This week I have been playing with myself a lot.

That’s play-testing.

I play as two players in at the same time, arranging the planes to shoot each other with alarming frequency. Hilarity ensues. I am catching quite a few small bugs. Up until Thursday if you shot at an enemy plane you would catch on fire and not them.

I finally sat down to do the tailing code, and it was surprisingly easy. What was I so worried about. With the hex system I developed relative distances and directions are easy to calculate and that is all tailing is. So now if you are in a position to tail you will get a drop down list of planes you can follow. Once you select one you will be shown the direction for their maneuver, once they lock it in.

My first original plane sprite sheet, for the SPAD, is up. It took several attempts to get it looking right once it was shrunk down to the size of the sprites, but given that is is vector based it can be scaled to any size. I need to trace the Albatros DIII and the Nieuport 17 (which I have entered the maneuver schedule for, but have yet to use in a scenario).

With the first version of tailing code in place the core of the Blue Max game is close to complete. There are still rough edges to be cleaned up, and I will most likely take the time to consolidate what is already in place. The next features to be added are:

  • being able to select a colour scheme for your plane during the selection phase at the start of the game.
  • one player being able to control two or more planes in a game (which kind of relies on the feature above).