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This is archive of older news items. For current ones, check out 'News' link
at top. Please note that some links might be broken due to web site redesign.
27th September, 2002
Small
update, but needed one. Here is a changelog
Bug fixes:
- Hakpak repack is now a lot less stressing for a system. HakUpdater now
takes around 20-30MB max in memory, instead of using all available memory
and making rest of system unusable.
- now tlk files will be listed/packed properly
Extras:
- command line options for running HakUpdater without gui
* -pack - packs separate files from local or remote filesystem to hakpak
* -appendlist - adds files specified on command line to paklist
* -listcache - outputs full list of local cache
- added German translation by Team Versuchunung der Macht, http://www.versuchungdermacht.de
Especially first bugfix is important here - previously, with large hakpaks,
system was really reduced to crawl because of memory usage. Repacking big
hakpaks still take a lot of time but system is a lot more resposive in the
meantime.
On my, not too fast system, repacking 400MB hakpak takes 800s - this is around
14 minutes. A lot of time. I have compressed cache, with uncompress one it
should be a lot faster. Everything seems to be I/O bound - after all, we
are talking about around 600MB of data moved here (read+write), taken from
convoluted direcories inside cache system. I'll work on improving this time,
but there are certain limits which cannot be beaten - after all copying 400MB
of data in 10000 files HAS to take some time.
With help of Maximus, I have managed to set up Library URL system on nwvault. Correct URL is http://vnfiles.ign.com/nwn/hakpackupdate/cache/
and if you put it into your pakinfo.txt in line LibraryURL, all file downloads
will be first tried on nwvault, falling back to your server only for files
which are not there.
Currently, I have put Arcanius25in1, Arcanius18in1, Iceman12in1CreaturePack,
BodanglyDesdesc and Velmars Dungeon there. I'll slowly update it with more
and more files over the time and I'll also find a way for you to determine
which files you can delete from your website, to save space. If you would
like to have some of your files available in Library, just send me url to
your pakinfo, I'll download needed files and send them over to nwvault.
In day or two, there should be an announcement on nwvault about yet another HakUpdater functionality...
20th September, 2002
I have finally written small help on enabling compression for HakUpdater repositiories.
If you already know how to work with HakUpdater, please consult advanced section on compression
for details.
18th September, 2002
One person has contacted me by email, but I'm not able to send an answer
back - return email seems to be broken. I'll post an answer for you here,
Millan
"Can you tell me how it transfers the files from the server? Is it
using standard HTTP ports, or FTP ports? Or is there something special
you have to configure?"
HakUpdater can use http or ftp protocol, on any port. If you web browser
can read it, HakUpdater also can.
There is no need to run any special program on server - just prepare files
with HakUpdater and upload them there.
One important note - please set transfer to binary when transferring files
to server, even for .txt files. In other case, md5 checksums will give problems.
16th September, 2002
HakUpdater 0.9.5 is available in download
section. Changelog:
Bug fixes:
- corrected bug in 'absorb hakpak' action, where hakpaks without pakinfo.txt
were only partially absorbed
- tried to correct windows web server local connection problem, when too fast
updates were stuffing the server: added minimum time between downloads (2
seconds at the moment) and decreased amount of download threads to 3 (from
4)
- file extensions are now compared without looking at case of letters (corrects
a bug where 2DA files where not recognized during listing generation)
- workaround for some broken hakpaks which contain spaces at end of filenames
Extras:
- added preview for 2da, ini, nss, set, tga, txi, txt, wok files
- possibility to download single files from hakpak
- when downloading update file list, progress shown if possible
- pakinfo.txt is now always loaded from InfoURL (thus allowing shared UpdateURLs
for many servers)
- abort button now works in more places
- ability to generate md5 listing directly from hakpak
- prepared HakUpdater for localization; I'll add localized versions if I'll
find a translator for given language
- added Polish translation by me
13th September, 2002
Next version of HakUpdater is due in few days. One of new functionalities
is localization - HakUpdater can now display all GUI in other languages.
