ACV, Multiple Exposure Style

I've talked on and off about one of my works-in-progress, ACV. I'm working on it even as we speak, actually. I've gotten a lot more in - new weapons, new graphics, numerous bug fixes... But there's still a lot to do.
Now, unfortunately, while I have uploaded a video to YouTube of it, my laptop doesn't really like to mess with the game and recording program at the same time... and I get a low framerate. The video I uploaded is horrible.

But I want to show my progress! I want to show it in a way that people will get sort of an idea of what's going on and what needs to be fixed, but I want to leave them wondering. ...It also wouldn't hurt if it was kind of artistic.

Therefore... ACV - Multiple Exposure Style:

I almost wonder how many frames I used to make each of these images... It's an incredible amount. But that aside, let me help you examine it.

You'll notice some of the ACVs in the images are flying close to the top of the window - this isn't allowed normally. ACVs (sort of an invention of mine) fly (if they were in real life) with the use of three high-powered fans - one in the back and two underneath. therefore, while it's possible to fly forwards almost level, it is slow. Also, there is a maximum height for flight. When the atmosphere gets too thin, the weight of the craft balances out the force of the air thrust through the fans, and it ceases to gain altitude. I made the tilting of the ACVs in the game reflect this.

In the pictures... there isn't any smoke. Damaged crafts look and act just the same as those in full repair. This was how I'd originally intended it. However... my youngest brother suggested I add smoke, and I did. I turned it off to increase framerate while I set it up to take these three images. The program is running at the equivalent of a forced 32 frames per second - this is how it would look if the program was actually running at that speed at all times. In reality it was running anywhere from 20 to 40 frames per second. Smoke cut that down to 5 to 25, making it rather slow to finish.

You'll notice at the bottom right of all three images that missiles are falling through the ground. This is a bug I haven't fixed yet. It doesn't really harm anything, except for the guided missiles (and you can see some of those in the picture) - the guided missiles can duck beneath the surface of the earth and come up behind stalled ACVs, often destroying them. I'm going to make it so that they detonate on impact.

The last two weapons I haven't added - bombs and "beam boxes" (basically a bungee cord between two ships to fling one forwards and pull the other one back) - will be in the two empty spaces on the dashboard. The spot with the number that's missing its picture is that of the Energy Sapping Missiles, or ESMs. The rest of the weapons have already been added and are fully functional.

During the making of these shots, I completely shut off player control. The player's ship, and those of the enemies, are controlled by AI. This, unfortunately, isn't quite as smart as my "humanistic AI", but it has almost perfect accuracy and is easily capable of beating the player, both with arms and maneuvering. I'm going to have to add in a difficulty slider at some point, I think...



But, that's the progress so far. When it's done, I'm uploading it to the Phrogram website for anyone to download, and for the first time I think I'm going to fully comment on the code. Hopefully this will be enough to jumpstart interest in writing games with Phrogram.