Beta release 1.9.8b

Information and change log about the latest ZGameEditor release.

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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Here is an archetypical tree (4 sided) for further testing,. .

Code: Select all

ZZDC<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1" ?>
<Mesh Name="g_tree">
  <Producers>
    <MeshLoop Count="4" Position="0 0 6" Rotation="0 0 0.25">
      <OnIteration>
        <MeshLoop Scale="0.9 0.9 0.9" Count="5" RecursionCount="4" Position="0 0 3.5" Rotation="0 0.025 0">
          <OnIteration>
            <MeshBox Scale="1 1 2"/>
          </OnIteration>
        </MeshLoop>
      </OnIteration>
    </MeshLoop>
  </Producers>
</Mesh>

note; no code required just componenets and values,. . shows the power here, and the setup is still quite scriptable for more complex structures,. . jup, this is excellent stuff!
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diki
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Post by diki »

i'm overwhelmed by the mesh recursion feature, but also missing the preview camera control boxes (direct position input, 'reset camera' button etc.) ... are they gone for good, just in this particular release or only on my machine?

edit: my bad, i did not notice that they are only not present when previewing a mesh.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Another experiment, this time on exe-size. There is a new menu item in the "Project"-menu: "Remove unused code". If you check this item and then use "Build and compress Windows exe-file", zge will try to remove the code of the components that aren't used in the current project. So for instance, if your project does not use implicit surfaces or steering components, then they won't get added to your exe.

It works by modifying the exe-file and zeroing out the areas occupied by unused components. Then it is up to the compressor to compress away the areas of repeated zeros (or NOPs).

It can be helpful to get small projects below 64kb. I got around 10% savings on the small sample projects. But if we find it to be a stable feature then it can be more useful later on because we can add more components without exe growing too much on projects not using the new features.

Please try it out and report any problems.
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Tuned it some more. Minimum exe (empty project) with upx is now 27kb.

ParticleToy becomes 38kb, which is pretty cool because when I released that almost three years ago it was 47kb and we've added tons of features to ZGE since then!
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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

ah, that does sound cool,. I very much like the idea, and the tricky hacktastic way you went about it, sweet. Had a brainstorm did you? I will test it with some of my projects,. . and report back.
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Kjell
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Post by Kjell »

:!:

Speaking of the preview "camera" ( which isn't actually a camera ), could it be changed so that you control the actual camera / projection instead of transforming the object? While you obviously don't notice the difference in most circumstances, as soon as you're doing ProjectionMatrix specific shader tricks there is no way to Preview those.

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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Beta updated, see first post for details.
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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Wow, who would have thought that doubling the sample rate would so greatly increase the sound quality,. I have yet to try samples, but the synth engine sparkles now! With no noticable loss of speed in my curren project!!

Attached is a little ting I been working on,. it is a recursive melody generation algorithm. The four number 'seed' is just random,. and then the 64 note phrase is generated by recursively adding the seed to itself,. . I will post a better description later,. if anyone is interested.

This is just a test that plays endlessly..,
Attachments
f_tune_003.zip
music black box
(28.63 KiB) Downloaded 797 times
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Kjell
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Post by Kjell »

Hej Ville,

Noticed you're working on a "export mesh as 3DS" feature :wink: Not entirely sure what one would use that for .. being able to render procedurally generated meshes in other applications to create promotional material? Anyway, wouldn't it be better to look at a "modern" format instead of investing more time in 3DS-based features? Although I'm aware that "reversing" the functionality of the 3DS importer takes a fraction of switching formats ..

.. Softimage can't import 3DS either ( nor export ) :(

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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Yep, I know this wasn't a requested feature but I needed it for another project I'm working on which use 3ds-files. It's a project I'm involved with during my day-job as a IT-consultant. Building 3ds-export in ZGE allows me to import and modify a mesh using an expression and then export it again. And since there now also is a "export bitmap" I figured a "export mesh" would be a nice addition too :) . I agree we should support more mesh-formats but the 3ds-exporter just took 2-3 hours to write so it wasn't a heavy investment.
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Kjell
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Post by Kjell »

:)

Perfectly valid reason. Thanks for filling me / us in ~

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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Export bitmap is done, and export mesh too?, . nice ;) beta soonish?

Not that I really have any imediate need,. just could be usefull for some experiments, theoretically. any other new stuff coming?
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kattle87
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Post by kattle87 »

sorry for hijacking the thread, but yes! My degree is coming within hours :P
So I will take a look at what we need next to do! Suggestions are welcome...
I was also thinking about a greater project that involves us all, just to have something bigger to show to get more people into ZGE... Once the 1.98 is out of beta (Ati-Radeon debugged, I think) we will think about it.
In the fall of 1972 President Nixon announced that the rate of increase of inflation was decreasing. This was the first time a sitting president used the third derivative to advance his case for reelection.
-=Hugo Rossi=-
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VilleK
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Post by VilleK »

Beta is updated today, see first post for details.

I fixed a problem on my ATI-debugging computer. I found out that using my custom minimal system-units I got the ATI-crash, but if I instead used the slightly larger system-units from the previous ZGE-release it was working. So now I've reverted the units to the previous version so I can debug this in more detail later on. The only downside to this is that the binaries are 1-2kb larger.

The project I tried this on was "CleanseCube" which is now working on ATI again. Jph, can you please download the latest beta and make a new "in the shadows"-release so that we can see if the problem is solved?
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jph_wacheski
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Post by jph_wacheski »

Not sure what is happening now,. it works fine in the editor but when I build and run the walls and floor do not render? You want I should PM you with the .zgeproj file?
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