Scott Richmond

Wait wait. You're talking about MegaTexture. That tech is the precursor to the iD Tech 6 technology. Wikipedia Quote: Check out this presentation: http://s09.idav.ucdavis.edu/talks/05-JP_id_Tech_5_Challenges.pdf

But won't then the linepick fail to grab whatever is behind the light? With your code Macklebee, it'll collide with and dismiss the entity, but it'll act as an invisible wall for objects behind it no?

Already doable no problems. Prey did that - Jumping between asteroids of medium sizes. The gravity was great fun to play around with. Garys Mod has a few levels with the space plug where you can fly ships around a fairly large level full of worlds. Not as nice as Prey, but definitely cool. You make some good points. But my main point, and I think one of the main attractors to iD's solution is this: By having this one mega-texture, iD have developed a real-time editor where artists can just go in and literially paint out the landscape. You can place down and merge in as many layers as you want because in the end it'll all become one big texture. I believe the editing tool is capable of working on the same 'world' in parallel with other artists as well. So oyu could have a team of peeps painting away in realtime in the same world. The advantage here is that it could cut production times by an astronomically huge amount. Of course, its a completely new concept and there have got to be some disadvantages. But the bigger we make our worlds, the production costs in time and resources continue to exponentially increase. I mean its getting to a point even now where most large worlds look noticably crappy because they simply cannot spend the time they would like on all aspects of the surface. And I think this'll first come to light when we see RAGE released. I think we'll all see the subtle but massive impact this mega-texture technology could have on a large landscape.

*shrugs* I was talking more about the texture itself, not the geometry. My guess is that geom/polys will be Carmacks next big project after this.

Well I think your comparing two different techs here Josh. Your terrain is just that, a plane of terrain. RAGE uses one giant texture for EVERYTHING. Buildings, roads, the lot. As far as I know you can technically make the size of the texture as large as you want. Your only constraint is space to store the thing.

I don't think its too far off. Carmack's Rage is about to pretty much remove any problems to do with textures. IMO the biggest hurdle is us, the humans. The bigger our worlds get the longer it takes to build them or the more watered down they become. I think the answer lies in perfecting procedural environments. You guys should check out the game Fuel - Its a truely HUGE world and its pulled off completely procedurally. Check out this article: http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=5134

Aye, I've been on LinkedIn for a few months now. Its pretty good, and I could see how it could be a great tool to progress your career. Only thing I don't like is that some people seem to think the aim is to rack up friends. You're only really meant to add people you've worked with seriously and you know you can count on to vouch for you. For that reason I won't be adding anyone here and won't expect anyone to add me. At least until I produce something worth-while and get to know anyone. Lumooja - LinkedIn is not really the same thing as a blog. I agree with you for the most part, but think of LinkedIn as a dynamic and professional resume/CV. Its a priceless tool once you've got some decent contacts and made a few impressions.

No. Thats 70% (or whatever the real value is) of the INTEGRATED market. Larrabee is targets at the actual graphics market. Intel wants that, wants it bad.

I realise that. But I don't doubt for a second that they'll stop. They can't stop, not if they want to catch AMD/Nvidia any time soon.

Fair enough. Well you'll have to excuse my skepticism - I very seriously doubt Intel is out of the game in terms of consumer space graphics. That notion just seems completely wrong in so many ways.

Well that's certainly interesting - The graphics market is simply huge and growing and I seriously doubt Intel are just going to let that be. Do you mind if you post the email here? I'd like to see exactly what was said.

Thats my point carlb. Josh, and that news poster at Bit-Tech make it sound like Larrabee is dead. It is simply delayed. No more.

Way to take the quote completely out of context Josh. The real quote is: "Larrabee silicon and software development are behind where we hoped to be at this point in the project. As a result, our first Larrabee product will not be launched as a standalone discrete graphics product." Please note the highlighted keyword.

That bit-tech story is deceiving. Larrabee isn't canceled at all - Intel have a working prototype and according to 'on paper' tests its damn good. But it just isn't as good as the AMD or Nvidia solutions yet, not to mention consumer drivers, etc. So they have decided not to release it. I think many really expected this - Intel are the biggest and best CPU makers in the world, but its going to take them a few goes to think about reaching for the GPU crown, and I think thats where they over-estimated themselves. We'll see Larrabee, don't you worry about that. Just expect a few fails first. Good to see Intel had the sense not to release their fail this time around.

To be honest I don't know. I'm not even sure that the code you pasted there does. I'm only just getting into LUA. Any explanations would be greatly appreciated.

