Latest updates
New developer references
2008/06/20 Representing Rotations In Quaternion Arithmetic
Some more bugs have been detected and fixed.
I've uploaded a new version of BMFont with a few minor bug fixes.
The long wait is over. A new version of AngelScript is available.
I've done a bit of clean-up and reorganization with this version, as a result some methods in the engine interface have been deprecated (remember that you can still use them, if you compile the library with AS_DEPRECATED defined) as they have been moved to more appropriate interfaces, i.e. asIScriptFunction and asIObjectType. The asIScriptEngine interface has become a monster over the time, and this restructuring will make the interfaces smaller and better organized, thus improve the useability of the library. In the next versions I plan on creating a new interface asIModule, which will hold the methods for accessing the script modules, e.g. enumerating functions and global variables.
Besides the restructuring the new version also includes the new asBEHAVE_REF_CAST behaviour, that allows applications to register how an object handle of one type can be cast to a handle of another type. This is intended for those application registered classes that have a relationship through inheritance. So now polymorphing for registered types is also available. In upcoming versions I'll improve this, by having a asBEHAVE_REF_CAST_IMPLICIT as well, which will tell AngelScript that the cast can be made implicitly by the compiler where appropriate.
I received an initial contribution for support for native calling conventions on 64bit platforms from niteice. I've been told that it is not fully working yet, but hopefully the community can help me test it and root out the final problems so that this support can finally be added to the library.
And finally but not least, I've fixed quite a few bugs in the latest version. So if you've been having problems, this version is definitely worth checking out.
New developer references
2008/06/07 Learn to Tango with D Excerpt: Chapter 2
2008/06/06 GPU Gems 2
2008/06/06 Deferred Rendering in Leadwerks Engine
2008/05/27 - AngelScript tutorials
I just encountered some tutorials on how to use AngelScript. I'll have to thank Steve Jones, the author of the tutorials and owner of GameEngineer.net.
AngelScript has been needing a decent set of tutorials for a long time. I should have written more myself, but I prefer working on the actual library, which still has a lot more that needs to be done.
Hopefully Steve's initiative will inspire more people to do the same, so the number of resources on AngelScript increases.
Thanks a lot, Steve!
2008/05/27 - Downtime
I'm sorry about the down time, every one. It's been a frustrating couple of weeks. I still don't know what caused the downtime, but my guess is that the servers where AngelCode is hosted have been a bit overloaded the last couple of weeks.
The last couple of days seems to have had no downtime, at least I can't see any evidence of it in the logs. Hopefully this means that everything is normalized.
New developer references
2008/05/22 Improved Alpha-Tested Magnification for Vector Textures and Special Effects
2008/05/22 AssistCG
I've uploaded a new version of the popular BMFont tool. This version brings various minor improvements, but the biggest improvements are:
The extended unicode support so that all characters in the Unicode 5.1 standard can now be accessed (given that the TrueType font file contains the glyphs).
The content of each texture channel can now be customized, so that the output can be better adapted to the format used in the application, e.g. glyph and outline in separate channels.
The file format have suffered some minor adjustments to accomodate the new features, so be sure to update your font loading routines.
I've updated the Bitmap Font demo to support the new file format, so you can download it for reference if you don't like reading the manual.
New developer references
2008/03/29 GPU Gems
I've uploaded a new version of AngelScript. The main improvements this time is the addition of Enums and Typedefs to the script language, and the asIObjectType and asIScriptFunction interfaces to the API. All of these were contributed by Chet Simpson.
I also added a couple of new methods to asIScriptGeneric, that will let the application obtain more information directly from the interface, such as the object type id, number of arguments, etc.
Another thing I improved is AngelScript's capability of recognizing calling conventions of registered functions, i.e. it can now differentiate between global functions, class methods, and generic functions, through template programming.
The last mentionable improvement to this version is the new documentation. I've converted the API reference documentation to Doxygen generated html, so it should now be much easier to find needed information. For future versions I intend to convert the entire manual to this new format.
New developer references
2008/03/20 Welzl's Minimum Sphere Algorithm Demystified
2008/03/07 Windows Sysinternals
2008/03/06 The Designer's Notebook: Damn All Gameplay Patents!
2008/03/04 Dave Perry's Game Industry Map
2008/02/29 Hey, That’s MY Game! Intellectual Property Protection for Video Games
2008/02/29 UnrealScript Language Reference
2008/02/28 Realistic Water Volumes in Real-Time
I've uploaded a new version of PUPP, my little image program. Now it has some basic image manipulation features, such as crop, flip, and rotate. The program is slowly growing into it's acronym: Pretty Useful Picture Program.
New developer references
2008/02/16 Integrating Realistic Soft Shadows into Your Game Engine
I've uploaded a new demo that shows how to write text with the bitmap fonts generated by BMFont.
The demo is rather simplistic, and I have plans to add more to it, especially colored text, and scaled fonts, but it's still a good reference for loading the font files.
I'm using the CFont class from the Tool Box, which supports loading BMFont both in text format and binary format. The CFont can also render text both with packed outline and without with automatic detection from the font file.
This is now the official tutorial for BMFont, so if you're having any doubts about rending text with BMFont generated fonts or loading the fonts I'll refer to this demo.
