tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-48971251545622377802011-11-28T02:04:57.266+01:00Blog about the APOCALYX game engine development and related newsLeonardonoreply@blogger.comBlogger1891100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-73757434509084113492009-08-17T09:59:00.005+02:002009-08-17T10:07:04.706+02:00

The new MekaWars' Fleet Viewer

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-39771601639663884922009-01-18T15:34:00.003+01:002009-01-18T15:40:31.725+01:00

Yesterday I cited the space marines that populate the starships during battles.Space marines defending thecentral area of a module My idea was to develop the MekaWars control unit system (as you may already know, in MekaWars the players develop the AI of their units - that's how MekaWars is meant to be played) and recycle it for Gun-Tactyx-2 (that is the sequel of Gun-Tactyx).Then, recently, I

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-70791127002083752332009-01-17T15:31:00.002+01:002009-01-18T15:34:28.963+01:00

The starships concept included in MekaWars was extended and improved. Additional modules apart (research module to develop the projects from which devices, units and ships are designed; factory module to effectively build devices, units and new modules), the ships have now got a crew.I'm not talking about the pilots of units or the captains of the ships (or even the admiral that commands the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-65199496204747672782009-01-16T15:28:00.002+01:002009-01-18T15:31:37.802+01:00

Yesterday I talked about the Galaxy. Today is the time of stellar systems. The star, one planet with a moonand a fleet exiting the hyperspace Each sector of the Galaxy contains a stellar system. The prototype of the system is given by a star, with several planets, each with its moons.The asteroids rich of resources will be located in that environment, so the units must scan the space to avoid the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-77228165495488569632009-01-15T15:25:00.001+01:002009-01-18T15:28:15.732+01:00

MekaWars Offline will feature a strategic map like the one you can see below.MekaWars' strategic mapEach player has got a sector to manage, separated from other players by neutral sectors.A fleet can travel from sector to sector through hyperjumps, because travels among stellar systems needs too time being performed at sub-light speeds.A fleet can jump in a neutral sector only if no more than two

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-44481932294912344632009-01-14T15:13:00.004+01:002009-01-18T15:24:56.684+01:00

Almost three months have passed since the last post. I was quite busy and it was impossible for me to publish the promised daily post.However recently I've found some spare time to spend and I used it to continue the development of MekaWars Offline. In particular I have successfully ported the already working Lua simulator to C++, so very large starship battles are going to be possible.The port

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-49239745623774296502008-10-23T17:50:00.005+02:002008-10-23T17:57:37.495+02:00

After a lot of days of silence, let's start again the APOCALYX 3D Engine daily posts. Today just a short old news: I simply signal an old paper of mine that describes how to simulate a refractive (and reflective) perfect sphere with just two triangles.In DemoPack1 is available a demo (RefractiveSphere.lua) about the subject.The article dates back to 2004, so it explains how to simulate a sphere

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-91123738093934131402008-10-19T10:23:00.000+02:002008-10-19T10:23:00.271+02:00

Other screenshots from Miguel Manchego Rivas' Simple Shooter.You can download the demo from the Users' Gallery. Feel free to submit your little demos, even if you find the quality of yours worse that Miguel's ones. Thank you in advance!

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-20780252814126824532008-10-18T10:15:00.005+02:002008-10-18T10:23:12.016+02:00

Other screenshots from the Miguel Manchego Rivas' demos. This is the time of the Simple Shooter that you can find, as usual, in the Users' Gallery.As you can see, the features of the demo resemble those of my Urban Tactics. The main important different is that the avatar can jump and walk on ramps, while in Urban Tactics the level is completely flat.Another difference is the use of level items (

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-25091768913218879192008-10-13T17:30:00.004+02:002008-10-13T17:33:15.338+02:00

Other two screenshots from Treasure Hunter. Visit the Users' Gallery for more.

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-17351001221994934222008-10-12T13:37:00.004+02:002008-10-12T13:41:43.874+02:00

Just a few screenshots from "Treasure Hunter", a side-scroller demo realized years ago by Miguel Manchego Rivas.If you have developed games or demos using APOCALYX, feel free to submit them, even if they use very few functionalities. I'll be very happy to host them in the Users' Demos page.Thank you in advance!

