Thursday, January 10, 2008

Ainur is started!

Introduction

Ainur analysis is started, the Google Code page will soon be available and I'm thinking about how cool my work will be.

If you don't know what Ainur means go here.

Let's talk 'bout scene managers

A simple application that renders a free Quake3 map is done. It uses Ogre3D, OIS, BspSceneManager and PhysX/NxOgre (although I cannot connect phisics to the world).

It's just a little application that doesn't do much, in fact I was looking for a good scene manager instead of the old BSP. The kind of games which will use Ainur will have both indoor and outdoor levels, and BSP is only indoor.
Big outdoor levels are cool, think about Crysis or GTA. I am planning a FPS game with the ability to drive cars and take the free way, or ride a motorcycle, or go by feet with your precision rifle and find the good place where you can kill some people. Amazing!

Anyway I've found this important link for BSP making and I've found the DotScene format and related tools and scene manager.
It's also possible to import BSP maps into Blender and export theme as .scene files.

Now I want to try DotScene and see if it's good. If that's good enought a video will be posted on YouTube to demonstrate a simple Ainur demo also with Ageia PhysX/NxOgre.

Anyway it seems that the DotScene loader found on ogreaddons is not updated.
The New DotScene Loader seems up to date and supported.

Also, I've found oFusion and its scene manager and I'm looking forward to see if it fits my needs.

Compositors

As I said, I'm still using the good and old indoor BSP scene manager.
Since I can find a lot of Quake3 levels for free, it's possible to start hacking with compositors until a good scene manager has been found.

The first compositor is the obvious HDR effect. I'll also do a motion blur compositor, see here for a cool thing.

I will post screen shots and/or videos of the BSP demo program ASAP.
Anyway I must implement a GUI with CEGUI first and think about a configuration tab for the level of detail with some profiles (low, medium, high, very high) just like Crysis.