Subject:
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Re: New game Legator
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.games
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Date:
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Sun, 12 Aug 2001 18:53:48 GMT
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Viewed:
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8259 times
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Ben Bucksch wrote:
> But the apps had their own weeknesses:
> * Building in 3D view impossible
This point is by far what frustrates me the most about the current apps out
there. The program I am developing, GWCAD, allows parts to dragged in the
horizontal plane by holding down the left mouse button, and dragged
vertically by holding down the right mouse button. This gives simple and
complete control of part movement with no ambiguity.
Check out proof-of-concept executable #1 from http://gw.ro/lego/gwcad/ for a
demo.
> * Editors not scalable to large amounts of bricks
My program allows for any number of parts, as long as they are not all
individually and simultaneously able to be manipulated. For example, if you
had a very large model, the editor will work considerably faster if
components of the model are made into sub-models that can be moved and
rotated, but not directly edited from the main view. Sub-models can be
edited after being opened in a separate view.
The reason for this is that GWCAD sets aside memory to hold a 32-bit raster
image and a local, 32-bit z-buffer of every individually selectable entity
that is at least partially contained in the orthagonal or isometric view
prism. Sub-models are treated as a single entity so they only need one
bitmap apiece, until they're opened up in a separate view for editing.
This technique results in blazingly fast screen refreshes when moving
individual parts around (since absolutely nothing has to be re-rendered),
but eats up memory like there's no tomorrow. I may have to switch to using
palettized bitmaps and lower-resolution z-buffers and sharing these among
identical parts to conserve memory.
Currently, between 40 and 60 MB is required for a typical isometric view in
1280x1024 resolution. This is not a problem on my development box, which
has 768MB total memory, but it may be a problem on typical users' machines.
I wonder how much memory a typical Lego CAD user's computer has. Today it's
hard to imagine a typical home computer having less than 128MB.
> My best bet is to start a new project, I think. I hope that I can
> leverage a lot of code from existing open-source 3D engines and editors,
> so the task is hopefully not so huge. Nevertheless, I will need help.
Best of luck!
-Gary
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Message has 1 Reply:
 | | Re: New game Legator
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| Hi Gary, I've been reading your progress with interest. Caching the z-buffers is a nice trick. But what is the advantage of doing it per piece? I would cache the whole frame's z-buffer for pieces that were not moving, and composite just the dynamic (...) (23 years ago, 13-Aug-01, to lugnet.games)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | RFC: New game Legator
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| Hi, I baught LEGO Creator some time ago and liked it, mostly. I was surprised by the comfort, speed and fun of building. It was very similar to playing real LEGO. But it had a few major problems, namely: * Cannot tilt bricks * Small array of brick (...) (23 years ago, 12-Aug-01, to lugnet.games, lugnet.cad.dev)
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