Take a look at that screenshot. Notice anything? Yes, well, Torn Stars, and Unstable Space for that matter, run very nicely on OSX. How is this possible? Well, if you have a copy of X3 The Reunion, it is quite easy. That game is wrapped in a program called Cider, which is used to simulate a windows environment for the program it wraps. On a whim I tried Edge of Chaos in Cider, and lo! with just a little tweaking it worked. Specifically you need a noCD dll for EoC, and compressed textures must be turned off in EoC's graphics options.
Now that we have almost unlimited ships for the player (about 7 for the US release, but more can be added thanks to the new Loadout) I recently realised that now we have a cockpit that doesn't always match the ship. In Eoc one cockpit sufficed, as every ship Cal flew actually had the same cockpit. How fortunate. Of course the cockpit was also just window dressing, as all the important info is stored on his helmet's hud. (0)
One of my favorite moments in I-war2 was when I switched to an outside view to examine my ship, and suddenly noticed the maneuvering thrusters. Such a great little detail, that really helped build the reality and believability of the simulaiton for me. In light of my recent work on maneuvering thrusters, I suddenly took it upon myself to tackle a little point about them that never really sat well with me. Namely, that the thrusters on the Dreadnaught Corvette seemed waaaay too small to be spinning it around the way they did.
So I quickly whipped up some new thruster nozels, a more powerful animation (simulating actual engine like thrusters, rather than jets of gas), some lighting and threw them together on a Corvette. Here is the result. Kinda cool, so I may just have to release it once our coding for Unstable Space is done (crosses fingers)
Video might be a little small, but hopefully it can get the idea across.
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