We're happy and proud to
announce the latest release of the Ca3D-Engine: version 9.06 - June
2009 adds many new great features and enhancements to the
Ca3D-Engine.
New features in this release
The new version introduces a new
GUI Editor: A
convenient graphical editor for editing GUIs for use in Ca3DE. The resulting
GUIs can be used both in
2D (e.g. for the console,
player HUD or the
main menu) as well as
directly in the
3D worlds as game elements. See the
GUI Gallery
for some examples - updated today!
We're very proud that in our implementation we managed to beautifully combine
two normally totally opposed concepts: Our GUIs are
conveniently
edited in the new
graphical GUI Editor and
still customized in a very
powerful and flexible
manner by
easy to understand Lua scripts.
The GUI Editor is a component of the
Ca3DE World Editor
"CaWE", and it employs a new advanced user interface style that is
already familiar to many users from other contemporary applications. We even
have extended the same user interface technique to the well-known
Map Editor component
of CaWE as well.
Also finished is the new
Font Wizard that you can use to
convert regular font files for use in Ca3DE GUIs.
The conversion is fully automatic in just a few simple steps, and the
Font Wizard guides you through the process. The image to the
left shows the second to last and last steps of the wizard.
Under the hood, we employ the
FreeType Font Engine, and thus our
Font Wizard supports all font types that FreeType supports: Among others,
these are TrueType Fonts (*.ttf), OpenType Fonts (*.otf;*.ttf), PCF Fonts
(*.pcf), BDF Fonts (*.bdf), Windows Fonts (*.fnt), etc.
As shown in the image at the right, the new release, compared to the
previous 8.09 release:
- requires 27% less time for loading the huge TechDemo
level,
- requires 18% less RAM due to much enhanced collision
detection code,
- has improved in-game performance (mostly as a result of changed
collision detection code),
-
and at the same time adds(!!) support for the
Bullet Physics engine!
Note that the last point is a small miracle: Even though we reduced the overall
RAM consumption, the Ca3D-Engine now keeps another "parallel universe" for its
simulations in the form of a fully enabled Bullet Physics world!
The secret behind this wonderful new feature is a very clever sharing of
collision data between Ca3DE's own code (used e.g. for player movement) and the
new physics simulation. In fact, this sharing is the main contribution of the
new RC compared to the last about one month ago, which suffered from way too
high RAM and loading time requirements.
We're also happy and proud to announce the results of our first
successful adventure into
the world of movies!
Click the movie thumbnail in order to get to the movie website. The movie shows
some of the
new physics support described below. It is
available in three levels of playback quality and can be played directly in
your browser. We hope that you have as much fun watching the movie as we had
making it, so please don't hesitate to post your feed-back either at the
Ca3D-Engine forums or at the movies YouTube page!
Support for physics simulation has been added to the engine
core, using the
Bullet Physics library! The
current maps don't yet show many examples of it's use, 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!
What is the Ca3D-Engine? (A brief
introduction)
The Ca3D-Engine is an all-purpose, modern 3D graphics engine and game
development kit for Windows and Linux.
It can be used to create a variety of 3D applications, including games,
simulations, and training and architectural software.
The Ca3D-Engine includes a comfortable 3D world and assets editor and all tools
to make new games.
Its main features include
- high-quality, real-time 3D graphics,
- a very powerful and flexible material system,
- cross-platform and cross-compiler portability,
- multi-player network support,
- physically correct lighting (radiosity based),
- dynamic per-pixel lighting and shadows,
- 3D sound effects, skeleton based model rendering,
- very large terrain rendering,
- scripting language support,
- live demos come with 3D editor, tools and sample source code,
- and easy extensibility by code and Lua scripts.
For a more detailed feature list, please refer to
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/features
Further information and contact
For further and more detailed information about the Ca3D-Engine, please visit
the official website at
The website has a detailed feature list, many high-res screen-shots and of
course a download page where the latest demo and game development kit are
available.
If you have questions, problems or comments, you're heartily invited to join
the Ca3DE
forums.
You can also contact the authors of Ca3DE directly as detailed at the
Contact page.