http://som.mancubus.net/ Ramblings, and behind-the-scenes crap. Mostly EE development related. Copyright 1908 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=7 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=7 2008-05-30 There has been a great deal of progress on Eternity in the last few months. Portals are running quite a bit faster now due to some rendering optimizations which came about from trying to debug some problems relating to Esselfortium's new EE map. Line to line linked portals are working better and I hope to have some other portal-related rendering issues taken care of soon. Clipping and aiming still needs new code, but I've been making such progress in the rendering aspect I didn't want to break stride. <br /><br />Essel's mapping has really made good use of features such as attached surfaces and linked portals, and it's been fantastic having his help in finding bugs. More than that, he is constantly pushing what they can do and this is helping the code to become more robust which is always a good thing. Linked portals render about 200% faster in some cases thanks to an optimization I made while playing around with an automap glitch uncovered by his map. <br /><br />Anyway, off to bed with me! http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=6 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=6 2008-03-23 Ok, so linked portals have hit a bit of a design snag. The current clipping code which handles objects standing half-way through portals is critically flawed and needs a complete rewrite. Also, the tracer system is apparently broken and also needs a bit of an overhaul. I'm very unhappy with these recent developments, as the problems stem from having to work within the doom clipping system which was originally designed for 2.5d clipping. The simplest solution would be to completely rewrite a new system from the ground up but this isn't an option for us because of our commitment to demo compatibility.<br /><br />So I guess the short of it is I'm going to have to rethink my current strategy for these systems. The design is going to have to change. I know this feature can be a complete and seamless one which will allow mappers to essentially paste to parts of a map on top of each other. Everything <b>will</b> function, it's just a matter of finding a design that will work within the current clipping system... *sigh* http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=5 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=5 2007-10-20 So the portal rendering bug has been fixed thank God! That was a major pain in the ass which required rewriting a fairly large chunk of code. <br /><br />I don't think many people know this but, Eternity's next release will have an entirely new renderer which I wrote called Cardboard. The renderer uses floating point math to do projection and most of the rendering which actually doesn't slow things down on modern processors. This also gives Cardboard a major edge on rendering precision. Floor and ceiling textures line up ALMOST perfectly which I've never really seen in a software renderer for a doom port before. Cardboard also fixes the long-line and extreme angle wobbles which have plagued the Doom renderer for ages. All of this plus it still looks and feels like Doom!<br /><br />I'm also working on a really awesome mapping feature (besides linked portals) which many of you on IRC will already know about. The rest of you, however, will have to wait to find out what it is. How long 'till the next release? I don't know. But expect it to push Mordeth E2's release date about 10 years back... D'oh! http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=4 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=4 2007-05-05 I recently discovered a design oversight that caused HOM in portals in very specific cases. Currently my programming effort is going toward fixing these problems and hopefully the portal rendering will run faster when I'm done. I love optimizing code.<br /><br />Also, I don't want to get people's hopes up but I've started a new single player map. So far it is promising and makes heavy use of linked portals to create massive 3D layouts. So far the map doesn't look like much because of how interconnected the various areas are going to be so I'm not posting screenshots for a while. I'll let everyone know when I have a WIP for it. http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=3 http://som.mancubus.net/?blogid=3 2007-03-12 I added a link to the Eternity Engine Wiki which your friend and mine Bloodshedder has graciously hosted on youfailit. Any technical documents and tutorials I write for Eternity will be posted there.<br /><br />In other news, work has begun on my next Eternity mapping project, which will take full advantage of linked portals and other EE features. I'll post more as things progress.<br /><br />Also, I thought people might like to see the todo list and the done list for Eternity's linked portals feature... so here it is:<br /><br />Done:<br />+ Tracer (bullet) passage through portals.<br />+ Player's aiming through portals, including autoaim.<br />+ Sound traveling through portals.<br />+ Alert noises recurses through portals.<br />+ Monsters follow the players relative position through portals.<br />+ Auto map overlays portal areas<br />+ Use works through line to line portals.<br />+ Primitive thing travel through portals.<br /><br />Todo:<br />- Finish thing travel through portals.<br />- Monster aiming through portals.<br />- Monster lookout through portals.<br />- Thoroughly test and bug fix everything.<br /><br />Unfortunately, these last items are the most difficult, so they will progress more slowly than the others.