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-86957889414429280632008-10-11T14:28:00.002+02:002008-10-11T14:31:00.438+02:00

Another quite hidden feature of APOCALYX is the support of UNICODE true type fonts. You can find a demo showing how to display UNICODE true type fonts in "UnicodeTrueTypeFonts.lua" included in DemoPack2.As you can see in the screenshot, after a true type font has been loaded in the engine, there are several different ways to use it to display texts. This feature is brought to you thanks to the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-11049235588765961242008-10-10T19:04:00.001+02:002008-10-10T19:07:17.871+02:00

Probably this is one of the most hidden features of the engine, but APOCALYX can also support multiple viewports.There are several kinds of viewports: first of all, the world scene can be seen from different points of view, then also other simplified 3D worlds independent from the main scene can be rendered in their own viewport. To see the feature at work, try the "Viewports.lua" demo in

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-80533431996609599432008-10-07T16:30:00.000+02:002008-10-07T16:30:00.847+02:00

Well, why should we limit the range of possible applications of the programming-game concept to the examples given in the past days? Other possibilities are available, such as the genre of Real-Time-Strategy games.The paradigm harvest-build-attack is simple enough to be mastered by our intelligent bots, also known as agents. Your possible objection may be based on the number of the units: if one

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-12472230654130973062008-10-06T16:30:00.000+02:002008-10-06T16:30:00.870+02:00

As a final example of projects that are going to benefit from the MekaWars development, let's consider the very-long waited Soccer Tactyx (ST). If you have been reading this blog since the beginning, you remember that ST was planned on occasion of the European Football Championship. Now I think that a more realistic release will be on occasion of the... Football World Cup!Delays apart, also very

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-81944386694107625362008-10-05T16:30:00.001+02:002008-10-05T16:30:00.066+02:00

You may know that MekaWars, the game currently in a heavy development, is a spin-off of Gun-Tactyx (my CROBOTS-like QUAKE3-style programming-game) and long before of JRobots (my Java CROBOTS-like game with online tournaments). You also may know that I planned long ago a sequel to Gun-Tactyx, that is GUN TACTYX 2.The occasion to develop MekaWars has delayed the GUN TACTYX 2 development a lot, but

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-50437217864022968632008-10-04T23:39:00.000+02:002008-10-05T10:43:39.478+02:00

If you have read the last posts, you know that MekaWars is currently in a heavy development phase. You can also discover the concept behind MekaWars playing with the recent preview (MekaWars.zip).MekaWars is a game set up in a outer space environment, but the genre of "programming-games" can be obviously applied to worlds subject to other rules. For example, let's consider a few long waited

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-30421409599448778572008-10-03T23:34:00.005+02:002008-10-03T23:39:58.742+02:00

The particle engine implemented in APOCALYX simulates the movement of textured particles in a frame rate independent way. Each particle moves along a path that is a superposition of two kind of movements: a quadratic path (characterized by an initial position, speed and acceleration) and a circular path (built from a radius and an angular speed). As usual, those parameters are linearly

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-41634304004401048622008-10-02T23:59:00.006+02:002008-10-03T00:07:49.372+02:00

I couldn't resist and show a few screenshots taken from the new MekaWars site that is going to appear at www.MekaWars.com. More detailed instructions, more demos and full featured forums: the real game apart, what could you ask more? Stay tuned!

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-49918321210044984642008-10-01T21:57:00.002+02:002008-10-01T22:00:17.787+02:00

Just a screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-46606740420418570322008-09-30T18:17:00.002+02:002008-09-30T18:18:23.823+02:00

Just a screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-15731095611124160782008-09-29T23:15:00.000+02:002008-09-30T18:16:59.920+02:00

Just a screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-37405800441032855182008-09-28T00:24:00.005+02:002008-09-28T00:33:09.841+02:00

The second MekaWars demo is finally here!You can download MekaWars.zip from SourceForge (2.5 Mb)Since the first demo was very primitive, this new preview includes several improvements:a static initialization screenan options screen with animated modelsusers can choose the number of unitsradar tracks shown in the 2D viewertwo different programmable teamsimproved info and Lua documentationa Lua

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-43093988033672907592008-09-27T19:07:00.004+02:002008-09-28T00:34:37.513+02:00

The second MekaWars preview is almost completed. In the screenshot you can see a preliminary mask to modify the number of items in the arena. The upload is scheduled for tomorrow afternooon.

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-30755757765579781352008-09-26T17:58:00.002+02:002008-09-28T00:34:09.229+02:00

The second MekaWars preview is under development. The next demo is going to include some masks useful to personalize the test arena. Stay tuned!

