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