Diamond Sword

Just prior to my teenage years, I purchased an APC magazine from the local newsagent. On the cover disc of that issue was a game that defines nostalga for me, right up there with having to bare the tones of a dial-up connection if I dared to play online as a Diamond Sword sniper. Starsiege: Tribes is a multiplayer first person shooter developed by Dynamix and released in 1998. Environmentally the game is set across futuristic galaxies, consisting primarily of outdoor maps with vast sloping hills in a variety of climates. Player are equipped with a jetpack enabling them to rocket into the air and maneuver through the skies until their energy levels are depleted.

Some weeks ago I made an attempt to replicate a map from the game, complete with sloping hills and the jetpack. It was this project in fact that led to the development of my terrain generation tool, so it seemed fitting to release a small working demo despite my poor efforts at emulating the almost frictionless player physics. If I were to rewrite the player controller now, it would be far more accurate given what was discovered writing the one herein. In saying that, I'm sure it would still be possible to fine tune the current example further given that every physics related variable is tweakable.

Here is a link to a Unity web build of the demo, press right mouse for thrust.