A8

We usually release a new engine generation every 3 years. Thus, 2010 will be an A8 year.

The A8 engine is based on the MMO kernel that we started last year. The MMO was stopped, but the engine development was continued, resulting in A8. The beta version will be released next month. The final release version will be available in summer.

With A8 we'll change most external libraries that the engine was using since A4. Still, A8 is backwards compatible to A7 and A6, so all projects since A6.60 will normally still run under A8. The exception is physics. The dynamics is different and might require different parameters.

The hardware accelerated PhysX engine will replace the ODE engine. In almost all cases this will result in a better frame rate and greater stability of the physics simulation. Also, there will be a lot of new physics commands.

A8 can use the graphics hardware for accelerated bones rendering. This way, A8 can render bones animated actors about 3 times faster than A7, and 5 times faster than A6. Other entities, especially sprites, are rendered up to 30% faster than with A7, and two times faster than with A6.

Sprite instancing and new sprite types for dense vegetation will be supported.

A8 will support realtime shadowmapping.

The DirectPlay network library will be replaced by the Enet library. Previous network projects will still work as before.

Later in 2010, DirectSound will be replaced by OpenAL, allowing new sound effect commands.

A8 will support portal regions that can be controlled by doors and user switches, for increasing the rendering speed in indoor levels.

A published A8 acknex.dll will work with all executables generated with the same development system. This overcomes the problems with some commercial wrapper systems.

Through an overlay channel outside the DirectX area, arbitrary shaped windows will be possible.

A8 Commercial will support commands for realtime procedural texture generation and shader-based parallel processing.

A8 Extra and above will still support C-Script.

A8 will be free for all A7 owners who purchased an A7 version or upgrade in our store in or after March 2010.

Greate news! YUPIE!

THATS good news!
And a giant leap for game developers!

Sounds good.. seems like i need to wait, before i buy PRO XD

Nice to hear

Since i got my update last week (:P) i will get A8 for free

Thank you soo much , jcl

crap, I bought my A7 update like 3 months ago... now I have to upgrade again...

Wow, good news.
Thanks to jcl.

Good news! Will the prices be the same as A7? And what about upgrades like A7 Commercial to A8 Commercial?

Great News, but what about the Pro-Editon and price as A6 Pro to A7 Pro ? The same gratuated prices or have you not even think about it ? I know the only think people will know is the price ;-) and a working edition :-) of course.

sounds great, but what about the editors? Will they be redone? And what about the website? A redesign would really fit to the release of A8.

It should really come with a new set of demo and beginner content.
(such as a new set of models and a fully new standard.wad,
and some examplegames to play around)

You should post a content competition for that purpose.

awesome idea - hold out winning already an A8 update would a lot users motivate to contribute something which would lead to a useful amount of resources for game- and prototype development

maybe also a contest for a new website and new editors?

then TechMuc will win the contest

but a "ausschreibung"/contest for a new mainpage would be nice (and i would participate ^^)

Questions

1- Will everyone be egilible for BETA or do ineed pro for that?
2- Do the editors are still same?(Keeping up with the tutorials i am writing for MED and WED is a good idea?)
3- Will upgrade prices be same as upgrade prices of a6 to a7?
4- Do we still have that start up screen instead of an intro logo?(like in unity)

Thanks.

Sounds great! I am really looking forward to this. What part of the summer do you think the final release may be? I would like to even install this with my project for the obvious speed reasons before release. As well, what benefits would Enet bring? Will all my existing network code work just fine? Thanks for all your hard work!

Hi,

A8, hm? Very interesting. I've been working with the Unreal Development Kit lately and the difference in mere rendering power between A7 and UE3 clearly shows the need for A8 - very nice to see that you are still making your product even better than it already is to keep up with other engines.

I, too, have some questions regarding A8.
1) Quadraxas already asked that, and I think it is VERY important: will we - or will we not - get new Editors instead of WED and MED? WED is okay (it could use some additional visibility options, though), but even after using it for quite some time now, I still think that MED is by far the "weakest link" in the 3DGS development chain.
2) Also very important: will we be able to use object orientation, and if yes, will it be possible using lite-C?
3) How about lightning in general? This was one of the "weak spots" of A7. Has it been improved? UDK and the lightning system it is using ("Lightmass") can produce really good-looking static shadows with only ONE light and indirect lightning - if we wanted to have it that way we had to place many light bulbs to "simulate" indirect lightning.
4) Shaders. Applying a working shader to an object wasn't that much of an easy task in A7 - assigning the material wasn't enough, the textures had to be in place too (sometimes with alpha, sometimes without... confusing....), and in the right order to make it work. Plus, without being able to program shaders on your own you couldn't "mix" two or more effects (e.g. BumpMapping/NormalMapping and Phong). Especially bump/normal mapping is a topic of its own, in my opinion users shouldn't have to "choose" to use bump mapping, for every texture there should simply exist a "Bump map: [...]" field because it is such a basic way of shading.

Well, that's all so far, the UDK certainly has some big advantages compared to 3DGS, however, there is one category in which 3DGS simply *rules* over UDK, and this is scripting. UnrealScript is horrible and moreover poorly documented, lite-C is just awesome and easy - so keep that up ^^


Greets,



Alan

@Alan: you can use OOP with C++ so there is no need for a support under Lite-C, also the map compiler already supports radiosity

@Alan: I cannot agree with point 4), take 30 min and read through the first 4 Shader Workshops, shaders are easy to use in gamestudio IMO.

I don't think that they should spend much time on MED, too, there are great and popular tools with a lot of tutorials and stuff such as Blender, Wings3D and or the like. MED is good at basic modelling (now that the extrude bug is fixed) and especially at importing and preparing models for in-game usage.
They should rather spend the time they have on the engine so it becomes better and better.

One (big) thing for A8 that I would like to see (maybe in 2011?):
Combine WED and GED, that means if you maximize the 3D view in WED the editor will behave like GED does now but you are able to modify blocks, too.
You can click on objects, press a button to start their action immediately to check if you set up everything right (platforms, ...) and return to edit mode by pressing the same button again. Materials can be globally switched on, too. Basically, a WYSIWYG editor.
As a result (of the required structure), the developer(s) could implement a Geo-Mod feature for models and blocks, one of the most underestimated features of gaming history.

Furthermore there could be a box/region that you drag with which you determine the area that has to be rebuild, only box/groups and lights touching it get updated by the build process. This reduces building time a lot when you are tuning your level or expanding it.