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-12024177778449343052008-09-25T18:11:00.002+02:002008-09-25T18:14:34.840+02:00

Very soon you'll be able to play with an improved MekaWars demo. In the current version, published a few days ago, there is very little to change: the starting situation is always the same, but you can already try to modify the basic AI written in "pilot.lua". Then, there is no documentation and some important features of the 2D viewer are still missing, like the drawing of the radar tracks (very

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-39354853477342352982008-09-24T17:23:00.004+02:002008-09-24T17:34:55.091+02:00

The MekaWars official site is already online.Not much to do on the site yet: it's simply a placeholder for the future official site that is going to manage the MekaWars universe, infact the game is still in heavy development. However, you can play a little with the very early preview the link of which was posted a few days ago on this Blog.Improved versions with more documentation will be

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-51497086631407715982008-09-23T18:12:00.003+02:002008-09-23T18:18:52.077+02:00

Waiting for MekaWars, I put online again the old Gun-Tactyx site. It has been hosted at GameProg.it for years, but recently they modified their hosting policy and there is no more space for external projects.I uploaded it for historical reasons only, in fact more than two years have passed since the last online Gun-Tactyx tournament. However, if you were addicted to Gun-Tactyx, you should

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-89539544513483625562008-09-22T17:26:00.004+02:002008-09-22T17:37:42.619+02:00

Another banner in Flash freely created through PowerBullet.I think that this new one is cleaner and more readable than my two-months-old past attempt. The banner already links to the official MekaWars site, but the site and the game are still in development. While waiting for the final version, give a look at the very early 2D preview posted yesterday.

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-14912427950624326872008-09-21T15:08:00.003+02:002008-09-21T15:19:00.043+02:00

Since a reader has asked for it, I have uploaded a very early demo showing the MekaWars simulator at work. Don't expect too much: it's only the 2D viewer that I used in the past four weeks to capture a few screenshots and demonstrate some of the simulator features.You can download the MekaWars very early demo (1.5 Mb) from SourceForge. Just for blog readers' eyes only.Here just a few notes follow

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-54256187518209509932008-09-20T21:18:00.004+02:002008-09-20T21:24:39.986+02:00

Space stationTwilight on the sunOrbiting fighters

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-85398401438178463062008-09-18T23:52:00.007+02:002008-09-19T20:40:39.226+02:00

I always look for good resources for my demos and games and sometimes I find large repositories under the sun that I missed completely for years. One of these is The Wadfather.The Wadfather is an important source of graphic files for game developers, focusing primarily on First-Person Shooters such as Half-Life, Quake 3 Arena, and Unreal. they currently feature: 552 environment maps, 198 texture

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-16224855379498955842008-09-18T23:52:00.005+02:002008-09-18T23:58:23.507+02:00

Fleet flying over a planetFighters in an asteroid fieldOrbiting fighters

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-24132477242728149262008-09-17T19:12:00.003+02:002008-09-17T19:16:11.555+02:00

The particle-based physics engine included in APOCALYX is useful not only to simulate flags and cloths, but also other kind of objects with different physical properties.In fact, the rigid constaints that link particles are resolved spreading the calculations over several frames (the method, known as relaxation, guarantees convergenge, but not immediately). If the satisfaction of the constraints

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-19870739202379156122008-09-16T19:03:00.002+02:002008-09-16T19:07:11.269+02:00

Sometimes people asks how those cloth simulations that you can find among the APOCALYX demos are done, or more precisely how can a virtual cloth be affected by wind. Are they simple animations or are precise physics laws applied?I programmed that effect several years ago and some simplified technique had to be applied, because there was no PhysiX engine running on the GPU at that time. The

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-81155163786298627112008-09-15T20:26:00.000+02:002008-09-15T20:27:43.294+02:00

Just another radar-screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-12308551509452453912008-09-14T20:58:00.001+02:002008-09-15T17:30:51.884+02:00

Just another screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-67301739995127274462008-09-13T17:16:00.003+02:002008-09-13T17:22:50.238+02:00

Thanks to Tom, the official forums related to the APOCALYX 3D Engine has been hosted at xfuj.com for a long time. Now SourceForge.net has provided phpBB support to their users, so I have decided to free Tom's server and move to the new phpBB server. Thank Tom for you great service!The new APOCALYX Forums are divided into the usual sections:GENERAL SUPPORTThis section is devoted to questions about

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-57339083143858947492008-09-12T22:47:00.009+02:002008-09-12T23:03:09.880+02:00

As you know, the long waited Will Wright's Spore game is on the shelves. There are quite different reviews about Spore, but I think that a game designed by the author of SimCity ans The Sims can't be so bad.Anyway, I'm not interested in the game itself, but in its development prototypes that are available for free and learn a lot about the step moved towards the real thing.In particular I'm

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-86974798021083469612008-09-11T19:18:00.002+02:002008-09-11T19:24:23.447+02:00

Havok(TM) and the Intel(R) Software Network start a game physics competition. Through the use of the Intel-sponsored versions of Havok Physics and Animation for the PC, you must demostrate an innovative use of physics in a game. Your game demo could earn you $40,000 in cash, a gaming PC and great exposure.There are two caterories:Most Innovative Use of Physics in a Game. Your entry must be a