If you know non-english language and you feel like helping, there is a chance
of getting some fame :) Translation involves two jobs - translating strings
file and optionally translating help pages. As for the help pages, they
are not finished yet, after that, somebody will have to help me with translation
from Revinor-Inglish to real English and only after that there is a point
in localizing them. But for main program it can be done at the moment.
Of course, with each new version there would be few extra strings to translate
- but I really don't think it will be more than 10-20 sentences every few
weeks. Hard part is to start with that.
If you are interested, please contact me at abies@pg.gda.pl - I'll send you special
development version of HakUpdater which allows to test translations.
I already have person who expressed interest about Italian translation, I
myself can handle Polish one, so I think that I'm really looking for German
and French translations.
One important note - entire HakUpdater is public domain. You will be credited
for you your translation of course, but if you do not agree to put your work
into public domain, I do not agree to accept it. Sad, but I would like to
avoid any misunderstanding later.
2nd September, 2002
I hav released new version of HakUpdater. Only few changes, only reasons for
putting it out there is because old version was not working with NWN 1.23
- name of main program has changed. Changelog:
- HakUpdater now works with NWN 1.23
- check if filename contains spaces or is longer than 16 characters when generating
paklist
- added action which tells which files should be send to server to update
hakpak directory
You can get version 0.9.4 from download
section.
31st August, 2002
IMPORTANT : If you have updated NWN to version 1.23, HakUpdater will
not longer allow you to run NWN directly. This is because Bioware has renamed
nwnmain.exe to nwmain.exe. I'll fix it in HakUpdater 0.9.4, for now, please
just copy nwmain.exe to nwnmain.exe (do not rename, copy it) and it will
work. I hope to make a release during next days, but until then, I think
that this workaround is acceptable.
I would like to thank Dyliak for pointing me to this problem.
28th August, 2002
Version 0.9.3 of Hak Updater is available for download.
Changelog:
- added support for media files (portraits, music, videos) - packing, updating,
selective blocking
- when absorbing hakpak with pakinfo.txt, ask user if he wants to add this
server
- there is an option to automatically conver mp3->bmu in media dir
- right-click popup menu for server list
- remove server action
- separate Info/Update URLs are now working (useful when you are switching
hakpaks on same server)
I'll write full tutorial on media file later. If you want to experiment now,
create media subdirectory in directory you have your unpacked hakpak. You
can put tga (portraits), mp3/bmu (music) and bik (movies) files there. Everything
will be handled for you from this point on.
I'm thinking about adding page with links to HakUpdater enabled servers. Of
course, I would put servers there only when owner asks me (no gathering of
data from HakUpdater behind the scenes). In addition to being able to browse
it on web, I would also add an interface to HakUpdater, so it could be checked
out from there and you could connect to given server with simple click.
Unfortunately, so far, people using HakUpdater seem to be local-group oriented.
If you want to use HakUpdater for public, everyone-welcome server and think
that extra publicity is not bad, please contact me - if I'll get few requests,
I'll put this page up and add needed functionality to HakUpdater.
27th August, 2002
In current development version of HakUpdater I have added support for media
files (movies, portraits and music). They are downloaded together with other
files for given server hakpak and put into correct directories inside NWN
installation. User has an option to block any of these three types of media,
to avoid heavy downloads (AFAIK, all these files are noncritical - game will
not crash if you do not have movie used on given server, but you might want
to skip 20MB or 40MB download). For server admin it is very easy - just create
media/ directory when creating hakpak and put your custom media there. All
preparation actions in HakUpdater take care about this dir. For user, it
is no-brainer - in fact he can do exactly the same as he used to (with possibility
of turning some media off in Config menu).
I have also added option for adding server to active list when you put contents
of hakpak into cache - this should make things easier for people who prefer
to get first hakpak download in standard way.
I'll probably release new version tomorrow. I'm also trying to create some
better documentation - for me it is really the hardest part of project...