Just my 2 cents.

EDIT: If somehow possible speed up block rendering would be great (esp. with shaders).

Yes I'm keen on that! Although I would've thought we'd get far more than 3x increase, but I guess it depends on your CPU/GPU power ratio -- I have a relatively wussy CPU with a much nicer GPU, hence my significantly different results.

Huge shame I only upgraded to Pro in the last 2 months

Jibb

what is A8 based on? still directx 9?10?11?opengl 3?4???any other fancy stuff?like unified editor or visual shader editor?

Oh crap, I got my new license in October

What shall I say, got mine two years ago...

However, that's great news, especially the point "realtime shadow mapping" makes me shiver.
I just hope the upgrading prices from A7 to A8 wont be too high...

Very interesting. This new zone-based scene management combined with shadow mapping and shaders could offer some good options, to make nice indoor games.

Applying and previewing shaders in MED could improve work-flow also a lot. So MED and WED should use A8 for rendering.

I am very curous about the new engine. Real time shadow mapping sounds very good!

Just one (for me personally important) question. In compare with the new unity 3 ... will there be a clear distance in the price policy of the A8?

While at Unity, is there something in development to replace the outdated WED?

If any webplayer in the way?
like support for webgl ?
new iexplorer 9 support nativily html5 web3d

If A8 stick to Windows platform, Windows platform ON Mac HARDWARE, I doubt the possibility of web player.

If A8 support WebGL (OpenGL ES) please support on iPhone too, I will reserve my money to upgrade.

One of the most important things for basic-codeing is still missing.. Local variables debugging . Debugging Lite-C code is one of the critical flaws in 3D-Gamestudio.

But nevertheless i'm really satisfied with the announced features.

to support webgl it would have to be written in javascript. i doubt this will happen.

the announced features sound nice. i would also like to see the OPCODE based ellipsoid collision detection replaced. doing a nice character controller (without gliding and getting stuck issues) is much harder than in all other engines i know. it also would make a lot of sense if physics and normal collision detection used the same collision detection system (support for the same primitives,...).

i agree about the editor. the engine will be quite competitive again if all the announced stuff works well but there also should be an unified wysiwyg editor.

also, deferred shading with unlimited lights as an option would be nice.

yes! and as you stated in the other thread you want to selling it for an ipad touch. Whats is the problem?

So its nice to see that the new unity-guys also have an eye to the further development of the A7 engine with their "outdated editors".

Back to Topic:
--------------

I cant wait to get my hands to the new features, especially
the new Shadow-thing, Bone-thing and Physics-thing.


Unlike many of others here arround I dont care about "the Look" of the Editors or the design of a website.

What really count is the substance and stability of the engine! A shiny website is for Pus**es.

Give me a stable Version of GED and I'm happy.



So JCL move on!

regards gri,

No, you don't understand.
If I was going to get A8 for free, I won't sell my license, but since I won't get it, I'll sell it. And then I'll get my iPod Touch.
I WILL try A8, if it's not what I expected I'll stick to Unity, if it'll be TEH AWSUM ANGIN!!!!11, I might give Gamestudio another chance.

And I'm still excited for A8!

I hope that the WED 3d window will be replaced by a GED plugin with engine window.
For MED I'd expect an engine window as well. Maybe it's possible to write a simple plugin for that. I haven't looked into MED plugin stuff yet.

Why not including essential imp/exp formats of MED directly in the open/save dialog? This way you could open models of a non-mdl. format by "right klick -> open with -> MED" in the explorer

holy shit, now that's awesome news.

Do you consider a rebate offer for the 'early' upgraders like back when A7 was released?

JC,
This type of news is always great to hear...
Each upgrade seems to help me attain new solutions.

One comment for A8...
Can Med be altered to make use of mocap files user friendly???
This could add a great deal to everyones animations.

And... One Question...
Will you offer a discount for seniors???
(Age should have some good points.)
Regards,
Paul

And to think I was going to switch to Shiva3d... Awesome news JCL, I've been reeled back into the Acknex bandwagon!

great news
cant wait until the release

can't wait.....

this is gonna be the most boring wait ever...

...

TO be completely honest here;
It feels a bit like a rip-off, don't get me wrong I like my A7. But I see no reason to switch to A8 because of what is shown.

I'm not excited at all, and frankly it feels a bit like conitec is putting another version out just to try and be able to fight against the other free engines out there... I'm very disappointed. The only thing that would make me switch would be a completely new set of Tools that aren't as crappy to use as the toolset we have had since A4. Seriously, fix that...
I love Conitec, and have been supporting to use it the past 10 years (I got my school to work with it and buy licenses), but it feels like you are slipping this time...

Ofcourse i'll wait till A8 comes out and i can test it, but this was the first feeling and idea that came to mind.

regards,

So A8 will catch up to Unity a bit except for being multi-platform, the user-friendly editor and the upcoming high-end features of Unity 3? Well, it all will depend on the price policy I guess...

agreeing with helghast, i dont care much for the listed features, they dont seem 'upgrade' worthy, they seem like stuff that could be added to A7, paying for standard features and if you try to undertake a full game you'll see that the editors are the weak points, lack of material and lighting editors, all that.. dont see myself upgrading.. at all, unless i win it in a contest or something but looking at my game now and looking at the listed 'new' features, i dont see how the game benefits majorly... once they fix their damned vec_for_vertex bug that i mentioned in a report thread, then am fine [a thread that was closed btw, bug still not fixed]

how about better lights? WORKING radiosity, current implementaion is slow as.. heh, tsk, change the lighting model totally then.. then it'll seem worthy

Will the native HTTP support become available in the Commercial version of A8?

while you are at it also replace the direct input.(and allow stuff like ctrl+v)

wouldnt you say doing that is already somewhat, easy?

The speed increases alone are worth the update. I agree that the WED can be vastly improved though. I use Max for all my work, and a very tight integration with these programs would be the best.

i wish a drag-and-drop import for med and wed

Well reading all the comments, it seems a shame you've pulled the wool over so many peoples eyes.

I agree with Helgast and DarkInferno on this one.

Tell me if I've misunderstood this at some point, but...
You won a 'contract' (although be it a con) for the readiness and stability or A7 to make an MMO.

So although you sell your product to the public, you see it unfit for your own use.

You've been working on A8 for (give or take) 10 months. I understand engines need to constantly need to change and improve, but I can't see many indi-developers buying a new engine every 3 years.

