It has been over a month since the last Turtle Arena release (v0.5.2). I haven’t completed the goals for the next release yet, I got side tracked working on some new ideas.

A new “arcade mode” has been started. It is a single player mode for playing the multiplayer game types (deathmatch, CTF, etc) alone. It saves the top five high-scores (w/name), this the main reason it is called arcade mode. There is still some things that need to changed and features to add. It replaces the ‘Vs. Bots’ mode which was essentially off-line multiplayer (it was the same as Quake 3’s skirmish mode).

I started working on a new website using WordPress, so the blog and main Turtle Arena site can be combined. It reuses a lot of content and design from the current website.

I have a lot of specific ideas for the playable characters, but still need to create concept drawings to be references for the 3D models. I created some concept drawings for the rabbit character this week. There are still a few things to work out with the design, I’ll probably post a concept image after that.

The support for using a single IQM model for players (which was basicially the main feature for the next release) is unfinished. Engine-side code should work (hasn’t really been tested). I haven’t added the game/cgame/ui code yet. I need to learn to use Blender so I can create test IQM models. After that it should proceed.

I’ll try to finish arcade mode and do a new release by the end of the week. The general plan (since June) is a new release each month.