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-86490497721135838882008-09-10T16:09:00.002+02:002008-09-10T16:12:06.401+02:00

Here they are! Now fighters and bombers of MekaWars can protect themselves against incoming missiles thanks to decoys. In the screenshot you can see decoys (smaller green dots) thrown by fighers and, some of them, followed by deceived missiles.The vehicles detect the incoming missiles thanks to a particular device (queried by the threat() function) reporting the distance of the nearest missile

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-61818857644543212312008-09-09T16:59:00.002+02:002008-09-09T17:02:33.626+02:00

Finally the top level weapon of MekaWars is implemented: homing missiles. As already explained in past posts, missiles are driven towards their target, while bombs and torpedos follow a straight path. In the scheenshot, you can see several missiles and their targets linked by a line for clarity.One may ask what can a target do to avoid the incoming missile. There are two main devices useful as

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-42348401312525285302008-09-08T18:45:00.001+02:002008-09-15T17:32:20.447+02:00

Just another screenshot

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-33972968654482406882008-09-07T19:01:00.003+02:002008-09-07T19:03:26.176+02:00

A further evolution in the simulator of MekaWars. In the original scenario, the environment show the presence of asteroids and resources all around (such as iron, silicon and uranium) and starships drop vehicles to harvest them.During the development of collision detection algorithms, it was natural to consider also the explosion of torpedos, missiles and bombs against the asteroids: the obvious

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-8080895084621893242008-09-06T17:17:00.002+02:002008-09-06T17:20:44.618+02:00

Just a screenshot to showthe VEHICLES BUILDER panelcurrently in development

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-5236266615542195112008-09-05T19:25:00.001+02:002008-09-06T17:21:21.374+02:00

Just a screenshot to showthe FLEET BUILDER panelcurrently in development

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-81247719398465069062008-09-04T14:17:00.002+02:002008-09-04T14:23:32.484+02:00

When I heard of interesting competitions that involve the game development, I'm very happy to post news about them.This one in particular is very intriguing because there are a lot of prizes, but also because the task is the development of games that has something to do, resemble or even clone, glorious games of the past. The contest is divided into several categories, but all the entries

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-71527699038907964412008-09-03T19:11:00.003+02:002008-09-03T19:17:11.453+02:00

Someone may think that the basic radar-like screens on which I show the MekaWars' simulator capabilities and rendered thanks to specific code written in C++. In reality, those simple screens are drawn through code written in Lua, thanks to the LuaGL library.LuaGL is a library that provides access to all the OpenGL functionality from Lua. It is a free software and can be used at no cost for both

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-9466411288731134532008-09-02T19:31:00.004+02:002008-09-07T19:05:04.210+02:00

After cannons with their bombs (read The Guns of MekaWars), another weapon has been implemented with its projectiles: torpedo-tubes and torpedos. Of course, those are only names to differentiate these two kind of weapons available to MekaWars' spaceships and fighters.In the small radar-like screen shown in the screeshot, the white pixels correspond to bombs, while the red pixels to torpedos. You

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-19578675722020867222008-09-01T14:46:00.000+02:002008-09-01T14:47:13.219+02:00

The APOCALYX 3D Engine 0.9.3 release is finally available. It includes some improvements and bug fixes. To download the engine in a easy-to-get 60 Mb installer, or in smaller selected pieces, visit to the APOCALYX Official Site's Downloads page.New features:Added MDLModel functions: setTransition(), setTransitionTimer(), getStoppedTransition()Added IM (Imaging Toolkit) support in IUP GUIAdded

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-17343270648210137622008-08-31T19:29:00.004+02:002008-08-31T19:35:06.590+02:00

Finally, it's time to describe the MekaWars battles. You already know something about MakaWars spaceships, fighters, bombers and exoskeletons. Now I list the basic weapons available and show here the usual little radar-screen of a fight.As you can see, there are asteroids (yellow dots), resources (orange and cyan), harversters (two green dots) and fighters (two red dots). The fighters are firing

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-85139450166020637342008-08-30T19:15:00.003+02:002008-08-30T19:19:03.433+02:00

Yesterday I briefly described some of the devices installed on MekaWars harvesters. Today I consider fighters and bombers.Since this kind of vehicle is used mainly for combat, you may expect that weapons play a major role in their equipment: that's right, of course.The basic devices, such as the generator, the radar, the engine and the hull, are also available, but there are additional ones.For

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-76141155202825178002008-08-29T22:41:00.002+02:002008-08-29T22:45:02.208+02:00

Some days ago I described the structure of the MekaWars spacechips and the modules they are made of.In the game there are also units made of a single piece, like a lone module, but their internal structure is also complex. In fact the vehicles, such as cargos, fighters and bombers, even if they are shown as one-block models, possess a hidden organization, visible only to the simulator.Let's

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-21745404527799245022008-08-28T23:00:00.000+02:002008-08-29T13:40:21.878+02:00

Just a screenshot to rememberthat your dog is a wonderfulplayfellow, but it's not a toy.If you leave for holidays,don't adandon it.

