New Releases

AVALANCHE v0.6 is now available here, and the accompanying SDK is available here. This may be the final version of AVALANCHE.

Additionally, a new version of mesh2rdm, v2.3, is available here. This version contains added support for Quake 1 and Half-Life BSP's, and COLLADA (.dae files). A generic preview mode has also been added, so every format supported by mesh2rdm can be previewed instead of just a select few.

Back on the note of AVALANCHE, here's a list of what's new in this version:

• Fixed a bug that caused decals from particle impacts to not appear.
• Some effects (pertaining to shells and faked specularity) were not clamping correctly on later GeForce cards. This has been corrected.
• Expanded game API's, and provided full game state save-load functionality. This functionality is only useful for modders.
• Various bug fixes and optimizations to the renderer backend.
• Fixed the music fade not actually fading in/out from silence under some audio configurations.
• Tweaked epsilon for linear depth shadows. This corrects a bug that was introduced in v0.5, which caused incorrect darkening of lit faces from character shadows.

Nothing too significant, this is mostly a bug-fix and behind-the-scenes release. The engine and game code are actually cross-compiling across numerous platforms now, but that doesn't mean much (or anything, really) for the end user.

This will be the last set of releases here for a while, most likely, as I'm now heading back in to work on my internal tools/iPhone tasks exclusively for the coming weeks/months.

Update: mesh2rdm has been updated from v2.2 to v2.3, to address a potential bug with previewing ASCII-based formats like SMD and OBJ.

Comments

30 comments in total.
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#30

livid

June 10, 2010 at 2:44 am (CST)
can you tell me detail about Image_UntileDXT()? i try a lot small texture , it work ok. but when imagewidth > 256, it failed.

i think just swap in some order?


#29

katcode

June 4, 2010 at 11:04 am (CST)
Hello, Rich i have to say i am impressed by your efforts.
The R-Cube engine especially seems very nice.
I have to ask, I wish to use the SDK in a Closed-source
Indie Game/Engine, utilising some of the code you made available. Would it be alright with you? Do you have any restrictions like "Non-commercial" or something? Thanks.


#28

ukurereh

March 28, 2010 at 1:17 pm (CST)
When you say "you'd still need a way to get the anims into Max," are you saying Max can't import Collada animations?


#27

Rich Whitehouse

March 28, 2010 at 8:01 am (CST)
It might take less overall thought/effort to do the Max plugin. But, like you mentioned, COLLADA export from mesh2rdm would probably be much more ideal, since everything in the world supports COLLADA import now. Of course, with a Max RDM importer, you could just import the RDM and then export it as COLLADA too, but that still requires a copy of Max for the person doing the conversion.

FCollada has been treating me pretty well, in using it for the import. I'd definitely use it for export, too, since it's already linked in.

The other problem would be maintaining the RDM importer. I already have to maintain my engine and mesh2rdm when I add new features to the format, I'd hate to add maintaining a Max importer to the list. Of course, the nature of the format dictates that new features don't need to be supported. But if I didn't stay on top of it, I'm sure the importer would start lagging way behind, and once it got too far behind I'd be too lazy to ever update it again.

Another interesting thought is GMO export, although it is in no way useful as an in-between format. I was just thinking that the format is well-understood enough to do that in a totally correct way, now. But it'd still be a lot of work, and...I don't know if I'd actually ever use it. Still, though, I like the idea of being able to mod Dissidia with totally new and original models and animations sets.

But unless you wanted to make all the anims from scratch, you'd still need a way to get the anims into Max, so you could weight a new model to the skeleton and check it with the anims, then just export the whole damn thing (anims+geometry+skeleton) to a COLLADA file and go COLLADA->RDM (internally, everything gets turned into "RDM" as the preferred in-between data structure)->GMO. So clearly GMO export is getting way ahead of the functionality that actually exists in the program. :)

I probably shouldn't have even mentioned that. People could be watching, and it's almost inviting them to prod me about it. Not that I actually want that. Don't prod me!


#26

ukurereh

March 28, 2010 at 12:42 am (CST)
Would it take more effort to implement full Collada export or write a RDM import plugin for Max? If both routes are as fun as eating an ass sandwich anyway, I figure the Collada export route makes slightly more sense since more 3D modeling programs (claim to) support that kind of thing. Plus you've got FCollada.

On the other hand, I have variously heard (mileage varies) that FCollada can be pain to compile/isn't maintained anymore/has some bugs, the Collada format itself can be a pain for certain features (something about tangents & binormals?). Though from the look of things, it seems to work well enough most of the time, judging from the relative lack of "fcollada/collada sucks" Google results out there. Not to mention import's already working fine, of course. If you decide to go ahead and implement Collada export as well, I'd like to hear how it goes.


#25

Rich Whitehouse

March 27, 2010 at 1:56 am (CST)
I just meant a forum where people play games in general. I don't really know any to recommend. Maybe like gamefaqs or something. I'm the worst person to ask. But AVALANCHE doesn't have any connection to any kind of master server, it's one of those oldschool "Hey what's your IP" arrangements.

Also, Pesmontis. It's probably rude to continue blatantly ignoring people, but I'm trying fairly hard to stick to my "I don't support mesh2rdm" policy. I continually fail at that, which prompts more mesh2rdm questions. Just like this probably will. But anyway, there's no way to do what you're asking as of the current version of mesh2rdm. I'll probably add COLLADA export support some day, which supports every data type under the sun, and would allow such things as vertex colors + vertex weights + skeletons + midgets (and donkeys) all in one file. I have no estimate for when that might happen, or guarantees that it actually ever will happen, though.

I would like to beef up the export support in general. It's not a hard thing to do, but it's just one of those things that's not very fun. I suppose if someone wrote a RDM import tool for Max that would also solve it, since RDM, like COLLADA, supports every data type in the world. But I don't expect anyone would ever want to do that. And if they did, I've never written any actual file specs, so I'd probably throw my monstrous parser code at them and go "well, go by this", and then they'd cry.


#24

nodomion

March 24, 2010 at 8:34 pm (CST)
well if any i'm hosting one under nodomion


#23

nodomion

March 24, 2010 at 8:15 pm (CST)
wait how do i get there to the forum atleast i cant find it



#22

nodomion

March 24, 2010 at 8:12 pm (CST)
ok thank you i'm kinda new and all



#21

Rich Whitehouse

March 24, 2010 at 8:01 pm (CST)
You'd probably be better off trying to round some players up on a forum where people actually play games. :) I don't think many people that actually play Avalanche frequent my web site (which I suppose is kind of ironic).


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