Canardia

Although 2.32R5 is quite bug free, there are some inconsistencies in the C/C++ headers still. I got feedback from Masterxilo and Roland and they suggested the following fixes: Roland: All functions which use the str type as parameter, should use const_str. This avoids that the user needs additionally to specify (str) when calling those functions, and it is anyway the right thing to do, since the const keyword should be used always when a parameter is not changed by the function. Masterxilo: The APPLOG_xxx constants are totally wrong, and should be according to the bmx engine.i mod file. mathlib.cpp should have also scalar factor operators, so that one can say for example: Vec3(1,2,3)*5; FontHeight() is missing from LEO::Font Shader::Set(false); needs to be static Lumooja: The VIEWRANGE_xxx constants for the EntityViewRange() function need to be added. On european keyboards, the KEY_TILDE corresponds to the Ö key, so a KEY_SECTION constant needs to be added to access the key left of the KEY_1 key on european keyboards. Usertype.dat is missing some LEO keywords When Josh approves these fixes, I can update the headers, and then all other language headers can be updated too. Of interest for users who have already game projects going on, is that these fixes don't affect your existing game code at all. Even the str to const_str change does not need you to change anything, although you can remove the (str) now from all places where it was needed earlier, but it still works if it's there.

Texture baked AO gives the best results, and in addition HDR also gives a similar effect. You can keep ambient light pretty low, and it should change dynamically according to the daytime anyway, so that at midnight it's 0,0,0 and at highnoon it's around 0.1,0.1,0.11. In daytime, when you have bright surfaces, like white house walls, you can add a point light to the wall to give a nice light bounce effect to the surrounding. You can also color the vertices darker, like Dave did in this blog: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/blog/42/entry-309-the-zone-blog-07-milestones-and-vertex-colors/

screenwidth = GetSystemMetrics(0); // returns the windows desktop width (works also in fullscreen mode) // cool trick: get screen width BEFORE switching to fullscreen mode, to // get fullscreen at native (=maximum, or user preferred) LCD resolution! screenheight = GetSystemMetrics(1); // returns the windows desktop height windowwidth = GetWindowWidth(); // returns the LE window width windowheight = GetWindowHeight(); // returns the LE window height bufferwidth = GetBufferWidth(buf); // returns the LE drawing buffer width (useful when you don't want // to draw on the whole window (speed up, cinemascope, // 2 player split screen, etc... )) bufferheight = GetBufferHeight(buf); // returns the LE drawing buffer height

Shadows can be controlled by several factors: - a light's shadowmap resolution - the global shadow quality setting - the global shadowsoftness setting

I don't think PositionEntity will produce a picture of a cat: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/page/databases/docs?record=1

I think to play this game you need a 3 month professional training in military helicopters

I have many projects going on, some have been going on for years, some were finished in very short time. When I got all pieces together, then projects are finished in very short time, and when some essential piece is missing, it will keep the project open until... well, until the piece is found. I was inspired to write this blog, because today I saw many pieces come together. Not just one for one project, but multiple for multiple projects. Actually this wave started already yesterday, and today even more things came together. Some of the big projects are: Lucid: a 3D system, not exactly an OS, although it replaces many OS features. It has for example a insane fast file system, which is done on another core, so it doesn't affect the main program at all. And that file system is a database, what Microsoft planned for Windows since years, but never managed to do it. Lucid was on hold for many years, since OpenGL didn't work on all computers. Now it does, even on Intel GMA. The missing piece was to find the right 3D rendering engine, now it's clear that it's Ogre3D/BlendELF, and it might be just one after testing which one wins the low-end limbo. Mimic AI: a research into reverse AI (the name Mimic AI comes from the fact that it actually behaves more like real humans (it blatantly mimics them), rather than using some intertwined logic), which I found very funny, since it was quite accurate and indistinquishable. Now I found a real application for it: the Human language, which will essentially transform spoken english into C++, Lua, BlitzMax and whatever it "knows". The knowledge database is a simple text file, but it could be a SQLite3 database also, but that's not needed yet until the size of the database grows too big to be in-memory only. The missing piece was to find a real use for Mimic AI, and also a language which can be used for any game, tutorial, documentation, etc... So that there is no need to have multiple languages. Blitz3D 2.0: I wanted to have a low-end capable 3D engine, preferrably cross-platform. Ogre3D with Bullet and/or BlendELF seems to fulfill this job best. Yesterday I realized it will also fit the job as core rendering engine for Lucid. The decision for Bullet was not a simple one, and I did a lot of research into ODE, PhysX, Havok also, and Bullet came out as the winner. The missing piece here was to find a low-end engine which can also do shadows and physics. A real game in LE: I found a nice team, and LE 2.32R5 is finally a completely bug free engine (not sure about the programmatic terrain editing yet, but I will find it out tomorrow). I also found today finally - after having searched for 3 years - an artist to make the LCP alien model. I told him a price range of 50-200€ and he snapped immediately a deal. The missing piece was to find a team which was dedicated to finish a real game, and the secondary objective to find an artist to make the alien model. So now I have the missing pieces for 4 of my big projects. Now it's time to code

Well you can just have a generic language, which doesn't auto-format anything. I would try to keep as much of the functionality as possible under one system.

It is one possible answer, when the knowledge database has not been filled with possible solutions for that sentence yet. This actually brought me to a very useful feature, so that when you say "make me a FPS game", it would download a simple FPS game example. Then it would be not only a compiling language, but also a help and tutorial system. In future, the answer when someone asks something obvious is not simply "search the forum, search the wiki, search google", but it could be "tell it to human". I think this is not a new idea, since it reminds me of an Expert System, which never became very popular.