26th August, 2002, later same day
If anybody came here looking for mdl2ascii, I would like to point you tohttp://www.torlack.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=6&page=1.
This is another ascii->binary decompiler (also other way as a plus), generally
more robust than mdl2ascii. I would suggest trying it out - I think you will
be more happy with it than with mdl2ascii. This also means that I'll not work
further on mdl2ascii, as better successor has appeared - I can focus on HakUpdater
and possibly back at java3d loader later.
Of course, c-tools will remain available, together with source, if anybody
likes to use them.
26th August, 2002
New day, new beta. You can download 0.9.2 from download
section, or directly from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nwn-j3d/hakupdate-0.9.2.jar.
Changelog follows:
- workaround of broken hakpak description length (should fix StringIndexOutOfBounds
-1 exception)
- do not crash when override directory contains another directory ('permission
denied while backup' bug)
- workaround for text files which have newlines converted on upload (still
emit warning, as it is a hacky workaround - solution is to upload all files
in binary mode)
- ignore directories and unknow types of files when preparing paklist
- added action for compressing hakdir (to be used with compressed repositories)
- cache compression status is now preserved properly
I would like to thank Mecha Dude, as he has reported most of above bugs and
worked with me on fixing them.
25th August, 2002
First public beta release of HakUpdater (0.9.1) is now available.
Basic idea behind this tool is to make sure that player wanting to play on
given server always has the latest version of hakpak needed. If his version
is outdated, HakUpdater will download differences between old and new hakpak
and update it for user. This means that if you have added one skin to your
100MB n-in-1 tileset hakpak, every user will only have to download this single
skin, instead of redownloading all 100MB.
As an added benefit, all files are shared in system. This means, that if you
have downloaded given resource for any other hakpak, you will not have to
download it once again if other hakpak uses it. This trick works by comparing
filename and MD5 checksum, which uniquely identifies content of file (if even
one byte is modified, checksum will be different).
HakUpdater also contains tools for server admins to help them with preparation
of updatable hakpaks. There is also an option to unpack hakpak and to pack
any directory to hakpak (so modifying contents of hakpak is just done by moving
files in Explorer).
For news concerning HakUpdater, please check out http://nwn-j3d.sf.net. There is a link
to 'Project' page,
which contains forum and bug/feature request tracker. Download url is http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=51061.
You can check out online help for HakUpdater at http://nwn-j3d.sourceforge.net/hakupdate/help.html.
To run HakUpdater, you will need Java Runtime Environment, version 1.4 or
later. This is one time download, around 8MB - there is a chance you already
have it, as it is used for displaying some java applets on web pages. If not,
it can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com/getjava/download.html.
You will get this bandwidth back on first hakpak update :)
If you will spot any bug or have any idea for improvement in functionality
or user interface, please submit info at project page or contact me at abies@pg.gda.pl.
It seems that sf is down for a moment. Until it is fixed, you can download
file directly from http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nwn-j3d/hakupdate-0.9.1.jar.
22nd August, 2002
Hak Updater supports now patching dialog.tlk and adding files to override
folder, transparently to end user (except fact that he has to wait extra umpteen
seconds after hitting 'connect to server'). For details, please check outadvanced section of help.
18th August, 2002
I have added LibraryURL property to hak updater. This allows to use some
big provider of content (web site with fat connection to internet) to serve
all contents, with metadata hosted on your own server. Basic difference here
is that such library can be shared between various projects - it can contain
many versions of same file (in same way as local cache on disk). This way,
there is no need to duplicate content on such site - just one copy of each
version of file. Files are compressed, to preserve space and bandwidth, but
this is transparent to user.
16th August, 2002
Small update. Hakpak updater is in closed beta stage now. Why closed beta
? Because it is very critical part of software, which is going to used by
people which are not a hardcore hackers (in contrary to mdl2ascii for example).
A lot of this people will probably download first version and do not care
about updates. So first version has to be rock solid, no way of beta buggy
one leaking outside and staying on somebodys disk for ages.
