The first release candidates for the upcoming new release of the
Ca3D-Engine are now available at
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/files/Ca3DE-9.04-RC2-win32.zip
Here is an overview of the changes and newly added features:
The older, but still current 8.09 release of Ca3DE is kept as the latest stable version in the Downloads section until we've resolved the few remaining problems (see below) with this new feature release. Map editors and testers should definitively grab this release for using the latest features!
Known issues and problems:
The current support for physics requires 2GB of RAM
when running the TechDemo map in
the Ca3D-Engine, and due to the huge number of triangles in that map, it
also degrades performance (frames per second) noticeably.
We're currently working to improve the situation so that even the TechDemo can successfully be run on computers with 1 GB of RAM at the same performance as the current 8.09 release of Ca3DE.
Additional notes about this release candidate:
Please let us know your comments, feed-back and questions!
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/files/Ca3DE-9.04-RC2-win32.zip
Here is an overview of the changes and newly added features:
- To the world editor CaWE, we've added a new GUI editor
(with live preview!) and a wizard for easily
making new fonts - see this
post for more details.
We've applied the concept of a new, advanced user interface (e.g. with toolbars and windows that can freely be dragged and docked) also to the Material Browser and the main component of CaWE, the map editor!
- Support for physics simulation has been added to the engine core, using
the Bullet Physics library.
The support is still experimental, but you can observe great
results by shooting or throwing grenades at the large crate in map
Kidney.
Related enhancements to the Ca3DE "ClipWorld" collision detection and ray tracing code yielded improvements with player movement as well, and make CaLight (for computing Radiosity solutions) up to 30 times faster!
- Replaced all external libraries whose source code, licenses or license
fees made it difficult to employ them in commercial projects with
alternatives or code developed in-house at CFS. All newly employed
alternative external libraries are
- of high quality (at least equivalent to their previously employed pendants, usually better),
- free for use in commercial projects (neither license fees nor GPL restrictions).
- Many other miscellaneous but significant improvements: Fixed bugs in the network protocol code, enhanced the Ca3DE APIs and their documentation, implemented many "under-the-hood" enhancements to the world editor CaWE (including better use of software design patterns), and many more.
The older, but still current 8.09 release of Ca3DE is kept as the latest stable version in the Downloads section until we've resolved the few remaining problems (see below) with this new feature release. Map editors and testers should definitively grab this release for using the latest features!
Known issues and problems:
The current support for physics requires 2GB of RAM
when running the TechDemo map in
the Ca3D-Engine, and due to the huge number of triangles in that map, it
also degrades performance (frames per second) noticeably.We're currently working to improve the situation so that even the TechDemo can successfully be run on computers with 1 GB of RAM at the same performance as the current 8.09 release of Ca3DE.
Additional notes about this release candidate:
- This is a Release Candidate, not the final demo.
The final demo will have additional bugs fixed and improvements.
- Minimum System Requirements: 2 GB main RAM (for the
TechDemo Map, 1 GB for the others), 256 MB video (GPU) RAM.
- There are a few known issues (CaWE menu "View | Load/Save user window layout" doesn't work properly; Linux version not yet available). To be fixed next week, along with the Linux release.
Please let us know your comments, feed-back and questions!