So with the lack of updates recently for A7, I'm guessing this was for the extra time you were spending on A8, and not 'in A7 development mode again' at all?

And some, if not most of the features you've given have been asked by the community since A6, and now you take notice and use them.

My rant is over, but I feel somewhat let down with A7, and think it should of only been a A6.5 for it to be swept under the carpet so soon with such few new features supported other than a 'new' language!

I'm with you 100% mr guest.

Really? How do you access the clipboard at the moment?

Jibb

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649051(VS.85).aspx
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms649048(VS.85).aspx

Common.. you have a language which can access Windows libraries.. so use it!

Cheers. It wasn't that I hadn't looked -- nor was it that I couldn't find anything. It was more that for some reason the first few sources I found were quite explicit that there is no easy way to access it, and those put me off further research.

Jibb

I have one big request for a8.
please add IK to MED!!

MH, so shadowmapping for A8?
I like shadowmapping but thats a bit late isnt it?
Every single free engine(actual ones) has it. An Cubicvr a 3d engine i supported a bit for the port to PSP has awesome shadomapping on PC....created by a SINGLE person.


Shadowmapping should have been implemented to A7 as a STANDARD feature.


Well, lets see what happens until the release of A8.

Greets
Rackscha

This are great news!

will there be any preordering offer to safe a few bucks on upgrading?

AWESOME! TRULY AWESOME!

Yes, I think shadow mapping was a target for A7.

Hiya.

I find this...tantalizingly interesting. It all sound good, but here's what I *really* want...

(NOTE: This is my "Ultimate 3D Game Engine Wish List", as of today...I don't expect all of it, or even most of it,...but the more the better! ).

1. Rivers with physics (re: Torque3D)

2. Roads with automatic terrain deformation if desired (re: Leadwerks Engine)

3. Destructable vegetation/objects (re: Torque3D with Sickhead Games 'forest add-on' stuff...see 'South Pacific' demo).

4. File structure is "change aware" and drag-and-drop (re: Unity 3d)

5. Terrain import for all the latest and greatest (re: importing from GROME II, GeoControl, PnP Terrain Creator, etc.), as well as some serious in-editor/game terrain manipulation and painting tools.

6. General "ease of use" (re: Unity3d)

7. Advanced rendering options (re; Leadwerks, ShiVa)

8. Easy scripting capabilities (re: A7)

9. Ability to script in other languages (re: LUA, C#, VB, Ruby, etc.)

10. Integration capability for IDE's (re: Visual Studio)

11. EVERYTHING real-time in editor, making full use of GPU's, multi-core, and SLI.

12. A Bajillion Import/Export format's (re: uh...too many to list...just look at the import/export list for something like Milkshape, or UltimateUnwrap3d...then double it...;) ).

13. Plug-ins for #12, to the most popular 3d and 2d packages (re: Lightwave, XSI, 3DSMAX, Maya, Blender, ZBrush, 3D Coat, Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, Paint.NET, GIMP, etc.)

14. Sky rendering with volumetric clouds, time of day, and atmoshperic effects

15. Environmental effects galor (re: snow, wind, lightning, rain, hail, ash, gerbils, etc.)

16. Ability to "package" a group of settings and common items so we can re-use them in other games/levels, etc. (re: "prefabs" that can include environment settings, groups of objects, sounds, textures, or even entire folders with contents).

Well, that's the gist of it. So...how close can A8 come to that?

PS: At least a semi-reasonable price...no $30,000 price tag, please, but $3,000...sure!

@ Paul L Ming: You can do most stuff all by yourself.
And the general "ease of use" like in unity 3d has a dark side effect too. It kinda limits the possibilities and your workflow. That is one of the reasons why i dont use unity 3d that much. Because i simply dont like the workflow.

Btw. 2k posts =)

Hiya.

Yup, I suppose I could. All I need is about, say, $80,000 to pay my living expenses for a few years, maybe another $20,000 to pay for tuition at a decent university, and the ability to travel back in time after I spend a few years learning how to program in C++ or whatever so I can watch my daughter grow up.



Being *able* to "do most stuff by yourself" assumes someone has all the required knowledge and skills. I don't. I'm an artist. I can model, sculpt that model in 3d, UV unwrap, create texture, bump, normal, specular, luminance and whatever other maps I need, rig it, and animate it. But I can't program in HLSL, C++, or Assembly, and the only thing I really know about "quaternion mathematics" is that it sounds cool. It's like telling a professional programmer "Hey, why don't you just whip up your own low-poly character with high-poly normal maps, textures, and bones, then animate it? Spend some time designing a simple outdoor town, texture it all, light it, etc., and then you can test your code."

Sorry, I don't mean to sound flippant...but the gist of it is this: I think you missed my point. That point is, simply, that I would pay good money for someone else (re: Conitec) to do all that programming stuff for me...I'll supply the art and ideas.

It's a must have today to have a shader driven rendering part and it facilitates so many things even for addditional plugins or user contribution, because most good tutorials are written for the shader driven approach. I think such things are more important than some specific details. Specific details could be add by the developer with the time. But the engine needs a real good and easy base architecture. Of course some things are really obvious requested now as the whole indie scene made some moves which are irreversible and people normaly tend to acclimate with the benefits they found in other software they used. I think think now with this announced changes they made some good steps forward. I'm not convinced if its enough for buying it especially for new users, but good choices to replace the physic engine with physx and porting Enet to this engine. and take the right time to implement it, so the stress with bug fixing not overruns the development per se.

ABSOLUTLY AWE INSPIRING POST...
You said it all...
Ain't this stuff a bitch...
There's always something next to learn...
Crap...

Do I detect a hint of sarcasm in your post?

Hi,

Great news. What for DX Version will by used ? (DX 9, 10, 11 or all three). And gives a 64 Bit Version of A8?

Bye

White_Wolf

i trust to conitec. There is very big difference between a6 and a7. So i think there will be very big difference between a7 and a8. I think, Jcl did not explain all the innovations of a8.(what about directx[9?-10?]) Nevertheless, there are great new features as him write, except for two things (IMHO);

*Realtime shadowmapping is not a great innovation. This is necessary. Sorry for bad language but stencil shadow is crap, very very crap. Year 2010 and realtime shadowmapping is necessary.
*PhysX is necessary too. We talked about new physic engine 2 years ago. * *
I think,these two features(or just realtime shadowmapping) should be in a7.

Apart from these, i did not spend thousands dollars for A7, and i am very glad with it. So, i am eagerly waiting for A8.