Of course, after beta stage there are no guarantees that software will be
bugless. But I hope that it will at least be working in acceptable manner.
Later updates will focus more on ease of use and extra functionality - core
should be already very solid.
I have added few things, basing on input from people. I have added ability
to have compressed cache - it will take less space on disk, with cost of having
hak regenerating taking up more time (we are talking about seconds here and
download speed is not affected). There is also an option to leave only one
hakpak in nwn hak directory, one needed for current game. Rest are deleted
(they can be regenerated easily), which should save a LOT of place on disk.
And most important, there is an option to connect directly to given server,
without going through server choice screens in client - so you can just update
your hakpak and press 'Connect as player' or 'Connect as DM'.
Help system is a bit updated - you can look below for a link. I'm still working
on it.
I plan to add compressed downloads soon. Override directory support should
follow soon, but after first public release. Some people have suggested patching
exe (camera fix etc)... I'm not sure about this. This is of course not a problem
from technology point of view, but this would allow malicious server owners
to install trojans in nwn exe. To avoid this, I would have to give the blessing
to very specific updates, not allowing other ones. This is not a job I want
to do - there is really no way in which I can test number of magical exe
patches if they are really ok. This also goes into a grey area I do not want
to cross - Bioware people are not making any problems with us disassembling
all types of files and modifying content, but playing with their exe is a
bit too much for me.
I think that instead of modyfing exe by hand yourself, it is better to lobby
Bioware to add such functionality in some patch. For example camera stuff
- I suppose it should be possible to ask them to include these settings in
nwn ini files.
So, for now, I'm not going to support modified exe. I'll first do everything
else - override support, dialog.tlk modification, some smart merge utilities,
portrait/music support etc and only after that consider this functionality
- if there will be really good arguments for it.
14th August, 2002
Hak updater is working. I'm now finishing alpha tests over the net and it
seems that it works in both local and remote mode. I'll contact few trusted
people and ask them to perform beta tests and after that I'll release first
version to public (of course full source is available).
I'm starting to write help - unfortunately tool is not intuitive enough to
use it without one (I plan to add more obvious controls later, when I'll
gather some feedback). You can check it out at http://nwn-j3d.sourceforge.net/hakupdate/help.html
- I suppose that it will take me a day or two to write something reasonable.
Stay tuned - I think this tool is really useful for all hakpak enabled servers...
9th August, 2002
Real life comes into way unfortunately. I was able to make some progress,
but soon most of it turned out to be not needed, as concept of way program
will work changed a bit. Instead download hakpaks contents to directories
and repacking them, all stuff will be downloaded to one big cache. They will
be identified by name/type/md5, which should be more than enough (in fact
I suppose that md5 alone would be enough...). Later, when writing updated
hakpak, files will be taken from cache. It has a basic benefit - you will
have to download given file to your computer only once, regardless of how
many different hakpaks use it. You could also probably download some common
files from fast sites, import them into cache (without any hakpak, just files
alone) and later if any hakpak uses them, they will aready be there. Of course
such cache will grow with time and some files will not longer be used. Maybe
not in first release, but certainly soon after it, I'll add an option to remove
unneeded files from cache.
2nd August, 2002
I have started working on hak utility. It is meant to be a tool which is
run before playing NWN - it will check all hakpaks if they are lastest versions.
If not, they will be updated - but only changed portions will be downloaded
(it should help a LOT with small changes to hakpaks containing tilesets).
Server hakpak will be just directory available at web server, from which
each file can be downloaded separately. Updating content of hakpak is as
simple as replacing file there.
Client side should be really easy to use - just enter web url for the first
time you want to download hakpak and from this point on, everything is automatical.
For server side, it will be only a bit more complicated, to allow overriding
web files with local ones (for testing). No need to use Bioware hak util
ever and to add/remove files in funny dialog - everything can be done by
normal OS tools (just move files to directory).
