Cafu Engine

for one of the arenas in PBX i want it to be played inside the thunderdome.
now they have a special game called arena madness. there are fog machines all over the place flooding the arena with fog. then there are tons of different lights and lasers and such swirling all over the arena. is this possible with ca3d? it would be very cool and if i pulled it off it would make the engine look great to evry1. just wondering how i would have to go about this

heres an example from greg hastings tourney paintball for xbox

i would like to prolly have more fog and lights but w/e is possible is good enuff for me

Well, except for fog that is simulated with the Particle System, Ca3DE has no fog yet. Will probably add that as soon as the MatSys is reasonable complete.
However, the Particle-System-generated fog should be high quality anyways (e.g. similar to the smoke after you fire the shotgun), so I'd suggest to try it out.

what about the lights? can i make them swirl like in the game? basicly just rotating the light. another question: i would like to eventually have voice of net chat built into the game for fast paced communication. im guessing this is not built into ca3d but would be fairly easy by just adding in a handling function with rec,send,recieve,play and such. am i right? if i do this i would prolly release it to the community cause it shouldnt be 2 hard and will help evry1 out.

ca3d uses OGL for graphics rendering correct? and wut is used to handle input and internet? wxwidgets? dinput? directplay? i could create my own ogl fog routine fairly easily since i already have this in a couple of games. but if it needs to be handled differently i dont know

Shadow wrote:what about the lights? can i make them swirl like in the game?

What game?
What lights?

basicly just rotating the light. another question: i would like to eventually have voice of net chat built into the game for fast paced communication. im guessing this is not built into ca3d but would be fairly easy by just adding in a handling function with rec,send,recieve,play and such. am i right? if i do this i would prolly release it to the community cause it shouldnt be 2 hard and will help evry1 out.

I think that this is not as easy as you think it is.
Afaics, the currently best solution is to resort to an external voice transmitting program, like BattleCom etc.

Shadow wrote:ca3d uses OGL for graphics rendering correct?

It used to. Now the rendering is done via the Ca3DE Material System, which in turn can be implemented in OpenGL, DirectX, Software, ...
I'll provide several implementations of the MatSys (a.k.a. "Renderers") based on OpenGL with the next release. They will match the previous (OpenGL) rendering functionality.

and wut is used to handle input and internet? wxwidgets? dinput? directplay?

Berkley sockets for all networking, device input is platform dependent (DirectInput on Win32, X on Linux).
However, you shouldn't bother about all this: as with the MatSys, the implementation details are hidden behind abtraction layers that are offered by the Engine to the MOD code.

i could create my own ogl fog routine fairly easily since i already have this in a couple of games. but if it needs to be handled differently i dont know

Yes, I'm aware of the fact that fog is not hard to code. But it has to fit into the context of the overall engine.

Two approaches are possible:
a) If you just want to "hack" it into the MOD code as a personal modification or for your personal MOD, you're encouraged to do so. I'll support you if I can. It may suffice to only change the MOD code and/or introduce a new entity for this purpose. Enabling you to do this is the very intention of MOD-ability, after all.
I'd expect the majority of the features that exceed the engines basic features to be implemented like this.

b) Wait for me to add support for fog. That may or may not be better than a), because I might only be doing excatly what you would be doing on a) anyway, but sometimes such changes also make me improve the engine core, or revise the entire pipeline from CaWE over CaBSP, CaPVS, CaLight until the engine itself.

Summary:
I'd recommend to either simulate fog with the existing and really powerful particle system, or wait for me to provide built-in fog.
If however your want to program you custom fog, just ask here for support.

ok i think u misunderstood me. is there a way to have or simulate a light that is changing the direction it is casting light at? i have done this with ogl but it might not be possible because of the way lights are handled. i was thinking maybe having a rather bright specular object that is transparent moving around would maybe work... when i reffered to the game i was referring to the screenshot in one of my earlier posts. this all can wait for now tho. this will only be used for a couple of maps and i dont wanna get worked up about it until the time comes
thanks for the help you have given me tho