After a long period of time you expected some major updates? (insert Sayaka pun here). Still, there are a lot of things done – clouds, post-processing, landscape data, fixes, and also dlc pack decrypted.
Continue reading
Category: General
Integrating Google Breakpad
That programs have bugs is a given in modern times. We all make mistakes, and even if we don’t, we use somebody else’s code, which may contain errors. When your program crashes on user’s computer, you should know about it, and that’s where Crash Reporting comes in. We all have seen it in Windows, MacOS X and even in KDE applications. But what if you want to add such capability to your own project?
As long as you’re only using mobile platforms like iOS, Android or Windows Phone, you have a rich choice of 3rd-party APIs which allows generation, collection and processing of crash reports. iOS has TestFlight. For a cross-platform applications, you may use HockeyApp SDK or CApptain. But on desktop, your choice is limited.
Actually, I was unable to find any free alternatives to Google’s Breakpad. The good news, however, is that Breakpad is a well-tested piece of code (it is used in Mozilla Firefox and some other major software products) and it’s certainly cross-platform. In fact, not only does it support desktop, but also mobile platforms!
However, its integration is far from straightforward.
Of Redmine, Ruby and FreeBSD: How I lost a blog.
Now, I think I’ll tell you a tale how I really lost all content of this blog and changed my server template from FreeBSD to Debian.
Reboot.
This blog has suffered a catastrophic failure due to my error in managing my web server. All posts are gone, and there are no backups. So, I’m starting from scratch. I’ll be keeping current theme for now, and I’ll try to write more often. My friends say this site is where projects come do die, and I want to change that 🙂
As for old posts, some of them were just a little bit popular and had incoming links from other sites. I’ll try to restore a few of those under old URLs from drafts I have on my desktop’s HDD, but everything related to Razgriz’s OpenHorizon project is gone (beyond downloads). Razgriz himself is no longer going to work on OpenHorizon because of lack of interest.
As for me, I still hope to release Return of Dr. Destructo some time in the future, and I also maybe have a new project going, but I’ll wait a bit before posting any details.
If you have any particular questions about content of old posts or state of various old projects, feel free to ask, and I’ll do my best to answer.
Update: Razgriz took upon himself to re-create his posts about OpenHorizon. He might be back to working on it.
Progress report
I’m glad to share with you my current progress. As you can see, I’ve loaded landscape (with hacks that I’ll fix later), loaded animations and added basic post-processing – color correction and FXAA. I also wrote linear approximation to AH’s flight model, it works pretty well, but another approach is required to get exact formulas. What’s next? Clouds, perhaps.
Textures
Instead of working on a flight model, I’ve researched locations’ format and texture assignment in AH a bit. Looks trashy without proper shaders and post-processing, but it’s an another step on a long way. I wish I had more free time…
A friend of mine (I don’t know if game files’ modification is legal or not) also found another approach in flight model’s research – to modify plane’s parameters, run the game and see, how it affects plane’s performance. By the way, Assault Horizon doesn’t recognize my PS3 controller on PC and I can’t complete the first mission with a keyboard, lol. Thus I shall start with F-22′s params.
I hardly believe that AH can recognize my save files from PS3
Nagase F-22 paint theme
I have found something interesting among original game’s resources
Map loaded
Hurray! The title speaks for itself.
I have learned how to load map files. Not everything, but enough for testing. Finally, I’m able to work on flight model! In fact, I don’t know how to do it. I shall start with simple manoeuvres and find relations between plane’s flight model parameters and speed/acceleration. I hope it’s possible to read AH’s memory at runtime and dump values to collect reference data. Memory address of each value can be found with ArtMoney but it’s not an easy way, so I’ll start with visual development of a simple model based on common assumptions and see where it goes.
Progress report
I managed to load models with bones and probably animations. I almost found out how to load map files. Looks like map meshes are inside ms01_mpt.fhm file and textures are in ms01.fhm
Those models are so awesome, I so like to watch them in viewer
Some progress
Have I told you already, how awesome I am? I can load almost any model’s geometry data now! 
Surprisingly, some models’ parts are out of place, maybe that’s what MNT chunks are for?
I also need to learn how to read locations data before working on flight model, which is my primary goal right now. I really want to work on graphics, but I should leave it for the phase 2. I’m going to post information about known parts of fhm file’s structure in the next post (I don’t want to mix technical information with emotional progress reports), so stay tuned. I also find this blog very motivating, and at this rate I’m going to achieve phase2 even sooner than I have thought.