Later, it will be possible to add override dir and dialog.tlk support - to
patch them automatically for currently selected hakpak, but this is future.
For now, I want to have robust solution for incremental upgrade of hakpaks.
Code is in package net.sf.nwn.hak. Yes, this means that to use this tool,
you will have to download java runtime. It is 8.5MB. One time. Will pay off
after one hakpak update. Application, on the other hand, should be very small
- maybe 100kb. After getting first version working, I'll use webstart, so
it will update automatically itself.
Current state of code:
I have code for packing and unpacking hakpaks. Basic skeleton for directory/http
handling is done. MD5 computation is done. File digest is done. I'll play
with update comparison logic a bit and start to work hard on UI.
28th July, 2002
Release 0.6 of c-tools is available. Only changes are done to mdl2ascii,
but they are quite extensive. Currently, almost all of emitter node is dumped
correctly - with exception of renderorder and one animation key (which does
not seem to be important in any existing model).
I would like to thank Jeff Jones, Arron Hocking and Tim Smith for help with
this tool. Without them, a lot of this things could not be done.
You can download c-tools, as always, in download
section.
Changelog:
mdl2ascii:
- emitter: blastRadius,blastLength, twosidedtex, loop, p2p_bezier2, p2p_bezier3,
threshold, lightningDelay, lightningRadius, lightningScale, combinetime (thanks
to Jeff Jones)
- emitter:p2p_type is now output correctly (thanks to Jeff Jones)
- animations: almost all animations for emitters supported (thanks to Jeff
Jones)
- tri/dannglymesh: render (fixes bug with shiny damage tokens in placeables)
- 8th parameter for faces is now present
- vertices are optimized (duplicate ones are removed) to allow smoothing
- not yet implemented for skin node (thanks to Arron Hocking)
- danglymesh:danglymesh,period,tightness,displacement added
- light:affectDynamic,lightpriority (thanks to Tim Smith)
- corrected way of determining aabb nodes count (thanks to Tim Smith)
I plan to refactor mdl2ascii code quite a lot, now when I see the whole picture.
Tim Smith suggested correct way of handling node types. This change would
not be visible for end users, but could help for people wanting to embed/reuse
some code.
There is a big problem with smoothing groups. Thanks to Arron Hocking, models
are now smoothened - but a bit too much, as all faces belong to same smoothing
group. Unfortunately, it seems that smoothing group data is lost when converting
to binary, being embedded directly into normals. I don't know if it will
be possible to get it back.
15th July, 2002, later same day
Ok, release 0.5 is available. Here goes the changelog.
mdl2ascii:
- emitters: deadspace, grav,drag and a lot of bitfields (thanks to Jeff Jones)
- emitters: temporary workaround for gravity p2p_type (gravity when grav or
drag != 0)
- anim data support for emitter:birthrate, light:color, light:radius, tri/danglymesh:alpha
- support for skin node
- anim-only nodes have now dummy type instead of '???'
- alpha value for tri/danglymesh
utxdump:
- removed from distribution, use Loxgen ITPTools available at
http://www.dladventures.com/pafiledb/pafiledb.php
talkdump:
- removed from distributon, use one of dialog.tlk editors
I would like to thank Jeff Jones for his help - it would take a lot more time,
if ever at all, for me to determine all these emitter fields he has spotted.
15th July, 2002
I just want to make a small update to current stage of development. For the
moment, I've stopped working on java3d viewer - I'll get back into it when
I'll be finished with mdl2ascii. As far as mdl2ascii is concerned, a lot of
progress has been done - a lot of it thanks to Jeff Jones, who spotted a
lot of properties for emitters. I'm now working on skin node - thing which
can be seens in dragon models, it is used for wings. Basically, it is trimesh
node, which has extra per-vertex weights entry, with up to 4 bone/weight pairs.