Btw, i'm waiting for the next a7 update. i need sv_info. Please Jcl, hurry up!
---
Sorry for my bad english.

This list is not really exciting at all... Sorry to say that.

For me it is really improtant that the editors get improved (mainly GED!). To say it in general: GED goes into the right direction but it is a) not stable enough and b) needs to be improved with a lot of new features.

So a must have for A8 is a more improved version of GED!

Some features that should be implemented into GED:
- a particle editor
- a good material editor
- a play and pause button for changing the level during testing
- change blocks in realtime
- a plugin interface
- ...

I know that Timo already has some experience with the features listed above because he wrote EasyParticle and already implemented some of the features into GED but I don't know why conitec doesn't want to see this features implemented...

I think you are talking about A10.

Or about a 200000 Dollar engine.

A7 is very great. A lot of things are possible.

Okay, you are right. The editors could be much better.

But there is no engine out there, where you can press Enter and everything is finished. And it seems that everyone is thinking that you must only have the right editors and your game looks like gta4, farcry or risen.

Every game is hard work. It depends not only on the editors.

Time to order A7

I am liking the list of improvements offered in A8 and will be purchasing an upgrade for my commercial license as soon as the prepurchase option is available.

I agree with Dark_samurai though, I would very much like to see improvements in GED. It needs a good particle editor and to allow for live previews of scenes

Looks to me that LED should/will/has to become the Editor for A8?

I guess so more-easily pluginable GED and new code editor is a must for A8.

What is bad about SED / what is missing?

@Quadraxas: "More customisable run/debug options."/ Image: Yes, that would be nice and very useful!

autocomplete/intellisense, other stuff that helps coding faster. More customisable run/debug options. A better project manager.

The first thing I always turn of is intellisense and auto completion, because it really really bugs me. It interrupts whenever I try to type my code.... ROAAAHH.

OK ... I'm trying to see enough added value in A8 to justify the upgrade cost (and going from A7 PRO to A8 PRO won't be all that cheap, I'm sure).

Some others have already mentioned their disappointment with respect to the list of enhancements / improvements, and while I can appreciate a new core for multiplayer support, shadows and some other improvements, I can't say that it makes me yell "WOW".

Every engine has its strong and weak points and A5/A6/A7 have helped me understand more about 3D-engines then any of the other engines I've used/owned (Torque3D / Lawmaker / BeyondVirtual). But since this is still just a hobby, the truth is that there are very capable engines available free of charge (e.g. UDK)- or for less money than the upgrade will most likely cost - that produce superior results in many respects.

I'll wait and see what the "final announcement" for A8 containts, but now maybe is the time to sell my A7Pro and move on ...

Cheers,
Andreas

you clearly have never ever worked with Visual Studio

When you buy/ upgrade gamestudio, you don't only buy the engine, editors and the like, you buy a license to publish an infinite amount of games without paying royalty fees, people should consider that, too. (In contrast to UDK for example.)

Cool, if I can learn how to use this software, I will actually be able to develop something good.

Absolutely correct ... but then again, most of us will never really publish much of anything - so for most of us, this is irrelevant.

Cheers,
Andreas

I did. After I turned off all this poo.

@Superku: Ogre is Opensource and you have to pay 0$ when releasing a game.

What I would like is the following:
Conitec opens a thread where all users can post their ideas for A8. Then in the end, conitec creates a list of all those features that are possible from their side and create a poll. The features with the most votes will be implemented into A8.

They did something like that one or two years ago. I remember that dynamic soft shadow mapping won ^^

One last important question: We get Enet,ok but all those sweet features like server connect etc ONLY in PRO again?? If yes, its completely useless for com users who want to create a serious interface. So com users would use Anet or GStnet(me).

And whats about the splashscreen thing at the beginning? Couldnt your team change it that way:
User defines his own splashscreen, but in COM it has some kind of watermark during loadingscreen? Would allow more users to distribute(because for distribution most users trie to get a Pro version).

GReets
Rackscha

In the past it was possible to hand in a custom starter screen and Conitec would approve or reject it.

The templates on forecast are there from more than one year and there is nothing , only the racing game.

They should make complete ready to go and solid templates for A8.
That we would cutomize by changing/adding panels and any other things.
Some general stats RPG screen to distribute points for nay game( RPG, Bioshock like etc ...) would be a cool template also.

For the FPS template for example, make some sort of template that works ( a game with a first level and basic AI ennemy : cover /shoot, go to one point or another ) !
Something that plays like Bioshock with panels for stats, game begin/save etc ... that we could have to tweak even on the script code.

Well it asks lot of work, perhaps it could be done by people
that would be paid with a good amount of money if done very well ! (caus skilled people don't take on challenges just for a pro version sometimes) !

Well i'm curious about A8, i think it will be only 3D programming features, no new totally all in one world editor !

Well i'll give it a try, and perhaps will buy the commercial
version like i did for A6 and A7
I hope multiple vertex per bones to be in A8 commercial,
even little indie games deserves good character animations !

A7 comm already has that.

not when animating in MED.. right?

as far as i know a7 pro doesnot have that too .D (i mean there is no way to set vertex/bone weights and attach a vertex to multiple bones. In MED, that is.)

but you can import from fbx.

yes i knw that much but that feature would be helpful to MED but shouldnt be a need really, afterall... most 3d engine packages dont even include a model editor

I hope that A8 doesnt demand me to upgrade my hardware too

You can't compare animating a model in MED and animating a model with Blender for example : it's day and night
In Blender you have options to visualise bones, you can paint weight, it auto calculate frames between IK keys etc ... etc ...
And Blender is free, with a new more friendly version incoming.


I really don't see the use of MED, it can be good for beginners in game making , or little tasks, but when modeling , animating serioulsy it's a pain ot use and can't compare with specialised tools.

That's Great News, thanks for the Info

Some questions:

- When will be a new A8 Logo, Artwork Contest?
- Have the Beta Tester unlimited access to the new A8 Beta Version (not the final release version) without restriction, like Pro Version etc?
- The new streaming textures feature (MegaTextures), will be implemented in the A8 Beta Version?

I was thinking the same, but MED is a great tool for importing models. In most GameEngines you either have direct fbx/colloda/etc importer or exporters for MAX. not eveyone has max. Problem of direct importing is that everytime something goes wrong while importing(or exporting), you have to go back your 3d package and figure out what could be wrong, because everything seems fine in the 3d program. With med, you can see what is wrong, and fix most of them in med, if it is not a very big problem.