There are a great number of ways to do it. Oblivion/Fallout3 uses a 'Cell' system similar to your concept Eternal Crisis, with the exception that it loads the 8 cells around you procedurally and you can therefore roam between the cells without a loading screen. The problem it had, and this is most evident in-game, is that if you get to a position to view several cells ahead (a distant mountain) then it can look quite bad as it is little more than a tiled texture and terrain.

Thanks for the replies guys. I do agree and I'm trying to improve it but I'm still having issues. The current script I have is: --Include the base script for all classes dofile("Scripts/base.lua") --This function builds the interface for the properties editor function InitDialog(grid) --Add the base interface for all classes base_InitDialog(grid) --Now we can add our own custom properties end --Spawn function for creating new instances function Spawn(model) entity=base_Spawn(model) SetKey(entity, "State", "IDLE") end --Update function, called during every UpdateWorld() function Update(world) currentState = GetKey(entity, "State", "NONE") -- Animation frames: Idle 0-69 Walk 70-130 Run 131-171 if currentState == "IDLE" then endframe = 69 startframe = 0 blend = 1.0 frame = (AppTime()/100.0) % (endframe-startframe) + startframe entity.model:Animate(frame,blend,0,1) end end function SetKey(model,key,value) return base_SetKey(model,key,value) end function GetKey(model,key,value) return base_GetKey(model,key,value) end Engine.log doesn't report any problems, yet the model doesn't animate which suggests Get/Setkey isn't working as expected. My guess is that I'm not doing those correctly. I'll admit I'm not sure I get the entity and model objects. I'm still confused as to why I have to define the Get/Setkey functions in the first place, aren't they already defined in base.lua? Or are those functions local only?

I guess it really comes down to the paradigm you want to build your game in. Its pretty obvious to me that game engines aren't a one-stop shop. You have to the pick the one that ticks the most boxes for you. For me, I picked LE because this is my first foray into C++ and game development, so having an easy to understand and modern OO engine is very important to me. Everything else is just a bonus.

Aye its fine now. I believe it couldn't find the scripts folder.

Will be interesting to see how LE and the other engines compare to iD Software's iD Tech 6 engine - It plans to abolish texture restrictions entirely. It looks amazing.

I'd check out a few photoshop tutorials if I were you. They are generally deceptively easy to make: http://www.photoshopessentials.com/photo-effects/starry-sky/ Thats just a random one I grabbed, just google 'photoshop stars tutorial'.

Thanks for your input Rick, but I worked it out a few minutes ago. The reason was that the Update function didn't seem to have access to the entity/model globals (if they are globals?). Either way I took a page out of the Windmill.lua book and its all working fine now. FYI - Simple script to do animation based on an entities 'State' key: --Include the base script for all classes dofile("Scripts/base.lua") --This function builds the interface for the properties editor function InitDialog(grid) --Add the base interface for all classes base_InitDialog(grid) --Now we can add our own custom properties end --Spawn function for creating new instances function Spawn(model) local entity=base_Spawn(model) entity.model:SetKey("State", "IDLE") --An update function for one instance. Declaring the function as part of the entity table allows us to use "self" for the table function entity:Update() currentState = entity.model:GetKey("State") -- Animation frames: Idle 0-69 Walk 70-130 Run 131-171 if currentState == "IDLE" then endframe = 69 startframe = 0 blend = 1.0 frame = (AppTime()/100.0) % (endframe-startframe) + startframe entity.model:Animate(frame,blend,0,1) end end end --Update function, called during every UpdateWorld() function Update(world) if world==world_main then local model,entity for model,entity in pairs(entitytable) do if model.world==world then entity:Update() end end end end

Still having some through setting and getting keys. Heres my simple code for an animated model: --Include the base script for all classes dofile("Scripts/base.lua") --This function builds the interface for the properties editor function InitDialog(grid) --Add the base interface for all classes base_InitDialog(grid) --Now we can add our own custom properties end --Spawn function for creating new instances function Spawn(model) local entity=base_Spawn(model) entity:SetKey("State", "IDLE") end --Update function, called during every UpdateWorld() function Update(world) currentState = entity:GetKey("State") frame = (AppTime()/100.0) % (endframe-startframe) + startframe if currentState == "IDLE" then endframe = 100 startframe = 1 frame = (AppTime()/100.0) % (endframe-startframe) + startframe entity.model:Animate(frame,blend,0,1) end end engine.log says: What am I doing wrong here?

Well to get the most out of it engines generally need to specifically have an option for it. Otherwise you SHOULD be able to just turn it on via the nVidia control panel. Though I hear you can have mixed results. FYI - Im not sure if this pertains to the nVidia 3D glasses or monitor.

Ah fantastic work TylerH! Thanks mate, I'll give it a crack tonight. (May as well start using this rep system. +1 rep for you )