Any news from BRL?

Jst wondering whats happening at BRL - anything interesting
going on?
- any new modules planned?
- whats being work on?
- is the 3D module still in development?

Any news is good news :]

thanks..

See the post about b3d tutorials. Not exactly a proper news update, but it gives a hint of what's going on....

Are you serious? :)

hahahahahahaaaa...

ahhhhh... ahahahahahahaaaaaahahaaaaaaa...

ohh... god... please stop...

--Mike

> ohh... god... please stop...

My thoughts exactly and on so many levels too. :)

We really should have a pool on when the next "When is BMax3D ready" thread appears, it could be called "The Thread Pool" boom boom.

In principle though it would be a good idea if BRL had some kinda news page or blog that they updated every so often instead of a) keeping people guessing (even though this is a valid business technique) or b) hoping people will find the little bits of communication hidden in threads here and there or Marks worklog which I don't even know where is...

The Thread Pool boom boom shake the room.

Well B3D is getting a NEW PRINTED MANUAL.

Maybe they will bring in DX10 support... ;)

Cool! I just saw a flying pig.

@Grey,

It would be a nightmare on these pages, if BRL announced they were going to spent Time each month writting a news letter, rather than on "Other Things"

I think its a good idea like, its just, well you can imagine

I'd still like to know what the 'many weird and wonderful modules' are...

I don't mean a whole newsletter I'm just talking the occasional line ot two of text which is in a single place that everyone can see...

that sounds like a reasonable request to me...

--Mike

> that sounds like a reasonable request to me...

Not really, cos when any information is given, more questions are asked. ALWAYS! People are never happy.

hey... ya don't need a reason to to get the ole rumor mill going around here... having no reason is just as good a reason to start the asking questions than having a reason...

--Mike

Maybe B3D will be fixed to ensure be as bugfree as possible(like the bug on Tablet PCs), then packaged as a finalized product polished enough, however don't expect a B3D 2.0 thing... thats really a flying pig...

hmmmmm bacon...

Yeah but the question askers can bog off. Having some central useful information that user's can't post comments against would be very useful and shut up a lot of people and keep non-question askers informed too...

> hmmmmm bacon...

puki? :)

You should be careful what you wish for.

I'll take that bet.

Max2D can be pretty weird.

yeh..thanks guys - a little respect wouldnt hurt.

- have i asked something unreasonable? something not
worth replying too? - i have payed my money and supported
BRL since the Amiga...all im asking for is a few minutes of
their time to answer some simple questions..

I dont expect BRL to answer every post on this subject,
but they seem to answer none of them.
No doubt they wont bother answering these questions
either..

Some of you seem to think these questions are stuped..
thats your opinion..but why do you feel you have to make
insulting posts?

I didnt ask when max3d was going to be released, but
i havent heard anything about it for so long..i wasnt sure
it was still in development..infact ive heard no news from
BRL...all im asking for is some damned news..

We all feel your frustration. I'm sure you know that the
reason this question isn't getting much respect is that it's
already been asked forty-dozen times with no response.

It's well known that BRL does not shed light on anything it
does. It must be company policy.

@Defoc,

Look right now at the general thread. There are two threads in the "last reasently posted", that are basicaly asking the same thing. Which is "Tell us whats happening"

You can garentee that by next friday, there will have been at least 2 more directly asking, and 6-8 more that started off as one thing, but end up as just asking.

No disrespect @ you

If there was time, a monthly news letter as Grey said, would be good. But you must see how any thread like this is simply going to be "Jumped"

@Defoc: I share your sentiment.

@Grey: and yours, a one or two liner each month wouldn't hurt, even with pessimistic release dates, that way when things are early everybody's happy...

Hey guys,

The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to adding some physics to Max3D.

We have a simple car zooming around, with doors that bang open/shut as it hoons around (saw that in some demo somewhere...). It's pretty cool - ODE is an extremely well engineered piece of software.

A big part of this is actually getting used to physics - eg: what sort of joint to use where (and how to get/set it based on a matrix), what the whole 'mass and the impulse matrix' thing means and so on. Lots more to learn in this area...

