Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

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Carsten
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Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Carsten » 2009-03-24, 16:10

The first release candidates for the upcoming new release of the Ca3D-Engine are now available at
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/files/Ca3DE-9 ... -win32.zip :wohow:
CaWE-9.04-NewFeatures.png
New maps, GUIs and fonts are easily created
with the new version via the related menu item.
CaWE-9.04-NewFeatures.png (8.41KiB)Viewed 27270 times
Here is an overview of the changes and newly added features:
  • To the world editor CaWE, we've added a new GUI editor (with live preview!) and a wizard for easily making new fonts - see this post for more details.
    We've applied the concept of a new, advanced user interface (e.g. with toolbars and windows that can freely be dragged and docked) also to the Material Browser and the main component of CaWE, the map editor!
  • Support for physics simulation has been added to the engine core, using the Bullet Physics library. The support is still experimental, but you can observe great results by shooting or throwing grenades at the large crate in map Kidney.
    Related enhancements to the Ca3DE "ClipWorld" collision detection and ray tracing code yielded improvements with player movement as well, and make CaLight (for computing Radiosity solutions) up to 30 times faster!
  • Replaced all external libraries whose source code, licenses or license fees made it difficult to employ them in commercial projects with alternatives or code developed in-house at CFS. All newly employed alternative external libraries are
    • of high quality (at least equivalent to their previously employed pendants, usually better),
    • free for use in commercial projects (neither license fees nor GPL restrictions).
    Both the Ca3D-Engine as well as the world editor CaWE now present a list of all external libraries in their Credits or About dialogs, and also in our FAQs.
  • Many other miscellaneous but significant improvements: Fixed bugs in the network protocol code, enhanced the Ca3DE APIs and their documentation, implemented many "under-the-hood" enhancements to the world editor CaWE (including better use of software design patterns), and many more.
The older, but still current 8.09 release of Ca3DE is kept as the latest stable version in the Downloads section until we've resolved the few remaining problems (see below) with this new feature release. Map editors and testers should definitively grab this release for using the latest features! :up:

Known issues and problems:
The current support for physics requires 2GB of RAM :!: when running the TechDemo map in the Ca3D-Engine, and due to the huge number of triangles in that map, it also degrades performance (frames per second) noticeably.
We're currently working to improve the situation so that even the TechDemo can successfully be run on computers with 1 GB of RAM at the same performance as the current 8.09 release of Ca3DE.

Additional notes about this release candidate:
  • This is a Release Candidate, not the final demo. The final demo will have additional bugs fixed and improvements.
  • Minimum System Requirements: 2 GB main RAM (for the TechDemo Map, 1 GB for the others), 256 MB video (GPU) RAM.
  • There are a few known issues (CaWE menu "View | Load/Save user window layout" doesn't work properly; Linux version not yet available). To be fixed next week, along with the Linux release.
Please let us know your comments, feed-back and questions!
Best regards,
Carsten
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Thrawn
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Thrawn » 2009-03-24, 16:39

Hi, I see a great release coming! :)

I tested the physics in the kidney map but I experience the well known old lagging and stuttering of the crate when it's moving just like we had/have it with grenades. That's a BIG problem. Might again be caused by client/server prediction.

However, I can see it's potential and it's really cool, especially that the physics take the different amount of damage caused by the various weapons into account so the crate is moved in dependence of the power of the weapon.
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Carsten » 2009-03-24, 18:52

Hi Thrawn,
Thrawn wrote:I tested the physics in the kidney map but I experience the well known old lagging and stuttering of the crate when it's moving just like we had/have it with grenades. That's a BIG problem. Might again be caused by client/server prediction.
Do you mean the stuttering that has been observed before also with non-physics entities?
In recent releases I (hot-)fixed the stuttering by adding a client-side interpolation feature, but this feature unfortunately turned out to be incompatible with the quaternion data that represents the orientation of physics bodies.

Thus, for a quick work-around, I turned off the interpolation feature again (for physics entities only - it should still work for other entities like the flying eagles, other players, the Trinity bot, etc).
(You can turn if off globally by entering interpolateNPCs=false; into the console.)

Thanks for pointing this issue out - I much agree that this must be fixed!
Best regards,
Carsten
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Thrawn » 2009-03-25, 17:55

Yeah that'S exactly what I meant! Thanks for the info!
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Cipher » 2009-03-25, 22:02

Hi Carsten!

Nice to see a new release :)

I played around with CaWE a little bit and found two little bugs:

-The "Make hollow" command doesn't seem to work, meaning that the command is in the undo/redo history but the currently selected brush isn't made hollow.

-Further a little visual glitch in the 2D view best explained by two screens:
screen1.JPG
screen2.JPG
The first screen shows a selected map element. When scrolling down until the element in no longer visible in the 2D view and then scrolling up again until it scrolls into view, the glitch is visible.

Another little problem occured to me when starting a map, then calling "Quit current game" and restarting the same map. The main menu seems to be stuck showing the usual Options/Credits/Quit icons and a "Stop server..." button on the left. Usually the loading screen appears right after this.

I'm impressed with the physics implementation :coolp: Finally a game where crates don't fly half through the room when hit by a bullet. The physics feel nice and realistic :cheesy:

Greetings
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Stephen » 2009-03-27, 16:45

Sounds like some great (and very impressive) new features! I can't wait to give it a try.
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Re: Ca3DE 9.04: Release candidates now available!

Post by Carsten » 2009-03-27, 19:18

Hi Cipher,

nice to hear from you, and thank you very much for your feed-back! :wohow:
Cipher wrote: -The "Make hollow" command doesn't seem to work, meaning that the command is in the undo/redo history but the currently selected brush isn't made hollow.
Ah, thanks for pointing this out!
The problem was in fact a result from my entirely rewriting all map brushes code, resulting in much shorter and clearer code. The actual cause was tiny, but effective, affecting all splitting and carving code, i.e. also the Clip tool, Carve, Make hollow, etc.
I've just fixed this for the next RC, which I'll upload soon - the latest early next week.
-Further a little visual glitch in the 2D view best explained by two screens:
[...]
The first screen shows a selected map element. When scrolling down until the element in no longer visible in the 2D view and then scrolling up again until it scrolls into view, the glitch is visible.
Yes, there is likely an insufficient area invalidated on scroll events... as I've rewritten the Selection tools transformation box code as well, it's probably something I overlooked there. I've taken a note on it, but will only fix it later.
Another little problem occured to me when starting a map, then calling "Quit current game" and restarting the same map. The main menu seems to be stuck showing the usual Options/Credits/Quit icons and a "Stop server..." button on the left. Usually the loading screen appears right after this.
Did the loading screen eventually appear, or were you left with the "Stop server..." button?

The "Stop server..." button is normally shown when only a (dedicated) server is running.
It can happen in single player games as well, as then first a server is launched, then the client. When the client has a problem initializing or connecting, you're left with the "Stop server..." screen, because the server is still running and not automatically shut down by a failing client.
One cause for which this may happen is if the client re-connects too fast, just as you described: The server may not accept re-connects from an IP that has recently disconnected.
I'm impressed with the physics implementation :coolp: Finally a game where crates don't fly half through the room when hit by a bullet. The physics feel nice and realistic :cheesy:
Well, the crate is still a bit problematic, as the player can get stuck into it...
I also hope to be able to create a proxy class that allows to use the Ca3DE internal physics representation of a world directly with Bullet - right now, Bullet gets its own representation which takes a huge loading time.
Don't know yet though if this will make it into RC3 or RC4. ;)
Best regards,
Carsten
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