It can be used to deform skin node without any breaks (thing to which most
of people are used from other games). If you want to experiment with it in
ascii models, create trimesh node and then after tverts add
weights number_of_vertices
bone1 weight1 bone2 weight2 ... bone4 weight4
....
bone1 weight1 bone2 weight2 ... bone4 weight4
You have to enter exactly number_of_vertices entries. You can use only one
bone per vertex - give it weight 1.0 then. boneN is name of part it should
follow - normal text name. For example it can be
weights 107
Dragon_RmainwingA 1.000000
Dragon_RmainwingA 0.500000 Dragon_RmainwingB 0.500000
...
Currently, I cannot find where weights for bones are kept in binary file.
It is main thing which keeps me from making 0.5 release. Hopefully I'll nail
it soon, and I'll put compiled version for download. Until then, I commit
current work in cvs, you can download source and compile it yourself from
http://cvs.sourceforge.net/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi/*checkout*/nwn-j3d/nwn/c-src/mdl2ascii.cpp?rev=HEAD&content-type=text/plain
[UPDATE] - I have already grokked skin node, it should work now. I'll make
a release soon.
9th June 2002
I've released new version of java NWN viewer. There are probably not enough
changes for release, but I'll have next weeks very busy, so I've just dropped
current state of cvs in form of release. I hope everything works, but this
is not as tested as previous ones. Changelog:
- implemented inherit_* for particles (pixie model now almost works)
- support for alpha
- support for walkmesh (aabb node) - parse and optional display
- models are now lighted properly
- particle update 'single' is now working correctly
4th June 2002
I have created new release of c-tools. They are small executables (non-java)
for playing with bioware toolkit files. You can get them in download section.
Changes from previous version:
nwnunbif:
- corrected extensions for most file types
mdl2ascii:
- emitter specific fields are now dumped (not all, about 70%)
- works with larger files - c_demon can be converted now
- wildcards are supported on command line
- newlines are now in OS native format (so you can edit it with notepad)
utxdump:
- wildcards are supported on command line
To reassume, c-tools, as for version 0.4, contain:
nwnunbif: unpacks contents of bif files
nwnunmod: unpacks .mod files (yes, they are just few other files packed
together)
talkdump: dumps dialog.tlk file in readable format
utxdump: dumps ut*,it* etc files in readable format (most binary files in
bifs are in this format)
mdl2ascii: converts binary model file to ascii format
For unpacking bifs, checking out utx files together with translating entries
to dialog.tlk, there is a better tool - check out http://www.neverwinterhaven.com/
for tool called BifUnpacker. Currently only mdl2ascii and nwnunmod are
tools in my package which BifUnpacker is not able to replace - but it seems
to be developed quite fast, so it probably won't take long...
20th May 2002
Tookit contains all data inside bif files. I've created small java tool
for that, but I think that C one will be more helpful for now. You can get
it from download section - zip contains both source and windows compiled binary.
17th May 2002
Ok, I have done a release. NWN Beta
toolset is already available for download. A lot of work to be done,
I want to have current version of code packed and ready for use for all people
and in meantime play with beta. For download, use link at top of page, changelog
follows:
- added orientation arrows and labels(optional) to skeleton
- corrected skeleton bones display (used to trim leaf ones)
- support for cloning all data (java3d cloneTree)
- all checkboxes are now reset properly on model change
- fixed problem with emitters 'bursting' after period of inactivity
- added animation slider to allow playing with animation stage
- optimized memory usage
Very important thing for people wanting to embed this loader into their
projects - I've managed to reduce memory usage of model/animation by significant
amount. Bugbear (containing a lot of references to parent animations - ~200
animations in all) take around 1.1MB for first instance instead of around
2.5MB (next instances are a lot cheaper - around 90kb each).
13th May 2002
Well, new release is available
. Changelog:
- support for emitter node (partial)
- support for following attributes in nodes
scale, selfillumcolor
- improved speed of skeleton display
- added grid
- support for gzipped models/textures
- viewer can be now run as applet over the net
- all nodes are now scenegraph io aware (you can save and load models
to j3d format)
Most important part is emitter support. It is not 100% correct - there
is a lot of places where small or not so small differences compared to
Bioware loaders are visible, but basic system is in. Spell_01 is not working
correctly, rest (including most models with emitters) look more or less
ok.
