I'm proud to release the latest Ca3DE demo today, as well as an updated MDK!
Here is an overview about the most significant news:
- Added a multi-purpose particle engine. (Which is currently
very underutilized. I intend to much better utilize it in the next
releases.)
- Added 3D sound effects, including Doppler effects. They make the Ca3DE
worlds much more vivid!
- Made a lot of weapons work, and there are many new entities as well.
-
Slanny much enhanced the existing weapon models by
re-modelling and re-skinning the hands and arms.
-
Peter Kleiner created new state-of-the-art sky-domes
exclusively for Ca3DE.
- I replaced all old textures with new, high-quality textures from
WadFather.
- Players can climb ladders now!
- Wrote CaPVS (one of the compile tools) entirely new. It is
much faster now.
- Speech recognition with Microsoft Speech API 5.1 as a byproduct for the
USAF (disabled in the demo).
- Much enhanced the network code, and fixed some problems with it. It's
faster and more robust now. Also added support for signaling entity events.
- A really huge amount of other improvements. Please refer to
the change log for full details. And of course, also get the demo and see
for yourself.
All this adds up to really impressive enhancements.
I think the most important message today is that the DeathMatch MOD is
finally PLAYABLE! Okay, it's technically still quite
simple. But keep in mind that it is far from finished. And the point is that
for the first time, it
works. That means, you can invite your buddies
to a party now, and actually have some fraggin' fun with Ca3DE!
Unfortunately, this release took much longer (nearly half a year!) than I
expected. The delay was mostly caused by the extensive work that Peter, Slanny
and I had to put into the artwork. Therefore, I'm looking for people who are
interested in helping me with artwork. Please have a look at the
Artists Wanted site
for more information. This way, I could focus more on the programming
part in the future in order to speed things up again.
Oh, and here is a short outlook to what I've definitively planned for the next
release:
- Many many many improvements to the DeathMatch MOD.
- Music support.
- Linux support.
- Many more particle effects (like smoke, muzzle flashes, decals, beams,
blood, ...).
- Dynamic lights and shadows. This is the most important part.
My plans are to finally employ the latest lighting techniques in Ca3DE, with
the goal to have Ca3DE catch up with the most contemporary, cutting-edge 3D
engines. It soon has to compete with D3 and HL2, after all. I'll tell you more
about all the details later - stay tuned...