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-51635903134655043602008-08-27T22:00:00.002+02:002008-08-29T13:40:59.569+02:00

The genie said: "Aladdin, still one wish remains! Which is your very last desire?"Aladdin thought that no other satisfaction was greater than to see the nations on earth all at once, nothing was more exciting than to fly at high speed over the ocean, no activity more inspiring than to be able to sing the sweetest melodies.So Aladdin answered: "This is my very last wish: to be a bird!" Just a

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-5742215241098243532008-08-26T18:11:00.003+02:002008-08-26T18:15:32.849+02:00

Some time ago I listed several papers related to Artificial Intelligence that made use of GUN-TACTYX as the main testing application of their thesis (read the post).I forgot to mention that also a whole book, devoted to AI applications in computer games, had based its examples on an old version of APOCALYX. The book, published in 2004, describes several AI techniques useful to make the behavior

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-68711539634837549172008-08-25T21:20:00.006+02:002008-08-26T09:29:09.807+02:00

The results of the latest Lost Garden's Prototyping Challenge (Shade) are finally available. My entry was one of recent APOCALYX demos: Mushroom's Ride.Unluckily I released it without implementing the main design requirement: take advantage of the shadows to bring the mushrooms at home (read the release post).This design requirement was fundamental, that's why the entry received the bronze award

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-57895351510934183192008-08-24T16:49:00.001+02:002008-08-24T16:52:47.832+02:00

Just a screenshot to celebratethe Italy's partecipation to theXXIX Olympiad - Beijing 2008

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-22134719535090477972008-08-23T21:00:00.005+02:002008-08-24T09:29:18.310+02:00

Today MekaWars moved a further step forward: the pilots can see the environment and the objects around them, in fact the algorithms to manage a radar and a detector device were finally implemented in the simulator.The radar is useful to detect enemy vehicles and obstacles, like asteroids, while the detector is necessary to find the resources flying freely all around in empty space.In the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-44491451950642027262008-08-22T17:20:00.003+02:002008-08-24T09:30:04.263+02:00

The MekaWars' pilots move their first steps or, better, fly their first flights. As already explained in an old post (read it), in a programming-game like MekaWars, the bots' AI is written in Lua and executed in a sandbox, that is a protected environment where the player's code is executed without affecting in dangerous ways the computer, or the execution of the simulator, or other players' code.

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-82472331867059609772008-08-21T14:54:00.007+02:002008-09-19T19:21:53.391+02:00

Yesterday I forgot to mention the other models shown in the MekaWars' trailer. They are the well known vehicles already used in Hoverjet Racing.They come from an Andrea Orioli's old project known as Black Chaos, a clone of the old Wipeout 2097. He kindly gave the permission to use them in Hoverjet Racing and I find them so good that I use to include them as placeholders also in other

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-16348958016880113802008-08-20T14:01:00.005+02:002008-09-19T19:22:35.453+02:00

Yesterday I talked about the basic viewer of the MekaWars' simulator and someone asked about the models shown in the game trailer's screenshots.As usual they come from free packages available on the internet, but they are only placeholders for the real original models, of course. They were taken from TurboSquid, the famous 3D models repository.There are several lowpoly models representing cargos,

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-76261887878408181012008-08-19T15:49:00.006+02:002008-08-24T09:30:37.625+02:00

The core of MekaWars is its simulator. Ships, cargos, bombers, fighters and robots must interact in a "realistic" way with asteroids, laser beams, missiles, torpedos and so on. To test effectively the wanted behaviors is not always the best choice to develop a fully featured 3D view. In fact, since MekaWars is, for simplicity, based on a 2D map even if outer space is its environment, a 2D view is

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-78992291011279745892008-08-18T17:44:00.003+02:002008-08-18T17:50:43.612+02:00

The simple modules described yesterday permit to assemble in a modular way any kind of starship necessary to the players of MekaWars.Since the modules must easily connect along their sides and, at least in a first release, all the modules share the same shape, there are only a few regular polygons possible. The easiest to use are hexagons and octagons, in fact equilateral triangles and squares

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-53726611540972541752008-08-17T14:29:00.008+02:002008-08-17T14:39:56.412+02:00

After a few MekaWars' screenshots, let's talk a little about it.MekaWars is a game in development of the "programming games" genre, those games like Jrobots, where the players program the AI of their team of bots and then watch them fight against teams written by other players.The environment of MekaWars is outer space, so you can expect fights among bombers, robots and spaceships.Here I briefly

