I needed to add some on-the-fly lookups for data stored in XML databases without having them gobbling up memory. Most games of this type had a vehicle and weapon database, usually with a rotating 3D model or picture of the object. Using the TxmlTextReader function with a cache works fine. Only need to do the lookup once when examining an object.
All weapons come with suitable entries by entering the ground crew mode from proximity to any Apache helicopter. We can re-use this for tutoria
It's been a blissfully quiet weekend.
The Combat-Helo configuration files are now in an easier to use XML format and I added a lot of extra options too. Player profile name, host IP, graphics filters etc. Fullscreen and Windowed modes having their own settings.
Also experimented with light scattering, we'll be adding per time-of-day lighting and retiring the old LB2 style skybox. That's not a priority item just something that's nice to toy as a little break.
Arming system which shoul
Day/night cycles are something I have thought about for a long time. There's several possible approaches to simulating these, but it wasn't until today that I decided which is best. Here are some options I considered:
1. Shader-based skies with particle clouds.
This is the method Crysis employs. A subsurface scattering shader creates the sky background. The mathematics are pretty complex, but the results for an empty blue sky look great. Particle clouds are used to place sparse clouds
I started out this morning looking to update a test scene that I used for some first person tests I did in C++ after only having the engine for a few weeks and coding in C++ for even less time. Well, that was the plan. I managed to redesign the layout using 3DWS, and threw a few Dexsoft crates and Barrels in. The plan was then to work on textures but as usual after about an hour I had set sail on the good ship "unrelated" for a voyage across the bay of tangents. Don't you just hate it when that
hehe well the XPatcher2 software worked great for the upload, but the client program doesn't seem to want to work at all, requesting a file that wasn't supplied or exists.
Might have to look at other some other software.
Converting all config files to use XML format, this will make editing control inputs a bit easier later. They are rather messy atm and adding new options should be a lot easier.
Source
Currently testing the autopatcher software. Broadband upstream speeds being what they are, don't make this a fast process. The project core files are currently around the 300mb mark spread over 1300+ files. This will come down when we package them.
The benefits of having an autopatcher is the ability to push updates for CombatHelo on a regular basis without too much hassle and players having to negotiate versions when playing with friends. Just run the updater and everyone should be in sync.
Until now, we haven't really had proper debugging info when a crash occurs during execution of a Lua script. Thanks to some previous work TylerH did with Lua, a conversation with him revealed how to easily add debugging info into the editor and script interpreter. (Incidentally, the Lua integration was Tyler's idea to begin with!) Here's a shot of the Script Editor catching an engine crash and displaying the script line the error occurs at. This is a crash that occurred in the engine, not a
After close checking of memory usage when boarding and exiting the Apache there's feedback saying that objects are getting freed and memory dumped, except it isn't. Only a small percentage. There are object references that are keeping the cockpit and avionic entities alive and preventing them from being released.
Going to take a little time to track each one down.
*edit*
The large memory leak located, was the TADS camera world not being released. It's been removed for now.
Source
It seems Crytek maybe planning a free CryEngine release.
"The developer behind Crysis 2 and the engine behind it, CryEngine 3, has plans to release a free version of their game engine that will be "up to speed" with CryEngine 3. This should help Crytek to further compete with Epic Games and Unity, both of which offer free versions of their respective game engines, Unreal Engine 3 and Unity. "
http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3178763
I suppose it was only a matter of time consid
I've just moved on to doing research into co-ordinates and floating point accuracy.
Going to make a few test projects to try different ideas. Dave has been posting updates on the greenzone development.
Welcome to Afghanistan
Source
After a busy week we are happy to announce the release of our first environment model pack "Rocks and Stones 1.0". It's a huge pack with over 300 MB download size.
Beside the 21 rocky and stony models I included all baked AO (Ambient Occlusion) textures, Photoshop and 3ds max (2010) files to this pack so it's easy to do new textures based on them.the models themselfs are made with Mudbox and weight around 6 million polygones before baking the normalmap from them.
All textures got unique 2048p
Welcome to another installment of “The Zone” level design blog. Today I’ll be detailing what has been going on since the last blog post, which includes some new and imported assets as well as some significant changes to the level design in the Editor. I implemented the new SSDO that Josh posted recently, and redid the lighting based off of a few tips he suggested. The main sunlight is a white-orange, and a very dark blue-gray ambient light is used to lighten the shadows and balance the lighting.
Not convinced this a a great way of arming the Apache. But what we will do I think is provide some quick defaults, option A and option B.
Only the client sees the weapons appear on the ground ready for selection. The crewman loading the weapons clicks the weapon which is then sent to the highlighted pylon. Internally the helicopter entity receives a message to load pylon x with missile y.
To do: Tooltips for the pods to say what they are and I think highlighting the selected pylon might
Looking at the pieces we have and project roadmap. Our game, like football (soccer for American readers), is a game of two halves. Side A and Side B. One campaign is the thinking man's approach; counter insurgency. The other game is the more familiar tank spanker; survival in a high-tech hostile environment against well armed self-sufficient mechanised infantry with air-defence units.
Compounds are anchor points of the campaigns, in groups they form the villages, strategic points you're tas
Story.
Okay guys you now that Aggror and I are working on a horror game. We have shown you some pic's and some gameplay, but now we want to talk a bit about the story.
The story style is inspired by the work of the horror writer HP Lovecraft. However we will be not be using any kind of creatures and places from the Chtulhu mythos inside our game. We have come up with our own creatures and places that are needed for our storyline. Yet we try to stay close to the unknown and obscure worlds t
Lots of things are happening around here right now!
First up, we've got some free professionally made animations for you to use with our futuristic soldier character. You can download the files here.
Michael Betke of Pure3D has been cranking out AAA-quality 3D models ready to use in Leadwerks Engine. The following sets are available:
Birch Trees 1.x (€22,00)
Pine Trees 1.x (€22,00)
Ground Plants 1.x (€19,00)
Each set features new unreleased content. Buy a couple today
Most of the IHADSS modes are complete except for a couple of elements in hover and bobup, and the flight-path indicator in TRANS mode.
Also added for Dave's benefit a small map which I'll use later as a background underlay for a tactical situation display (TSD) and easy nav mode.
RichP has supplied an authentic start-up sequence complete with appropriate caution and warning signalling that fits our bird nicely. Once we're done with the arming set-up I'll get back on the cockpit sequencin
Welcome to the first Pure3d blog here on Leadwerks.
I decided to do one so everyone can keep track of our projects done with Leadwerks.
First of all we released the third vegetation game model pack. This time there are 15 different pine models available. Like our previous released packs (Birches and Ground Plants) they are game-ready for Leadwerks and offer source files in 3ds max format too.
The latest .pdf can be viewed here: http://pure3d.de/english-version/pure3d-gameart-division/pd
Version 2.32 will feature some internal improvements that ensures your games run their best when conditions get demanding. I've totally rewritten the vegetation rendering routines with a highly specialized quad tree algorithm. There's a lot more to it than that, and I could write ten pages about the technique, but the bottom line is its fast and dynamic. Rendering with many vegetation layers is much faster, and since the visibility determination routine is so optimized, the engine can perform
SCP
