Cafu Engine

Hi all,

Stephen and me have been busy over the weekend updating the Ca3DE documentation in the Wiki:

• The Entity Guide (by Stephen)
• The New Entity Tool (by Stephen)
• The Edit Vertices (Morph) Tool (by Carsten)

Happy reading!

Carsten, can you fix up the tree section of the entityguide? I had no idea what it is (the fgd just says "tree" in the comments)... Is it even used?

Wednesday and thursday are holidays for me, so I will try to write some more tutorials then! I can probably do the Camera and NewBrush editing tools, and the Adding a Sky tutorial.

Thanks,

-Stephen

P.S. Before I do the adding a sky tutorial, I'll need to fix a problem that I'm having. Basically the skys don't show up either in CaWE or in the engine. The texture browser can see them though, and I know that they're in the textures/SkyDomes folder, as specified in the skydomes.cmat file... All the other textures work.

Hi Stephen,

Stephen wrote:Carsten, can you fix up the tree section of the entityguide? I had no idea what it is (the fgd just says "tree" in the comments)... Is it even used?

Currently, this is unfortunately unused. This entity type is meant to represent a tree as seen in the screenshots at the bottom of http://www.ca3d-engine.de/c_ScreenShots.php However, I'm about to implement them during the course of the TechDemo, and will then come back to them. For now, please just ignore them.

Stephen wrote:Wednesday and thursday are holidays for me, so I will try to write some more tutorials then! I can probably do the Camera and NewBrush editing tools, and the Adding a Sky tutorial.

Wow, that would be cool!

Stephen wrote: P.S. Before I do the adding a sky tutorial, I'll need to fix a problem that I'm having. Basically the skys don't show up either in CaWE or in the engine. The texture browser can see them though, and I know that they're in the textures/SkyDomes folder, as specified in the skydomes.cmat file... All the other textures work.

Hm... might be a problem with the OpenGL implementation of your Linux machine... do you see the skies in the 3D view when you set the render mode from "3D Full Mats" to "3D Edit Mats" ?

Anyways, I would suggest to not write a Sky tut at all, because making a sky with Ca3DE reduces to apply a sky material to a brush in CaWE, just as with any other material. The engine and the MatSys then get things right. So making a sky is really trivial, and I don't think it needs mentioning in a separate tutorial (it would however fit well into the context of a larger tutorial, e.g. the "My 1st room tut" etc.).

Oh, something else I forgot:

I've uploaded a few resources for the tools documentation, please see

• http://images.ca3de-community.de/main.p ... itemId=893 and
• the list that appears when you press the "Add images and other files" button while editing a tools page (namespace "mapping:cawe:editingtools").

(I made these images weeks ago, and just didn't find the time to upload them, or even write proper texts with them... )

Yay! Very cool to see you guys working on the Wiki I might spent some time on doing this too this week

Very cool stuff! Reminds me that i should also work a bit on the wiki...

Anyway, the func_water is the brush for waters. But what does it make special? Doesnt it act like a simple brush or what?

Wfr, Sindwiller

Sindwiller wrote:But what does it make special?

Well, obviously, you're supposed to swim and/or drown in water (different physics (e.g. friction, acceleration, lift etc.) than on ground), which currently isn't implemented though.

However, a feature that used to be important before the Ca3DE MatSys was introduced was that the engine (actually, CaBSP) removed (and still removes) water polygons that are below the water surface ("walls of water" that otherwise occurred if the body of water was made of several adjacent brushes), and mirrors the upper water surface so that you see water also when you're below the surface, looking upwards.

So while there will probably be changes to handling water in the future, for now please continue to use the func_water entity.

So while there will probably be changes to handling water in the future, for now please continue to use the func_water entity.

Will we actually be able to swim up and stuff, or is it just updates to the shader?

Sorry I couldn't write any tutorials yesterday and the day before. I'll see if I can on the weekend.

-Stephen

Stephen wrote:Will we actually be able to swim up and stuff, or is it just updates to the shader?

Yes, of course, you will eventually be able to swim, dive etc., i.e. there will be more changes than "just" shader updates.
However, I currently cannot give you any other details, because I really have to look into the entire issue myself first (and it's currently not my top-priority item).

Stephen wrote:Sorry I couldn't write any tutorials yesterday and the day before. I'll see if I can on the weekend.

That's no problem. Speed does not matter when it comes to the Wiki! What we want is quality, not endless numbers of tutorials

Anyways, I would suggest to not write a Sky tut at all, because making a sky with Ca3DE reduces to apply a sky material to a brush in CaWE, just as with any other material. The engine and the MatSys then get things right. So making a sky is really trivial, and I don't think it needs mentioning in a separate tutorial (it would however fit well into the context of a larger tutorial, e.g. the "My 1st room tut" etc.).

I could make something like a "Introduction to creating outdoor areas" tutorial or something, which could include adding a sky, adding terrain etc.

-Stephen

I talked to Carsten and we agreed that it ould be best to include those 2 things into the My first room tutorial

But I think you could make a Placing new terrains tutorial

Thrawn wrote:But I think you could make a Placing new terrains tutorial

http://www.ca3d-engine.de/wiki/doku.php ... newterrain

Oh yeah, sorry you are right. I'll edit the Wiki front page and remove the "Placing a terrain" entry in the mapping tutorial list.