Naughty Alien

..what would be exactly 'demo recording system' ? Cut scene system or replay system for certain actions or..?

..dear Josh, you should let each programming language forum to grow on itself together with whole community..it will be no confusion and everybody will be happy..whats wrong with that ?

if installing package size is your only concern, then I believe it shouldnt be..fact that 3dsmax is so large is because of massive support it delivers to you as a user..its not just tool for animation but also modelling, and simulation too..you could rig entire scene of yours with physics, capture it and use in your game, and so on..possibilities are endless...bottom line is..if size of price tag is not problematic, then, installer package size is last thing you should worry about..

..iii..im not sure what you mean, but yes, I can extract modules in form of DLL's and thats what Im about to do once finish my tutorials updated (right now few basic functionalities introduced) , Ill provide proper DLL counterpart of same lib with same commands as in tutorial, and it will be totally free to use by anyone (except selling it as independent product of course ) ..

..sharing is good, best things in life are free things..im happy to see my bmax community here happy with small contributions i have made, and im going to expand it much more ..however, I also believe that there is no harm and that its good if i share for free my libs with no source code, so other people could make their steps easier...i dont think that absence of source in freely shared libs, is bad thing..far as im concerned, if anyone reach stage of development and using my libs, where is necessity to have a source of lib for sake of future game maintenance..Ill email it to that person..no problem..free of charge, and with maybe lil tiny place on credit list, but even that is not requirement..but before such stage is reached out, I see no reason to give away source anyway...simple as it is..

..im saying that 'First Steps' should be on the top, not almost last on the page..but if that makes sense for ya, then keep it up..im sure that people whos actually looking for first steps help, will find it rather messy like that..

..you can if you use other physics engine then provided one..then you could keep renderer totally isolated from what you do with your physics updates..

..yes, but he mentioned in his post that he need better accuracy than 1 mm, whats over 2 decimal places..im still wondering, what kind of application is that considering that for such precision, low poly modeling doesn't work anymore..on other side, poly count because of that, goes sky high..

..accuracy better than 1 mm ? For 3D objects ? Then i believe you using already wrong aplication (Editor) for such task. What kind of modelling you doing then, because for such precision, low poly optimizations doesnt fill the bill ? Im just very curious now after you mention about 1mm scale is not enough, because it seems like falling in to a mechanical engineering area, and im rather interested to hear what kind of aplication is that, if i may know (my background is CNC machine software programing/design, or better say, thats what I was doing before i started 3D games)..

..i suspect that Editor using metric system, and that means by having 2 decimals, precision is about 1 cm, what is MORE than enough..by having it up to 3-4 decimal places, tolerance goes at millimeters scale what really doesn't make any sense considering its a game and not scientific application..so, by saying this, I think your request is a bit..off..

..i smell an ambush..

..once you reach such level, or near it, whatever you call that level..you will not surf any language forum here in hope to find answer, but most probably you will be writing your own engine and be happy..fact is that, people whos using C++ or Bmax or C# or LUA, highly unlikely will swap their environment since they are familiar with it, achieving results with it and LE works with it, therefore, to have independent language threads sounds very logical to me..

..far as im concerned, whole this forum 'format' thing is not my business, so Ill just make few comments about it, from some sort of indifferent position toward actual topic as most of the time, Im just trying to follow my own posts in order to eventually respond quickly fast as i can..so having said that, from plain observer point of view, throwing all programming languages in to one 'can' looking like a 'fruit salad' because its all in there and at same time .. nothing.. I just look at tutorials and i noticed that thread about 'First Steps' is actually second from bottom of the page .. i mean.. 'First Steps' maaannn .. how that can be OK i have to figure out yet. Then look at asset store now (im checking that because of my lil lib, if someone ask something so i can quickly respond)..before, I could just go over Asset Store, pop up menu appear, and i just click on to tools and im there...now..I click on asset store, then whole parade of options came and again I have to click on left side on to tools to get what I want..hows that efficient, I dont know, but ok .. Bottom line is..it is always nice to see where you could go for given language of choice, in order to see eventual code of your interest..It is truth that syntax LE related is pretty much same, but NOT same rule apply on to language syntax where some game logic processing is done. Simple as it is. So, to sum it up..mixing it all up, in my observation, offering more confusion than benefits..not to mention that, following experience from previous situations, chances are that setup 'ok right now' will change..soo.. P.S. Locked/protected forums are not good idea in my opinion..it is nice to see how a live are product specific forums, from perspective of new user..just a tip..

here ya go http://babek.info/libertybasicfiles/lbnews/nl130/proj3d.htm

..ill just repeat what most of folks already pointing out..dont mix up programming languages, if will cause mass hysteria soon or later..

Since you using Bmax, I highly recommend to invest in to BLide + Bmax(you have it) + LE .. you will NOT regret it..

