Immediately after publishing the current 8.03 release, we have begun the
development of the next version. And in fact, we've been so busy doing that,
that I've hardly had the time to let you know about the important new features
that are planned for the upcoming release - some of them have even been
finished already!
Here is the list of the most important new features and changes:
Stay tuned - we're working hard to finish the remaining issues, preparing for the next release.
Here is the list of the most important new features and changes:
- CaWE:
- New (and much better!) Entity Inspector dialog that replaces and subsumes the old "Object Properties" and "Entity Report" dialogs. [100% complete]
- Introduced the "Command Pattern" (a very important internal enhancement). [100% complete]
- Rewrote and improved the importer for Half-Life 2 .vmf map files. [100% complete]
- Augmented the Ca3DE Sound System by introducing
OpenAL as the new and default
audio library, inclusive mp3 and Ogg
Vorbis playback support. (FMOD is kept as an alternative
and fall-back sound system.) We have also thoroughly revised the
underlying architecture, so that the Ca3D-Engine can now
auto-detect the best audio implementation on all supported
platforms. OpenAL guarantees the best 3D
audio output on all platforms, inclusive Windows Vista.
[80%
volume... er, complete]
- The GUI System scripts are now truly native Lua scripts, the previous
mix of Lua fragments and custom window definitions is finally gone. Even
better, the GUI scripts now support Lua coroutines, that is,
collaborative multi-threading, just like the map/entity
scripts. Moreover, the new type system and Lua-to-C++ binding code makes it
much easier for developers to make new window classes available to the
scripts, who have full control now over the creation, use and deletion of
all GUI windows. [100%
complete]
- The initial "Options" dialog of the Ca3D-Engine will be gone soon: It
will entirely be replaced by a native, in-game GUI that is implemented with
Ca3DE's own GUI system. [60%
complete]
- Improved support for importing models, support for models in Collada file format, and we provide a simple answer to the question "How do I get my model into the Ca3D-Engine?". [20% complete]
Stay tuned - we're working hard to finish the remaining issues, preparing for the next release.