When I saw this topic I first thought of a noob asking whether he should wait for some (hypothetical) A8 or buy A7 now. Some random thoughts:

- Compared to the UDK, Unity or all other engines that come into my mind, 3dgs toolset is like 1980 (like many posters already said)
- 3dgs power lies in the low learning curve (with tuts and all), but with an up-to-date toolset this could be strengthened
- Feature wise (graphics, scripting, ...) it's not "next-gen", but acceptable (though you could get some more power by using OGRE, Lua, Python, ...)
- Lua, Python, Angelscript, ... would take the lang devtime you spend into litec from you and at the same time offer more stuff to toy with for the bloody beginners (OO, threads, stackless py )
- Also using OGRE (or appropriate libs) whould spare time to spend on rendering because then thousands of ppl work for you for free
- Maybe instead of providing templates, provide finished minigames the users can learn from and change
- Good step in the right direction to use PhysX and to switch to openal

Just my 2 cents. 3dgs is nice for beginners, buy has too many potholes for serious, professional users.

Ok i'll add my 2 cents worth as well.

3DGS's good points, Only a one time price unless you want a major upgrade.
"No royalties or indie to pay" Heaps of free resources, good tuts, models, plugins etc.
Great support from both community and producers of GS. The AUM becuase of it's snippets and workshops.
Consistant updates for free. "Unlike other programs you buy "developers that produce a program and after
a few months or years scrap it and don't tell you. Take icex and world studio for example."
You can virtually start making money from 3DGS in no time. "Low budget stuff or course".
Proberly a few more good points that I can't think of right now.

Bad points. The constant crashes errors and bugs.
As many people have said the editors need a major overhaul.

All in all I am happy with 3DGS I have learned quite a bit over the few years I've had it and I am only getting better.
It's like everything else you try , buy or use, they all have thier bad and good points.
You might switch over to unity or somethings else but I betcha there will be things about them you don't like as well.

Well that's my 2 cents worth,

I like the OGRE idea. A product based on OGRE + Lite-C (needs much better debugging though) + OpenAL + Bullet + ... could be quite awesome. OGRE would bring OpenGL support and probably it would be easier to compete with the huge Unity team. This will never happen though. JCL won't give up his investments in the current engine.

PhysX of course is a lot better than ODE but I am still not convinced that it's the best choice in the long run. They fixed bugs, added features and polished it but it's still noticable that PhysX is originally based on ODE and has some flaws like lacking cylinders.

The biggest problem is the editors. I have no idea how this could be fixed without ditching WED and starting anew.

The captain of a sinking ship stays till the end.

Maybe, it is mainly this:
there are already many small example games in the AUM Magazines and on the Acknex Unlimited Resources site -
- may they simply need to be updated with each new version of Acknex, and get a better presentation.

A page of all these little games with index and search function, with tags to find in a fast way, what you need, and with recommendations for newbies.

George's snippets are magnificent for learning, they are worth to invest some time and money to sort them to ensure that even someone who is absolutely new to this engine and site finds within in seconds what he needs.

My guess: 70 percent of the questions in the forum could get their answer without having been asked, if the big resource of snippets were better organized.

If anyone here has a site idea for orginizing templates/resources better, i am willing the program it for community.

That's a great idea Quadraxas and it's really good of you to willing take the time to do this.

I reckon for starters, the best way could be to arange from
Basic to Medium to Advance. An example would be Basic player movements, Basic AI, Level building etc. Then in medium you could have Weapon handling,Advoidance, paths, doors sprites etc, Then advanced could be stuff like Multiplayer, physics etc.
Hope these suggestions are a start to get this idea of the ground.

@ Nidhogg

These are some really good ideas. We could also sort the models, for example "Charakter", "building" and so on.

@Quadraxas

Thanks you very much for your effort Quadraxas. You are a very helpful guy

For example a game made on Unity for Iphone :
I don't found an RPG game as good as that even with simple graphics !
RavenSword
And Iphone is far from a PC !
Unity workflow and complete , easy of use editors made it possible !

Another point, tutorials could be made by paid users !
Unity step by step tutorials in PDF format are lot more interesting to follow alos !
They begin to ask to you to import models, textures, use the editor in fact.
After they ask you to change some lines of code and explain
for example how works particle effects, or the different camera
system ! After that they go deeper in code and techniques.

It would be cool for A8 To have such quality tutorials
(download them on Unity site to view how they look like 3rd person game tutorial).



-I hope A8 to have in future an all in one editor (terrain, reatime lightening when making shanges in the scene, better gizmos like in Silo 2 ?). If it keeps MED i never mind , but GED should not exist, bring it into WED directly !

A8 can go hight if new panels features will be added to WED
like a first version of a physic panel, a panel to choose different camera systems with attributes to tweak , or a panel displaying textures and shaders of and objects and allowing ot change by simple clicks from project ressources !

Well enought dreams
Let's wait for the beta !

It's such a shame bmap_process didn't make it to A7

Jibb

It's very exciting to see the beta page updated with A8 features.

The description of matBones (which is, for me, one of the features I've been looking forward to most) says "With only a few bones and no weights, the difference is less noticable." -- I was under the impression that the amount of vertices attached to animated bones was by far more of an issue than the number of bones.

Can anyone shed some light on this?

Jibb

will A8 allow to render in RTs wich have a larger scale then the screen size?

A complete new Development of the WorldEditor would bring the
most advance in Workflow.
WED is a patchworked program based on an old Editor from 1999.

I dont see why there was no Engine-based Rendering implemented long
time ago into WED.
The whole purpose of GED is to make some workaround for
functionalities that should have been in WED long ago.

Also the Level-format should be based on something like xml
or other plaintext format (at least as optional saveformat)
So usermade Editors or script-processors can interchange with
the levelformat, and add custom functionalities.

----

The other big issue is the multiplayer part.
There should be at least a more advanced reference implementation made available.
And the silly limits to playernumber and dedicated servers removed.
(There is plenty room for Pro-exclusive extras in other areas)

imo just lift every limitation of commercial edition off, instead of the startup screen and wrs. Because that's what sells pro. Everything else can alreay be written as plugin. So lift limatations, so people may spend their time on creating better and more usefull plugins/tools instad of trying to get pro features to comm. I.E if cloth physx would only run on PRO, i would be disappointed.

