This is for the 'news' site.
I'd like to announce a new version of Crystal Space.
Crystal Space can be found at http://crystal.linuxgames.com and
is an Open Source 3D engine for Linux, Windows, OS/2, BeOS, Macintosh,
DOS, NextStep, FreeBSD, ... It uses Direct3D, OpenGL, Glide, or
software rendering.
This is a beta release with version number 0.13r012. We're developing
on CVS right now so frequency of beta releases has dropped a bit.
Here is what has changed since 0.13r011:
- Various makefile changes and improvements (mostly from Andrew Zabolotny).
- New document cvsguide.txt from Michael Dale Long.
- New document dir.txt from Thomas Hieber to explain the directory structure
fully.
- Various documents have been updated.
- New quick tutorial for MazeD from Thomas Hieber.
- Update to MazeD from Or Siu-Hang. Siu-Hang is making MazeD useful again.
You can now create portals and do other nice things (like read/write directly
from/to zip files).
- Denis Dmitriev added MetaDemo to CS. This is a nice program that
demonstrate how to use the 3D renderer without the 3D engine.
- Thomas Hieber added Crystal Shooter to CS. This is a prototype of
a game written with Crystal Space. It is unfinished but you can try
it out anyway. There is also a new library 'csgame' which is used
by Crystal Shooter.
- Macintosh port has been updated by Robert Bate: OpenGL improved, RAVE
graphics, update to Mac project files, various fixes, ...
- Update to BeOS port from David Huen. He updated the software and
OpenGL renderer drivers for BeOS and also added support for Glide.
- A few small fixes for DOS as suggested by Seth Galbraith.
- Small fix to OS/2 port from Andrew Zabolotny (speedup).
- Michael Dale Long updated the GGI makefile so that it compiles again
(but there are still a few problems).
- Fix from Serguei Narojnyi to the sockets networking driver.
- Massive changes from Gary Haussmann to the OpenGL driver. The 2D
functionality is much better (at least in Linux). There is no console
text and 2D sprites. Various fixes to the 3D renderer for transparency.
OpenGL is also MUCH faster (several factors) due to fixing a few
bugs in the handling of textures.
- It is not enabled by default yet but Andrew Zabolotny ported a lot of
assembler code to NASM. This is more portable and will allow us to remove
all compiler dependent assembly in the future. Compile with 'USE_NASM=yes'.
Note that you need a modified version of NASM which you can download
from the Crystal Space site ('nasm' directory in ftp).
- Update to 3D sound support from Nathaniel Saint Martin. Lots of
bug fixes and update for EAX from 1.2 to 2.0 sdk.
- Thomas Hieber enhanced the ds3d sound renderer to have support for
proper volume settings.
- Various bugs fixed (fog, lightmap size limit, case insensitive config
file reading, ...).
- MANY warnings have been removed. We have an almost clean compile now.
- Various extensions to console commands. Mostly for testing purposes
('addbot', 'addlight', 'addsprite', ...).
- New FastSqrt() function which is much faster than the normal
sqrt().
- Memory debugger works again.
- Better error checking when loading textures (for badly sized
textures). This is from Thomas Hieber.
- New mechanism from Thomas Hieber to interface collision detection
with the engine based on object hierarchy system from Ivan Avramovic.
- Thomas Hieber moved the logo to the right. Thomas also did various
other small changes (like loading of standard.zip, ...).
- Thomas did some efforts to keep the VC project files up-to-date. They
should work out-of-the-box now.
- World is deleted when quitting.
- New SetFlags/GetFlags methods for various classes.
- PolygonSet objects can support bounding boxes now (used for lighting
currently).
- New MoveTo method in csSprite3D from Denis Dmitriev and also a new []
operator for csVector3.
- Faster version of 'QInt()' macro for Intel (from Andrew Zabolotny).
- Added support for flat and gouraud shaded triangles (used in curves,
sprites, and normal polygons).
- Denis Dmitriev patched DrawPolygonQuick so that it doesn't need the
original triangle anymore. This makes DPQ usable for general polygons.
Now only the engine needs to be updated.
- Denis updated the DX5 renderer to support gouraud shading in
DrawPolygonQuick.
- Denis fixed some bugs in halo handling and also changed the
looks (but old way is still available in code. This is going to
be a config option).
- Improved lightmap calculator from Denis Dmitriev.
- Thomas Hieber did a large cleanup of the DrawPolygon/DrawPolygonQuick
mess. He also added DrawPolygonFX which is a more powerful version
of DrawPolygonQuick. In a next release we're going to merge
DrawPolygonQuick and DrawPolygonFX again.
- Thomas also implemented proper color keying for sprites and portals
in the D3D renderer and improved this renderer in other ways as
well.
- Thomas also cleaned up the 3D rasterizers with regards to texture
remapping.
- Thomas cleaned up the software renderer so that the scanline drawers
are more easy to maintain. Andrew Zabolotny cleaned up the selection
of the scanline drawers (this is what I call cooperation :-)
- Totally rewritten lighting system which is much faster, much
more extensible and also allows for optional shadow casting things
with dynamic lights (previously this was only the case for static
lights).
- Increased lightmap resolution of curves. This enhances quality
a lot.
- Fixed a severe memory overwrite bug in the lighting routines (dynamic
AND static).
- Initial work for dynamic sprite lighting. There are new functions
csSprite3D::UpdateLighting() and csWorld::GetNearbyLights() which
you can use for this.
- Andrew Zabolotny optimized the software fog routines a lot.
Greetings,
--
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Jorrit.Tyberghein@uz.kuleuven.ac.be, University Hospitals KU Leuven BELGIUM
"I'm vice-president of Throwing Out People Mr Dibbler Doesn't like the
Face of."
-- (Terry Pratchett, Moving Pictures)
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