Goodbye Breakout, Hello SkyWay

So once again my main idea for my final year 3D XNA game has changed. If you've been reading my blog, you'll know that I originally began with the idea of creating a game similar to Microsoft's Hover. Well, that was before I knew what 3D programming really involved. I think decided a 3D Breakout clone would be a better idea, due to it using simple shapes and only plane collision. Upon doing a few 3D tutorials (from Riemer's Excellent Tutorial site) I realised that Breakout was going to cause problems for me as well (mainly indoor lighting which I struggled with attempting); that and the fact Breakout is predominantly meant to be played as a 2D game. I wanted to make something that worked best in 3D, as well as would be fun.


Last night, thanks to insomnia, I was brainstorming, and remembered an old DOS game I used to play and enjoy constantly: Bluemoon's excellent Skyroads (now available for free download). The basic idea of the game is to drive your small space craft along an obstacle course whereby you must avoid hitting the obstacles or falling off the track, whilst maintaining enough speed so that you finish the track before you run out of time. I have decided that this game would be very suitable for my project: its fun, its 3D, and most importantly, I feel its within my ability.

Working from Riemer's XNA Flight Simulator tutorial, I am beginning to construct the game. I have included some work in progress screenshots below. Bare in mind almost everything you see in these shots is going to be changed: the skybox, the ground textures, the spacecraft model. At the moment I have a very primitive gravity acting in the world, and collision detection which barely works. Expect at least one more update this week to the blog.

Screenshot in solid mode (click to enlarge)
Screenshot in wireframe mode (click to enlarge)