There is already such an option. The WMP format was plain text until A7. You can still use it by disabling the binary WMP format in options.scr.

Thanks, did not know it can be reactivated
by editing this file.

it's a bit useless though since as far as i know it doesn't support any new features that got added in the meantime. the parser for it also seemed to be slow as hell if you used mesh level geometry.

I think meanwhile there exists a description of the WMB format, so it does not really matter anymore that it's binary.

Not sure about WMP, though.

yes, i think for external tools it's much better to target wmb.

The WMB format is not well documented, IMO it'd be better having a WMB SDK. I quit developing an XML converter after various issues with the WMB format.

WMP itself should be described by XML.
This is a much more clean solution than the propreatary current format.

Also: is there a method NOT to pack all textures into the
WMP file? But rather load the textures from the wad?

This would seriously reduce the size of levels, when using
more than a few. A much cleaner approach than packing everything
into each levelfile.

wmp doesn't include textures. only wmb does.

but i agree about more open and clean formats and that including textures in the level file doesn't make much sense and has many disadvantages.



...and i dislike file format sdks. they are the opposite of open. most of the time they turn out to be some kind of ugly c++ api which is hard to use from other languages like python.

Yes, ment the compiled format, the fileextensions sound too similar.

Basically for a clean approach, Assets and Descriptions
should be seperated.

Since the Textures are every time copied into the levelfile, it creates redundant data.
And thus blowing up filesizes.

Textures can also be reference by using somthing like
an "external" flag for a wad file.
Where the engine loads the texture then from the wad.
Just like it was done with the mdl format..
(Maybe even assigning textures as single files,
and not the closed WAD format)

And that palette file should be eliminated once and for all,
there is not purpose for it nowerdays.

I agree with ventilator on the SDKs, they seem too complicated to use. I tried to use one from C# and it just wasn't easy!

I decided to manually parse the WMB format, from the online specification although it would help if it was accurate, because I have found numerous errors.

for my editor, I'm using the .wmb to read in existing levels, but writing out .$$M files, which can be compiled by the map compiler, so i don't have to mess about with lightmaps etc.

will sprite instancing still allow sorted semitransparency?

Hey Hummel, what's up with this:

Have you tried bmap_zbuffer? I'm pretty sure that's its job.

Jibb

I know I know, Slin already told me
...should probably read update features more carefully^^

Ah k. No worries Very useful for AA with post-processing chains -- as I see you've already done in the off-topic thread.

Jibb

year but there I used a vertex shader to move the vertices an arbitrary count of screen-pixels (for AA just fractions), means I´ve to render the scene several times

Okay, that makes sense since you described it as "expensive". It's a pretty clever workaround.

Jibb

contrary to 'normal' SS my solution had to calculate the vertex stuff also multiple times but the much more expensive part of both SS-methods is certainly the pixel shader specially when using more complex effects like relief mapping.
I optimized my technique later so that the offset direction is defined by the world space normals of the vertices (means I scale objects instead of moving) which eventually reduces the SS sampler count by the half while reaching nearly the same AA quality (rotated grid is not possible with this method) but prevent the textures from getting slightly blurred. ( 3 sampler SSAA )
I could imagine that my solution could be used as per-object defined AA or something like that but nevertheless since this thread is about A8 I should stop talking about my clever solutions for not existing problems

...sorry for the off-topic crap

I appreciate the info

But yeah, it's about time we left this for A8-related questions. I think many questions here have been left unanswered

Jibb

Hi, I agree with you on this, the easiest way to use the SDK is with C++ and it's difficult to use the headers in say PureBasic (using PureBasic itself). On the forecast page, there's am entry about allowing LiteC to create standard WIN32 DLLs, I think this will be the best way to create wrappers for other third party languages rather than use the SDK. However, this feature has been on hold for over a year or so so I'll probably hold off buying A8 until it's implemented (my initial assumption was it was going to be implemented in A7?).

Will A8 Commercial cost 150 Euros, like A7 Commercial???
That would be great!

since A8 is completly code compatible to A7 id probably update to pro.

BUT:
where can i sign in for a beta test? i think as long term member who already completed freeware aswell as comercial games id fulfill the requirements for beta? no?

Will A8 Commercial cost 150 Euros, like A7 Commercial???

Why should it be more expensive, when you can find Torque 3D binaries for 100$ , Unity Indie for FREE ?

There is no prices change, but there will be a alot-cheaper upgrade solution for a7users if you upgrade in a limited time after release.

you have a point there but torque binary is like modding a game. The tools are all pretty but without source there are alot of limitations.(Programmer's wise. we spent 2 days only for some sort of injury/blood decal stuff on torque3d binary, turned out it was nearly impossible without source code access. torque script is not lite-c. It was a graphics project, we used ogre instead.), for short from programmer's pov torque binary is nowhere near acknex comm.

Also you can compera alot more diffrent stuff, i.e. udk is free it blows all indie-targeted engines in the market, for both power, features and tools wise.

This thread is for a8 release announcement, there are other engine vs. engine threads, so let's cut this here.

I wasn't starting a thread Vs at all !
Just pointed that price should stay the same , if the version name's is really COMMERCIAL VERSION.

I hope, you have founded facts for this statement. JCL did not answer my question about his price policy for A8. I could everybody understand, who thinks about a change to the major unity engine. And I repeat my statment... I am only to lazy to change to a new engine. But I can´t see really new hardcore features in A8.
And after I worked very intensivly with the old physics, I come to one point. The new system is deeply needed to correct the totally crap of the old system.

For me personally it is just a correction, not a new feature.

So, after all... I hope, the A8 price it worth to pay for.
And I really hope, the A8 price is not only a fake to make a position near the unity.

And... all the sale offers of A7 (com to pro) should really be a clear indicator for thinking about a more comfortable price for A8.

I do not exactly know where but i am sure that somewhere JCL said there is no price change.

This was not the question... ( I don´t have a doubt)


This was the question..
"but there will be a alot-cheaper upgrade solution for a7users if you upgrade in a limited time after release."

this is the Link where jcl say that:

http://www.opserver.de/ubb7/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=38940&Number=317106#Post317106

how come JCL hasn't commented in in this thread yet? You guys have all asked some really important questions which I think everyone would like JCL to answer.