You could also auto-generate VS2008 and VS2010 project files, like the NeHe OpenGL tutorials have, although those are hard files, and not auto-generated. And if you wanna go even further on user experience, you could generate the whole example as an exe (rar self-extract autolaunch exe), so the user can just click on the exe, choose save or run and the example will run. Then you could also have the server generate a video of the example, but those could be of course generated when the example has changed only, so there's no need to generate them each time. Well the same goes for the exe too. Then you could have all keywords as links, so if one example mentions "CreateCube()" it would link to the CreateCube doc example page. Then you could have the doc system generate a .chm help file, which is automatically updated when any doc page changes. You could also have it generate a HTML version for the offline help file.

It's pretty cool, and feels more like a real program than a web page. You should include syntax highlighting, a screenshot field, and also a file field where one can put supplementary files for the example. And you should make it possible to add a new language.

It's scary how fast it evolves, almost as from itself: Human 1.0 - The final language for humans and computers. No parameters are given. > hello You say hello. > why You say why. > bye You say bye. I understand you, and say also bye! Human is terminated. Press any key to continue . . .

1) Language: Human. Why? Because it can precompile to C++ or BlitzMax (or any other language if people are interested to write configs for it). So only one source code needed. 2) Wiki. I don't want to download all kinds of PDF files, but have a quick look at them online first.

You know, one could easily develop a similar language like BlitzMax. I'm making a human language soon, since my Easy language is pretty much ready and done, which is made with C++ preprocessor defines only , so human will go a step further and have its own preprocessor, so it can support any kind of AI context constructs. It will of course support also loading of DLLs, so it could look like this: tutorial1.hum I want to use Leadwerks Engine. Draw a rotating cube on the screen.

That still makes no sense A BlitzMax app is a .exe on windows, and a .(nothing) on Linux and Mac. It's the same for dll's which are .dll on windows, .so on Linux and .DyLib on Mac. So exe or dll makes no difference, it needs to be compiled on the OS on which it should run anyway. Unless you mean with BlitzMax app a BlitzMax source code, then it will run on 4 platforms (wintel, mintel, mppc, lintel), while a C++ source code will run on 18 platforms

I was not talking about LE 2.32, but about a possible future LE version, which is coded in C++. And the trend is to use more and more dlls, since then you can make decent modular plugin systems. DLL means not the windows DLL, but dynamic link library, which has its different names on different OS.

BlitzMax runs only on 4 platforms, while C++ runs on all. That's a quite big difference of over 10 platforms. So you can make a DLL with C++, which can be used by BlitzMax on whatever platform BlitzMax happens to run, even the new BlitzMax2 can probably load a DLL, so LE would run on much more platforms with BlitzMax2 than with BlitzMax.

ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5870 is faster than 8800M GTX and slower than GTS 280M, so it's probably as fast as a 8800 GTS. It runs Crysis with decent FPS, so it will run LE just fine. http://www.notebookcheck.net/ATI-Mobility-Radeon-HD-5870.23073.0.html

They are doing the right thing. It makes no sense to make BlitzMax more bloated at this point of transition, since each 3rd party library it has will only need more and more people and resources to keep them up to date. What is really needed is that it works. So far it worked on Windows, Mac, Linux (only Intel Linux though), and with the new concept it will basically work on every toaster. That's a real step ahead in my opinion. C++ has been able to work on every toaster since it was released, and now BlitzMax is nicely catching up. It is fully understandable that when you make a RAD compiler which has all the 3rd party libs integrated, and on the more platforms it works, the less you can first have of the 3rd party libs supported. That's why they cut down the number of 3rd party libs to make it more cross-platform. In future, they will add more of the 3rd party libs, and within a short time it will even beat C++ in cross-platform abilities, because with C++ not every 3rd party lib works on all platforms, but with BlitzMax 2.0 they will. That's actually something I would like to see from LE too, the ability to adapt to new technologies. Voxel engines are the future, like John Carmack uses in his new idTech6 engine. It might need some time to rewrite LE to use only voxels, but if it takes too long time, then some other engine will take the lead. ATI has already quite impressive videos about real-time voxel raytracing, so it's not something which is not possible today. I've been saying since 1980 (when I saw the mountain flying game on C64) that voxel engines are better, but people still kept developing polygon engines.

Like I wrote earlier today, it will only make BlitzMax easier: http://leadwerks.com/werkspace/index.php?/topic/2160-back-where-i-was-9-months-ago/page__view__findpost__p__19608

Keep trying, it will eventually download all files. Funny that "eventually" means "in the end", I thought also that it means "randomly"

Yes, not everything revolves about money. There's many things in life you can't buy with money, like open source software. Amateurs are in no way worse than Professionals, both have even their own abilities where they are better than the other. In first place, I don't also use 3D game engines because of the money, but because of the love to the hobby. If I can make some money with games out of it, it's even better, but being able to realize your 3D dreams is the major factor for me. It's the same with languages, some people just love a certain language, and don't do it for the speed or money, but because they like it.

Then we need a C# spokesperson, who will be informed about all changes to the headers. I think it could be also multiple, since they have their shared SVN rep. But OK, whenever I get some information about changes to the C headers, I can inform Tyler and/or ZioRed. It will just go naturally that way.

Like I said, if it doesn't work in Editor, then it's not your fault.

It was back then when engine.cpp and leo.cpp was updated by different persons. Usually when multiple person work on something, things get out of sync Now it's organized cleaner, so that only one person updates them, and changes are discussed in the council of the wise (that's josh, roland, me, masterxilo, etc...).