I want to put together a bunch of practical demos (eg: car, helicopter (with variable blade pitch), freaky mutant robot walker things etc) to make sure what I'm doing is actually useful and not just ticking the 'realtime physics' box.

Next up is optimizing the renderer - it doesn't do anything clever like renderstate sorting etc yet.

Still, it can handle 100 16 segment cylinders casting stencil shadows no problems - which probably doesn't sound all that impressive, but as always it's lots of 'instances' that slows down 3D even with ultra fast shaders. No doubt the drivers are chucking out lots of redundant renderstate changes here and a more realworld case would suffer badly.

D3D 10 is supposed to support a new kind of shader that pumps out triangles - this sounds pretty damned exciting and will reduce the per-instance issues greatly.

The shader system in there is probably a bit too clumsy for the final product, but man it rocks having *everything* lit 'per pixel'. I added a MonoBrush( red#,green#,blue# ) today (just does a monochrome diffuse color) and it just looks so much cleaner than old school per-vertex lighting.

Of course, it impacts on shadows as the silhouette gets much coarser, but in the test cases I was playinig with today (camera about 10 metres in the air watching a car drive around) you can get extremely nice results with 8 segment spheres.

Would love to play with this forever, but with a bit of luck will have something ready to release by the end of the year. It's like to be GL only to start with, with a D3D version coming soon after.

ah..thanks for that mark :]
- this is great news..

I CANNOT beleave that this tread actuly worked. Defoc8, I bow-down to you in suplication

Thanks for the Info Mark :)

Yeah,why did it(this thread) work?
was it the talk of bacon,bet it was! ;)

Sam

That's the most promising thread I have ever heard from mark! It's informative, well thought out, and doesnt give any ambitious promises.

Thanks mark, the info is well appreciated!

This is good news.. :)

It's nice to see Mark taking 30 minutes of his time, writing these things down...
I like getting news, no matter what kind of it it is.. :)

> It's nice to see Mark taking 30 minutes
> of his time, writing these things down...

30 minutes? He must type very slowly.

Don't you ever wonder why Max3D is taking so long? ;)

Please make them public in the process if you can, we haven't seen a Max3d tech-demo since that little 3d-ship model + hardware effects display...and that was ages ago. More-so since these involve physics, I love playing around with those kind of demos. :)

Thanks for the info Mark. How about posting your comment (and future ones) in a central easily viewable place? Maybe Simon could whip up some HTML to get the job done...

Thanks Mark for giving these informations.

Now get on coding... I still need a XMAS present... :o)

I don't wanna sit i one of these cars or helicopters if he's still learning how things work... ;O)

Hmmm i would like to see a new TRON movie with some Ragdoll and Physic games instead of just Lightcycle...wonder how this film would be rated! :O)

>Thanks for the info Mark. How about posting your comment (and future ones) in a central easily viewable place? Maybe Simon could whip up some HTML to get the job done...


I think it's better that mark posts here where only few of us see it, if he posted a blog or more openly some big game engine corp may find about all the cool stuff Mark is implementing feel treathened by BlitzMax3d engine and would either offer lots money to Mark to buy it or try to hire Mark to work for them.

It has happend already in this industry where small developer developing some cool techology was bought up by for example Epic, so they stop developing on that techology and join Epic, etc...

Better to keep quiet and release when its ready

Geometry Shader?

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6143883/p-5.html

I mean centreally on the forums somewhere, perhaps a sticky locked topic?

there already is such a thing Grey, just click on marksibly and then forum posts. :)

:)

I just wonder if we get to "test" those physics demo? ;)

So, Max3D is going to have built-in physics, then? Or will this be a separate mod?

and no news on b3d. *sigh*.

Yes there is. Your getting a new manual

muk: The very fact you had to explain that to me proves my point and about 95% of the posts are about bug fixes and not relevent to the state of things that people want to know...

I am happy to be proven wrong. Thanks, Mark. Every little
tidbit makes me happy to wait a bit longer.

thanks Mark, appreciate the information you give us.