JBEngine: Space Invaders defence post addition and some Blender work

This week I got to work on creating the defence posts. I decided that I wanted to create a new model for this rather than re-using some of the boring models I've already got. I managed to find a decent "metallic spaceship tile" image from www.opengameart.org . I then had to think about exactly how I wanted to do the defence post. I wanted it to be fairly similar to the way the original worked and also had to think about how this would best work with the physics collision code. 

One idea I had was to create one model that was quite complex and intricate and then model the various levels of it's destruction based on which area was hit. I decided this would be a massive pain to create and manage the assets. 

I then thought I might just make it as simple as I can and make it look like a "spaceship-esque" wall made up of metal "bricks". This would make things much more simple in terms of the collisions as I would just destroy one brick when it was hit. This is the approach I decided to stick with, as it was a nice fit with my blender skills at the moment. 

Here is a screenshot of me trying to work out how to use blender for even this simple model:

Blender Work

So after I spent way more time than it should have done for such a simple model, I finally got to work implementing the functionality. Luckily with all the work I have already put into the Component System It was simply a case of giving the entity the correct components and subscribing to the right systems and it mostly worked through the asset loading alone. 

The only thing I did have to change was the collision filtering, I had to put in extra rules for this new "DefencePostBox" Entity. Now whenever a "DefencePostBox" is hit by a projectile they will both be destroyed. This means that even the player can accidentally destroy their own defence posts.

I'm fairly happy with the progress for the couple of hours I've worked on this tonight, here is a video of the results. (Oh I've also been messing around with the screen resolution so the enemies currently go off screen).

I would like to implement a particle system at some point for the entity and defence post destruction, as I've had to do this for some work I did at Inspired and it was pretty fun. I have managed to stop myself from doing this as I know It will not actually add anything in terms of gameplay and I want to get this game finished.

I'm not quite sure what is next on the cards but I'm really excited with the progress so far :)