Hi, jcl

Sounds well, I hoped that A8 promotes can play the substantive role, comprehensive promotion and update. A7 lets the creation in many aspects not be convenient, raises the creation efficiency and supports the multi-software cooperation is the very important development flow. A7 may realize the NEXT-GEN engine performance effect, but because on some foundation function and does the connection flaw, how need to spend many time in the compatible data, develops 3rd side plugin and tools and in the SDK 2nd development. Therefore, A7 needs to improve some aspects:

1. Promotes the FBX format support, in order to support the complete data which perfectly the AUTODESK design software outputs. When a debugging perfect model inputs MED, but also needs to spend the massive time to debug the effect, does the redundant work is the unusual another person's depressed matter repeatedly. For instance the input model animations are incomplete, the skeleton or skin dislocation, bad vertex animation or bone animation, loss material or UV confusion and so on.

Between FBX, DX, OBJ, 3DS and so on forms back and forth transforms repeatedly frequently, achieves the MED best compatible effect. Regarding did not have ability development model plugin development personnel, this was the level design nightmare.

2. Multi-thread support. Regarding the large-scale high accuracy detail checkpoint, the WED/GED operating efficiency needs to improve, edit in the checkpoint on the high-end workstation entitys or the change camera view, at present needs to endure the worrisome exaggeration detention.

Good luck, anticipates A8!

Lin

will there be a logo contest again?

even if you didn't use any logo last time it was a lot of fun for most participants i think.

yes, it was very fun for me.

The thing that is a little sad is that A8 is only some sort of new A7 Beta.
Editors and tools remains the same, it's only new programming functions at final, not a new WED or improvements on workflow.

Well let's wait for A8.

well i just wished the video border on a8 was on the a7 because , a7 had video alpha and video border would make sense there too.. dont know why it did not happen..

thats right, but a better engine is good too. its just the question if the improvements are the price worth...

right.. i mean do i have to buy this a8 im not, sure.. even the physics thing can be done with dlls if its really needed. And one of the truths outhere is that .. i see people programming but i never see their work really worthing outhere.. why that?

Im just surprised sooooo much that JCL hasn't commented at all on this announcement. Or answered any of the many many questions ppl asked.

he didnt answer because he works hard to implement your desired features

dream on.

2 questions, maybe someone besides JCL knows the answers

1. when is A8 aprox. going to come out? please dont say this year...be little more specific if you can...
2. is it going to be DX9 or maybe, just maybe it'll support DX10? or will it be OpengGL?


maybe this was answered already in this thread but i couldnt make myself read all 16 pages hehe

1. this summer.
2. dx9.(it MAY support opengl since they are considering mobile versions?)

1: A8 comes out this summer, there is already a Beta
2: i don`t know...

open or closed Beta?

'closed' beta.
check http://manual.3dgamestudio.net/beta.htm for details.

ok, thanks

and one last question for tonight
what other platforms will be supported?

Quoting jcl -

I think any decent gaming graphics card will be vastly more powerful regardless.
Since gpu animation will run on the vertex shader, and the vertex shader is the most underutilized part of rendering, there is plenty of headroom for the gpu.
I forgot to mention that animation can also be accomplished within a fixed function effect on hardware previous to vertex shaders.

In this old article they compare a Radeon 9700 being 5 times faster than a pentium 4 at 3.0 ghz. That card did not have universal shaders, so there was less vertex processors than pixel processors, and it STILL got 5 times performance.
Now we have dynamic allocation to vertex and pixel shaders, and shader performance expanded vastly since then.

I did tests a while ago when I first requested the feature (it was a bit hacky, but it worked). I got far more than a 5 times performance boost -- there's far more information in the original thread, somewhere in the archives of the future forum probably. Differences in ratio would vary largely according to how up-to-date the user's CPU is compared to their GPU.

All I was saying is it doesn't appear to be the amount of bones that would be giving people performance issues, it's the amount of vertices. Although, that's compounded by bone-blending functions. Still -- unless an obscene amount of bones are being used, I would've thought the amount of bones would be one of the least important factors.

Jibb

is this worth ~700 euros? no offence JCL but i dont see that worth in here.
DirectPlay replaced with Enet, faster bones animation rendering, arbitrary shaped windows, new sprite functions and OpenAl later in 2010 which is a maybe.
oh and, realtime shadow mapping (how good this will be, who knows)


now, are these features worth that much money really?

are that just the new differences..? because i dont even use them.. lol
Would be better if they include DX11 and extended shader lib's, and maker.. more effects, things like .. cryengine 3

you ask alot

i'd be quite satisfied with better level editor, shadows, better multiplayer performance(i'm not sure if this replacing with enet even gonna improve MP performance), better shadows(not sure about this too)
faster, better looking engine not just a handful of bigger changes. needs more major changes and features.... or a smaller price hehe

The deal with gamestudio editions is you don't pay for some new features but for 2-3 years of updates, compare the first A6 version with the latest A6 update available.

i'd prefer to have a list of the features which i'm gonna like and need when the new version comes out but to wait and pray that those features come out as updates in next few years.


it's like buying a crappy buggy, one mission game without multiplayer but the publisher says all those new features will come out in the course of the next few years. would you buy such a game? i think not...

what i like about new version of anything is that list of new features which i feel so good reading them. and i cant say that for A8, sorry...

Gamestudio is a constant development of features
and upgrades.

The "cut" that the Versions make, is more of an economic
decision than an architectual one. (In order to sell a new Version-state, and not just give free updates)

Thats why you cant expect the next Version to be feature-complete
when it launches, as it constantly get developed further.

A feature that would make A8 really valuable would be a snippet library additionally to the template system.

The truth is that the engine works well for 90% of the users but the delivered (professional) content (not only snippets but also models, tools, sounds, music, ...) is not sufficient.

Yeah I agree, Need to replace the default WAD with a more professional one "not the enhanced one" but a totaly new one.

right, especially for new users it should be more attractive. a new default wad with cool textures could power on newbies to work with the engine

I disagree. What kind of snippets? This can only be Gamestudio specific, the internet and all good books on software engineering and programming are full of algorithms, tips and tricks, hints and concrete implementations. Who decided what is worthful in such a library?

I really would like to see Gamestudio on the same level with other engines technicalwise, so, I really want things like model instancing and a 1st party solution for dynamic indoor and outdoor soft shadowmapping without using stencilshadows :-)

Nevertheless I will update, the speed increase, the new sprite instancing and procedural textures are things I need.