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-17021339557904874502008-08-16T17:55:00.005+02:002008-08-17T14:41:00.691+02:00

This post regards again the GLGooey GUI included in APOCALYX. I already described months ago all the GUIs supported by the engine (read the post) and in particular the GLGooey GUI (read the post), but now I'm developing the GUI necessary to manage the fleets of MekaWars Offline so I discovered further GLGooey's hidden capabilities.In practice, I needed to show several properties of fighters,

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-184005669137822312008-08-08T18:00:00.002+02:002008-08-08T18:42:29.876+02:00

Just a screenshot to celebrate the beginning of theXXIX Olympiad - Beijing 2008

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-39434896187877072702008-08-07T17:00:00.001+02:002008-08-08T18:43:19.259+02:00

Just a screenshot to celebrate the beginning of theXXIX Olympiad - Beijing 2008

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-80475434617412061852008-08-06T16:00:00.000+02:002008-08-06T16:00:12.362+02:00

Yesterday I received a new demo by Nout, the author of the NsEditor, the editor/framework for APOCALYX.You may know that the NsEditor includes great tools to write Lua scripts, manage game resources and edit the game world directly into the 3D scene. These powerful features apart, NsEditor includes also a framework plenty of ready-to-use entities to populate your demos and games written for the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-34831505859443154852008-08-05T17:33:00.002+02:002008-08-05T17:39:48.341+02:00

A week ago I talked about PowerBullet, an easy to use tool to design simple Flash presentations (read the post).Looking for a help in programming the code necessary to Video Capture, I have found another free utility related to Flash that is also a screen activity recorder. It is called CamStudio.The purpose of CamStudio is twofold: one can use it to create several kinds of demostrations in AVI

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-73068230376030357892008-08-04T22:23:00.003+02:002008-08-17T14:41:28.010+02:00

Just a screenshotMekaWars Offline trailer

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-30183726921305752352008-08-03T18:50:00.003+02:002008-08-03T19:03:28.510+02:00

As usually happens, a webcam is placed at the top of the screen of my notebook. I was disappointed by the fact that APOCALYX could render nice scenes on the screen, but couldn't take advantage of the webcam. For example, one could think of embedding the real world that surrounds the player in the virtual world of the game.To perform a step forward in that direction, today I wrote some functions

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-28879277234959876122008-08-02T15:27:00.005+02:002008-08-02T15:32:17.067+02:00

Just a fast news to let you know that the CDN Speedgame Contest 2008 has started yesterday.The goal is to create quick, fun games focused on different aspects of Christian teaching (either moralistic, theological or both) to promote Christ, Christian Games and Fun!.This years theme is: PROVERBS!Create a game based on the point of the Proverb or create a game based on the Proverb itself! Dig

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-81959028316375681802008-08-01T17:20:00.003+02:002008-08-17T14:42:13.070+02:00

Just a screenshotMekaWars Offline trailer

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-59776926388761943632008-07-31T18:13:00.002+02:002008-07-31T18:18:33.373+02:00

Yesterday I have described a program that generates images of animated caustics. Today is the turn of a program that generates images of explosions. You can download it here.You know the importance of explosions in games. Often they are realized through the particles system, but also a simple square textured with an animation is good enough in some situations. For example, such are the simple

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-79512357628872747702008-07-30T21:14:00.002+02:002008-07-30T21:18:08.346+02:00

Textures are fundamental for games. Nowadays the fragment shaders add a lot of versatility and realism to game scenes, but also a good animated texture may be enough sometimes. Hand drawing textures is an art, use and modify real photos is easier, but there is a third way: use texture generators.In a past post (read it) I talked about the procedural texture generator included in APOCALYX. There

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-18122013997483660042008-07-29T22:03:00.005+02:002008-08-17T14:42:40.053+02:00

Let's start a new topic a little off-topic for the main line of discussion of this blog: Utilities.I had to write the flash-banner for a free game in development, the banner that you can see today on the left, and I never created one in the past (in fact, as you can see, the final result is not so professional). Anyway, I tought that some complex and expensive tools were necessary to put together

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-74961371068188241752008-07-28T19:35:00.002+02:002008-07-28T19:39:36.432+02:00

I received questions about the smooth transitions between different animations in MDL models. AS explained yesterday, they are only available in the preview of the next release. There are 3 additional functions:number MDLModel:setTransition(number duration, number index, boolean looping = true, boolean reverse = false)This function starts the transition from the current frame of the current

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-46622114202035321912008-07-27T17:51:00.005+02:002008-07-27T18:01:24.308+02:00

