiasts, and anyone is welcome to join. The author of these lines is the concept architect and the game designer, for the first time in that role, and otherwise a decades-long player of many genres of computer games.

If you are interested in details, you can find the information so far prepared about the game on the game description page.

Until next entry! :)
Stefan Ilic <stef@sezampro.rs>