Improving MDL support

Since the beginning of the development, I had a problem: I'm an average programmer, but a very poor modeller. That's why APOCALYX supports some of the most common model formats, MD2 and MD3: a programmer can concentrate on... programming, while downloading models from the large repository of free animated models that internet is.

I am a fan of the Doom-Quake series and I choose MD2 and MD3 formats as the primary source for my models. That wasn't a good choice because the Half-Life 1 format, MDL, is much better: it is a format based on skeletons, more compact and versatile, than the vertex based animations of MD3s.

As you can see from the pictures, the MDL format can encode very good looking models, like the one above, that is the Legionnaire from "The Specialists" MOD for Half-Life 1.

Now I have found some good example of MDL format loader and animator and also discovered large repositories of MDL models, so the MDL support, already available in version 0.9.1 of the engine, is improving a lot.
In the next release of APOCALYX, you are going to find an even better support for this format and you'll give new Full-Life to your MDL models!

The picture above shows MDL models in action from "The Trenches" MOD for Half-Life 1. I asked for permission to use these models in the next release of my GUN-TACTYX game. These models are quite light-weight and good-looking, especially when seen from a distance, as in a RTS-like game.