Yesterday I posted a link about the new preview of the next release of the engine (download the new executable here)Apart the bug related to eSpeak that I discussed yesterday, the preview includes some improvements as listed in the history document:Added MDLModel functions: setTransition(), setTransitionTimer(), getStoppedTransition()Added IM (Imaging Toolkit) support in IUP GUIAdded primitives:

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-9585913647319415782008-07-26T18:23:00.003+02:002008-07-26T18:28:24.894+02:00

Thanks to Nout (the author of NsEditor), I discovered that the current APOCALYX implementation of eSpeak had a design flaw. eSpeak is an open source library useful to convert text in several languages is fluent audible speech. Since the output of the library is a sound, I had to interface the output to a sound source and, because of their versatility, I had chosen a 3D sound source. This way the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-80386609491625522972008-07-25T17:46:00.005+02:002008-07-25T17:52:40.143+02:00

Finally, the end of the screenshots tour. Let's come back to an urban environment. The buildings are just made of simple blocks, but enough to represent the town of "Urban Tactics". All the lightmaps applied to the walls are generated by the raycaster included in GtkRadiant.A few buildingsA flat wall: the windows aredrawn in the applied textureThe main street

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-15607584357841094172008-07-24T17:07:00.004+02:002008-07-24T17:12:56.589+02:00

The tour continues. Probably, to say that the sea is an open ground is an oximoron, anyway these screenshots belong to the terrain tour serie. Again they are taken from the well known "Hoverjet Racing" demo.An isle in the Mediterranean SeaAn isle in the Pacific OceanA vulcanic isle in activity

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-27533723097172750292008-07-23T18:18:00.005+02:002008-07-23T18:52:48.823+02:00

In recent messages I have posted a few screenshots of BSP levels rendered by APOCALYX. Usually BSP levels depict indoor scenes, while the last shots simulate an open environment. Let's now consider a real open ground. This time the screenshots are taken from "Hoverjet Racing" one of the most complete and varied demos.Here you can see a landscape from MarsThen a shot from the Rocky

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-33955423616068645012008-07-22T16:42:00.004+02:002008-07-22T16:47:41.351+02:00

If you had fun flying through the El Paso level, you'll have more fun flying through a larger level that represents the town of Genoa in Italy. You can download the demo at SourceForge.The BSP level, very large and detailed, was created by Massimagnus for the game "Soldier of Fortune II". I have only converted it to the Quake III BSP format necessary to show it in APOCALYX.The author has created

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-88867179396358435572008-07-21T16:14:00.004+02:002008-09-02T09:01:37.870+02:00

Yesterday I show a few screenshots of MD3 models taken from "WesternQ3" a MOD for the old Quake III. The models are quite old-fashioned, but it's amusing the see the Clint Eastwood's face attached to a low-poly model. Now it's time to show a BSP level inspired to the town of El Paso, as it was built in "For a Few Dollars More", a movie by Sergio Leone.In the screenshot above you can see the bank

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-9271913067921850362008-07-20T15:59:00.003+02:002008-07-20T16:04:58.368+02:00

Yesterday I watched on TV the movie "The Good, The Bad, The Ugly", a so called spaghetti-western by Sergio Leone. The plot, the long sequences, the emblematic characters, the awesome sountrack, make it one of the best movies of the italian director.This is the right occasion to remember two small APOCALYX demos that take from that genre of movies their atmosphere. They are the "El Paso level" and

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-75446942834188427672008-07-19T17:33:00.003+02:002008-07-19T17:37:32.045+02:00

Sometimes I receive requests to modify in some way this or that demo. I'm surprised by these requests because I always explain that one can easily modify the demos himself. For example, it's very easy to change any resource used in the demos (textures, models, sounds etc.). Take for example the latest demo, Mushroom's Ride, posted two days ago and let's change the player's avatar. Since the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-1908799479050210962008-07-18T13:20:00.006+02:002008-09-01T14:21:56.134+02:00

Just a few screenshots of another demo in development.In the first picture you can see some buildings, a space-station, two robots walking on ground and some fighters flying.The second picture show an enlargement of the first one, where you can see the two giant robots, the fighters and the landing-dock.The two screenshots were taken as usual from an animation executed by the latest release of

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-60471795284924933462008-07-17T16:27:00.003+02:002008-07-17T18:23:30.777+02:00

Finally, here it is: a new APOCALYX demo, Mushroom's Ride. Move the fairy through the stone blocks to collect as many mushrooms as possible. You can download it from SourceForge. The 1.3Mb ZIP contains also a stripped version of the engine executable (only 414 Kb), so you don't need to download the larger runtime.This is only a demo, in fact the gameplay is not complete. For example, the shadows

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-91448757521375676672008-07-16T14:32:00.003+02:002008-07-16T14:45:33.818+02:00