..mm..while that may be correct, such approach will never return shortest path, and it will be rather difficult to control alternate routes, in case you have many characters and path you loking for by trying to go left-right is simply..stuck..also, this will work in any shape/complexity of level, and I decided to go with this sort of level for tutorials because its easier to follow, but it will work just same no matter how complex is level.. anyway, you will see in next tutorial where some form of labyrinth is involved and elevated path surface.

..today I was able to get triangular irregular mesh generator works..there is still small bug, during initialization so triangles at point from where everything is builted, somehow gets stuck to ground..ill fix that later..this is pictures of progress so far..its a bit slow (18-20fps) since no optimization of any kind is applied yet, however, it works. Next step is to update it in such way that it can be used not only for planar generation, but spherical, world like, so system can be used for planets creation/infinite terrains.I have glued map I used as a source for generation and it seems rather accurate for first attempt..you must love quads.. ..I hope you like it...

..this is very nice..it will be even nicer if goes a lil bit down to SM3..

..tested this with Bmax, few months back..it works..its not fast as they claim (or my code sucks), but its fast enough..far too overpriced..pretty everything can be done in naked Bmax..

..small companies who succeed, usually turn to be a big companies, and hardly remain 'small'..sure they are exceptions to the rule, but im pretty sure, its serious minority..

..oh..this is rather interesting..

..thanks YouGroove .. it will help to hear actually what people would like to have as tutorials, rather than me mocking around by guessing what would be good to have..

Now im going to show how actual things working. My descriptions will be supported by images taken from example im about to show, as well as whole media, source code and binary included, so you can try yourself. So, lets get started. After library is initialized, next step is to create both, search engine and navigation world, as you can see on pic bellow. After that, if you compile your proggy, it will not be much visible..and you should be able to see image like this. That looks nice, but we still cant see anything related to our pathfinding. So, just to warm up things a bit, lets create small functions called create_markers() and update_markers(), what will create and draw all available navigation nodes our search engine knows about. Details about each added function Ill not describe here as they are all included in source, so ill just say what they do. Now, our code at initial stage should look like this : Now, if we run our proggy again, we should be able to see all searchable nodes exist, as its shown on pic below. This is something B) . Now we see our all nodes we can search for best path. I want to notice that, this particular example is very nice example of very ugly setup for navigation mesh. Reason for that is unnecessary amount of search nodes as plenty of surfaces can be literally connected just with very few nodes actually, especially straight parts of level, without any obstacles. Basically this navigation grid has over 2000 nodes while whole thing can be done with very few (200-300 hundreds max). So, pay attention on way you create your navigation mesh. Now. lets do something more solid. Lets actually search some paths, shall we? In order to do that, Ill create few more functions, just to make things very easy to deal with. Additional functions are: pick_start() pick_end() distance() create_path_markers() delete_path_markers() Thats it. Functions are obviously, self explanatory, but ill still just make small note about their purpose. pick_start() is function what will set up our search start position. Its done by moving mouse over level and hitting LEFT MOUSE BUTTON. After that, you will be able to see green color marker used to show start location. pick_end() is function what will set up our search destination position. Its done by moving mouse over level and hitting RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON. After that, you will be able to see red color marker used to show destination location. distance() is function what will return distance between two Vec3 . Simple as it is. create_path_markers() function will create markers, but this time, markers assigned to our result path, so we can actually see how our path look like. delete_path_markers() function will delete existing path markers before new path is calculated so we can see updated path. So, after adding this, our code should look like this: So far so good...so lets just test it. Lets determine further distance on this level (diagonal distance). Left mouse click at one diagonal corner, and then right click on opposite one. After that, just hit enter and violaaaa..our path is in fron of our eyes and it should look like this: Niiiceee and fast.. Actual path search is done inside If-Then block i forgot to show, but its all inside source code so you can see yourself. Its very easy and simple. I hope you enjoyed this basics of AI. Next lesson is about steering basics. Stay tuned, and please, let me know if there is any particular area, you are actually interested to hear so i can make much better and useful lessons. Cya.. Download Linky and note: You have to copy your Shaders folder in order to compile and run exe. Its compiled against 2.3x, but it should work with any version. http://www.mediafire.com/?4nh4go346ecabmf EDIT: As i mentioned , current EXE provided, is compiled against 2.3x, and source code is from that version. Curtesy of Mac, here is updated version of source file, since one i have posted, clashing with newest versions of LE. Its not about AI library but Newton.DLL and way LE is initialized (doesnt work on new LE versions as it is on source i have provided). Here is linky for new source file, thanks to Mac . linky: http://www.mediafire.com/?o1nvgh6nao866vr

After initial release of Pathfind Library, I have decided to post few various lessons, covering most fundamental use of library, so people could have easier approach to a whole thing of AI. In order to do that I started this blog where im going to upload every lesson im about to do in future. I think its not good idea to clog Asset store tools area with tutorials. Let me know what you think.