I'm pleased to announce the new
7.07 (July 2007) release of
the Ca3D-Engine!
This release is mostly interesting for developers, as it contains both the
user demo as well as the
SDK, updating all
developer tools to the latest versions.
This is the first Ca3DE release that ships with everything combined in a single
package: The
download file
contains the latest binaries both for i386 Windows as well as for Linux,
and both the demo for users as well as the SDK files for developers. This
new single-package approach only adds little overhead for those who only
want to run Ca3DE on a single platform, but significantly reduces the
load for those who want to try Ca3DE on multiple platforms and also want
to have a look into the developers files.
Moreover, Ca3DE now adopts the version-numbering scheme from Ubuntu-Linux,
where the version number is based on the year and the month of the release:
This is version 7.07 of Ca3DE, indicating that it was released in July
2007.
Here is an overview of the enhancements since the previous February 2007
("7.02") demo release:
-
- The (DeathMatch example) game code has been greatly revised and
expanded, with the most significant enhancement being the introduction of
Map/Entity scripting support, based on the Lua programming language.
The scripting support code is not yet entirely finished; presenting a
finished and full-featured version is planned for the subsequent August
or September 2007 ("7.09") release, but programmers might already want
to have a look at the new files in Games/DeathMatch/Code/.
Implementing the scripting system also involved (and still involves)
many related enhancements and changes to the Ca3D-Engine core.
- The Ca3DE Virtual File System is now also employed not
only in the Ca3D-Engine itself, but also in all other programs: The map
compilers, CaWE, the material and model viewers, etc.
- Many smaller fixes and enhancements to CaWE, the Ca3DE World
Editor:
- The window size can now be reduced to 960x720 pixels without
corrupting the display of the VisGroups and status bar (important
for creating CaWE Flash tutorials).
- The texture for the "CaWE/Overlay" material (used for rendering
selected map primitives) is now properly loaded again.
- Terrain heightmaps are now loaded properly from image files
again (the last two issues were a result of the improper
introduction of the Ca3DE Virtual File System into CaWE, which has
been revised).
- The Material Browser now excludes materials whose
meta_editorImage property is set to "noEditor"
from being displayed (this is very useful to not clutter the
Material Browser with all the materials from sprites, models and
other non-mapping materials).
- A new PointLightSource entity type has been added that
allows to freely place dynamic point light sources.
- Support for many new model file formats has been added:
A native implementation adds support for .lwo
(LightWave Object) model files.
With the help of the mesh loaders from the great Irrlicht graphics
library, support for all these file formats has been added,
too:
3D Studio meshes (.3ds), B3D files (.b3d), Alias Wavefront Maya (.obj),
Cartography shop 4 (.csm), COLLADA (.xml, .dae), DeleD (.dmf), FSRad
oct (.oct), Irrlicht scenes (.irr), Microsoft DirectX (.x) (binary &
text), Milkshape (.ms3d), My3DTools 3 (.my3D), OGRE meshes (.mesh),
Pulsar LMTools (.lmts), Quake 3 levels (.bsp) and Quake 2 models
(.md2).
In general, this has been a great "maintenance" release, and I'm looking
forward on completing the Lua-based map/entity scripting support, presenting
you many exciting new features and enhancements soon!