Another screenshot about Mushroom's Ride. Finally the fairy can run through the stone blocks on the mushrooms field.Now it's time to implement the game logic:as time passes, the sun moves in the skywhen the fairy approaches a mushroom, it keeps following herwhen more mushrooms follow the fairy, they create a chain (each approached mushroom starts following the last mushroom of the chain)when

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-2066714048810918002008-07-15T15:34:00.002+02:002008-07-15T15:39:58.191+02:00

A few days ago I talked about the skyboxes available in APOCALYX. In reality there are different kinds of skyboxes, each of them useful in particular situations.The most suggestive, already available in the first demos (read the post about the ancient origins), is the StarField, here shown behind the robots. It is a collections of points of several sizes and colors, that resemble stars, together

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-88208503392135887202008-07-14T14:19:00.003+02:002008-07-26T09:11:18.753+02:00

Thanks to users' requests the capabilities of APOCALYX grow more and more. Recently several users asked about the databases management capabilities of the engine, in particular they asked for MySQL support. The engine can already manage MySQL databases, but the necessary functions are not compiled in the default release of the engine, while ODBC support is. So I uploaded a version of the

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-17734564388742073072008-07-13T17:30:00.003+02:002008-07-13T17:33:32.944+02:00

Latest improvements in Mushroom's Ride: finally the shadow volumes applied to static meshes are rendered correctly, as you can see in the screenshot (one of the fairies is partially covered by the shadow of the cube).However the performances are not the best yet, in fact the shadow volumes are applied on a per-triangle basis. This means that for each triangle enlighted by the sun, other three

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-56482105082044323842008-07-12T15:57:00.004+02:002008-07-12T16:03:10.629+02:00

One of my preferred 3D tools is Terragen. Thanks to this free (for non-commercial use) terrain generator, I could create all the open terrains that you can see in my demos, but also all the backgrounds.It's very easy to create a beautiful landscape with mountains, clouds and a shiny sun. After tuning some parameters, it's only necessary to take six shots of the scene with an aperture of 90

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-54435532781473915992008-07-11T16:10:00.001+02:002008-07-11T16:13:48.542+02:00

Yesterday I show some pictures of the Gundam-like robots available at InGame.de where a large collection of MD3 models is available, free to use in the old Quake III Arena.Since we already made a big jump back in time, I recall another great japanese TV serie that I used to watch when I was a little child: Goldrake. Here is a screenshot of the giant robot driven by Actarus, always taken from

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-50031182297862645602008-07-10T14:58:00.004+02:002008-07-10T15:03:09.865+02:00

In my continuous search for good free animated 3D characters, I look for large repositories of MD2, MD3 and MDL models, that are the most common because they were the formats supported by Quake2, Quake3 and Half-Life. A large one was PolyCount, but in the past years it suffered a redesign and the links to the most interesting models are not available yet.Anyway, looking carefully, there are other

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-369327783251975302008-07-09T14:10:00.003+02:002008-07-09T14:17:31.381+02:00

I need a model for Mushroom's Ride, but it seems that mushrooms does not inspire any builder of free 3D models, in fact I look everywhere on the internet but I coundn't find any simple or complex mushroom model. So I had to show my poor modelling capabilities and you can see my very schematic result in the screenshot below. Years ago I have been working for some time as a technical drawer on

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-29129487970503568992008-07-08T18:08:00.004+02:002008-07-26T09:11:45.545+02:00

Recently several users asked about the DB management capabilities of the engine. APOCALYX includes LuaSQL, so it's very easy to connect to an existent DB, simply write the following lines:env = luasql.odbc()conn = env:connect("your_database")conn:execute(your_sql_query)The your_database DB must already exist, of course. To create it use the usual ODBC system tools. All the functions are explained

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-87548389485751438982008-07-07T18:23:00.004+02:002008-08-02T08:25:58.862+02:00

First screenshot of Mushroom's Ride, a prototype in development written for the Lost Garden's Shade Compo (read the original post about the Lost Garden Awards). As you can see, to fast prototype the game I'm starting from the sources of Dragon's Ride because there is no time to reinvent the wheel again and again. In place of all the models features in Dragon's Ride, I simply put two fairies: they

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4897125154562237780.post-85511468512959191312008-07-06T13:34:00.004+02:002008-07-06T13:39:13.842+02:00

Some days ago I talked about the ancient origins of the APOCALYX engine (read the post). I said that all started from a demo written for an old NeHe Contest, the author of which was Matteo Perenzoni. I forgot to mention that Matteo has further improved his demo developing his own 3D engine, independently from my APOCALYX. That engine was then improved to support MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online

Leonardonoreply@blogger.com1