7th May 2002
I must say that I'm quite proud of myself - I've got some basic emitter
stuff working. You can see still shot of fire elemental.
It animates in correct way.
There is still a lot of things to do - gravity emitter support, particle
rotation and repairing rest of program, which got a bit broken by adding
new type of objects (for example it tries to change reflection map for
emitter - which is not kosher). Anyway, when I'll get it working, I'll
release new version of loader for you to play with.
Hopefully integration with j3dfly and j3dedit will get better and
better. Paul Byrne from Sun now has access to cvs and he is working on
enabling everything on both j3dfly and nwnloader side. There were some problems
with classloaders, but they are already almost solved. Loading models should
work anyway - trick is about adding some nwn-specific controls in form of
plugin distributed with loader. You can check out j3dfly/j3edit at http://java3d.netbeans.org.
If you feel brave and have jdk1.4 and java3d 1.3beta2 installed, you
can check out model viewer as applet here .
6th May 2002
New version is available
. Changes:
- rewritten text parser by hand (this removes JavaCC dependency
and works quite faster)
- improved smoothing between animations
- ignore emitter/reference nodes - this allows to display at least
parts of models using them
- added skeleton display - to see bones layout/animation
You can check out screenshots section to see skeleton display in
action.
You need java3d 1.3beta2 to run this application. If you still have
beta1, you can run it by providing -Dj3dtimer.workaround=true on command
line (models should load anyway, but animation will be very strange on
windows without this switch). On sun it should work even with beta1 (but
I have not tested it there).
5th May 2002
Well, not updates for a longer time. I have recreated entire text
parser by hand, so now it is somewhat faster and uses a lot less temporary
memory (which means garabage to be collected). I have also updated smoothing
method for animation changes - now repeating animations should be smooth,
without slowdown at start, while changes in middle of animation will
interpolate in nice way. In fact, I must say that my model viewer handles
transitions a lot better than Bioware one... :)
It is also now possible to load models containing emitters. They
will not display, I just ignore these nodes, but at least you can see
part of air/fire elemental. I want to add some special skeleton display
for animations and I'll wrap up 0.4 release in few days.
Next step is a big question. First I would like to experiment
with emitters. There is quite nice mdl format guess-description at http://www.wnwn.net/mdl/ - I also have
experimented a bit. But emitters are not easy, no guarantees. Second,
there is a chance that beta toolkit will appear. Depending on license
and possibility to download it to Poland (300MB is quite a lot after all)
I will want to play with all stuff available there - tiles, objects, maybe
new format ?
20th April 2002
I've created new release
of loader/viewer. There is a lot of new possibilities - here
is a changelog:
-------------------------------------
Added control panel which allows to:
- explode parts of model
- turn on/off main/reflection texturing and blending
- set animation speed
- set animation looping
- display/set default animations
- view wireframe/pointframe
- set face culling
17th April 2002
I have added new screenshot
showing new interface - you can select model and animation
to play in gui. I plan to add looping and slow-motion soon (code is
already there, only gui controls are needed).
16th April 2002
I have released quick fix for two outstanding bugs. Texturing
should now work under DirectX and I have finally created working workaround
for timer bug in java3d 1.3beta1. To disable this workaround (for example
if beta2 will come out) please use -Dj3dtimer.workaround=false on command
line. You can download version 0.2 from Download
section.
15th April 2002
I have released first version of viewer on sourceforge. You
can download runnable jar at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nwn-j3d/nwn-0.1.jar
and source code at http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/nwn-j3d/nwnsrc-0.1.zip
. If there are any problems with animations please tell me
- I have not tested new timer workaround on java3d 1.3.1 beta1. You
have to run jar file in directory with models or give path to model or
directory on command line - in other case, model selection will be empty.
Have fun.
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