@HeelX: Do you remember the old tool by Realspawn called something like "WDL Library (Gold)"? This is what I mean. And yes, the snippes should be Gamestudio specific!

i think they should replace MED,not upgrading MED or make anew one,but like other professional Engines,maybe a plugin for 3dsmax_maya_softimage_etc..
to export the model directly from these tools,this is better than making your models in third_pary tools then import them to MED to find yourself fighting it to make things right,f.i:bones-animation-some times textures.
and i am pretty sure that almost no one is using MED to design,but only to export models to (*.mdl)"well,at least not serious user's".

I Agree, give us some propper Blender support for weightpainting.

I was happy when i read that A7 COM supports weightpainting too, but its not capable of importing it properly from FBX(do this update for A7)



EDIT: oh they added a new fbx importer to med with the new beta

Greets
Rackscha

@Rackscha, i remember seeing a FBX update for blender last week on somewhwre, you may search for it.

So yout hink the blender fbx exporter is the problem?
Might give it a try.

Greets
Rackscha

I'll try and see if it's working for 3dsmax-exported-fbx models.

just a little question, will A8 at least have shader support for the free edition? Don't wanna step into discussion of it, just want to know this little fact for me, wheter it will inlude Shader Support for the free Edition or not. Didn't find any information about this, sorry if it is somewhere and I didn't see it well.

I have a question.
When I buy now 3d games studios A7 Commercial Edition, from the gamestudios side.
Is it true that I can update it to A8 for free??

YES

Question:
will A8 Be able to use more Model formats than mdl?
Like.. Full use if 3ds or/and fbx...
That would make some Things easier...

unneeded imo, that would require alot of work with a little gain,

fbx wont directly work and will have a lot of problems and it will be very hard to fix without an editor like med.

unneeded.. if you would have the same porblems with MED´s convertings.. You wuldn´t say that

Each 3ds, or fbx has:
- inverted normals
- NO Skins/Matrrials/Textures
- Missing vertexes
- No Animation

So.. working with MED is crap.. and using 3ds/fbx from 3dsmax or C4D is not working correctly... *tried to reinstall many times Y_Y*

For me.. It´s the thing i need most!

But do you think implementing 3ds/fbx support will be any easier than fixing the bugs of the import?

a direct support in the engine would be stupid imo, but a silent import/conversion would improve the workflow. So that you can open 3ds or fbx directly and it is loaded with some default settings and if you don't like the way it's loaded (which shouldn't happen too often ofc^^), you can change it afterwards in the properties panel or so..

@Esper, i do not have such problems, you probably doing it wrong, my skins animations and normals are importing fine.

Will A8 support Euphoria?! You can search for it in youtube.

lmao... am about 99.99 percent sure it wont =)

But, still... there is a 0.01 percent of hope...

Uhmm... no.
I guess it's a 100 percent that it WONT be included:
It's expensive. It's not necessairy.
AND:
It's more complicated than the current methods, and it needs more resources, so why would they include it? Even if they would, most users wouldnt be able to handle it (me included).

Very popular game engine and games using this "expensive and complicated method":
1 - GTA IV
2 - Assassins Creed
3 - Star Wars: Force Unleashed
4 - Indiana Jones 2008 (not sure about the existing of this game)

If you mean this argument for real, you are either stupid or haven't seen the real world.

Sylar I know about real word more than you, if you have nothing left to say then calling me studid, please shut the fuck up.

Games like GTAV IV also have a powerful graphics engine behind them, way above the calibre of A7. Theres no point in adding a state of the art system like Endorphin if the rest of the engine is lacking.

U also forget that all these games are produced with high effort, by highly experienced and skilled people, who are PAID for handling it;
Also, its unecessairy for an indy engine like A8: Just wont live up the costs for most people. A8 would also get much more expensive by including that.

Yep, you right guys... no Euphoria

Not that bad. It wouldnt make animation easier, believe me...

This more sounds like a point AGAINST euphorica.

Hehe

But nooo, the Physics of GTA IV are awesome! The best i've ever seen in games. How the persons moved when you were driving on them...AMAZING!

That's not what I meant.

Look at the list of games using it, then look at which engine we're talking about.

Yeah... if 3DGS were more professional, Euphoria could make any sense... but not now...

Better shut up everyone - if you call jcl's engine unprofessional, he'll get angry and you won't get your feature requests in A8^^

@Scorpion:
YEP, its not the engine itself, its the programmer.
We have some skilled programmer here(shaders and things like that), but to be honest:
Most programmers here(including me) are NOT professional.

That may be true, but I my opinion we don't need to be professionals to create great games.

Yeah, thats true Superku... but quality and type of games make by us, depends on it... on our professionalism. And not only us, ENGINE too...

Depends on the point of view.
You cannot deny that the big projects do not use A8, which is not necessarily a bad thing or does make A8 bad. However it does not make sense to integrate an expensive tool layed out for use in those big business games.

It makes sense!
The feeling of power!!!!

No it realy makes no sense and not becouse euphorica cost over 10000 dollers...

But will pXent realy be seportet in A8???

With flag physic, destuction physic, reaction on animations and so on.
like this;
link

I meen without buying pXent?

It is physx, pxent is just a wrapper for physx. So, I think all of this stuff is icluded.

But another question: Is there an release date? Because summer is long and I want A8 so badly

OMG

erhmmm.....in my opinion blaming the engine is a bad approach. Suppose anyone from this community gets the full commercial unreal 3 engine, what are the chances that he will create a great game? imho, the chances are low, and all because there are not so many people here who are skillful enaugh to get the benefit from all the cool stuff. Not many programmers are able to make some authentic and creative artwork, not many artists are good enaugh in scripting to implement all the physics, shaders, etc. So I think that the top level on 3dgs is not the AAA game, but a gameplay-oriented game. And I think that A7 already has all (at least enaugh) tools to create a thrilling game. Just look at AAAaaaAAA!!! or eghm (O_o) some other games whose names I don't remeber. Why are the games on Unity so good? My opinion: because the artists are very talented professioanls (maybe a bit off-topic here). So heads up!
Conclusion: look forward for A8 but do not give up on A7....

"V8.01 public beta - released Jul 12, 2010"

http://manual.3dgamestudio.net/beta.htm

hmmm

One question:

Whats about a compiler rewrite for A8?

For example when initialising a multidimensional object at runtime, we have to use those ugly brackets:

(array[x])[y]

in C you wouldnt have to do this o.o

Users of Free version of A8, will they be able to hide they models and script to .wrs? Or still, they'll need a PRO version to do that? I don't mean only script (as in commercial version), but all project data (pictures, sounds, models, scripts).