GMan's Mods & Stuff

greetings and welcome   its great to see a face from the Irrlicht forums over here   my apologies on the examples.  i didnt realize it had been so long since i published a release!  i actually recompile/rework the examples for each release of the Irrlicht mod for testing purposes.  i just hadnt sat down and actually ported/released the newest versions.  in any case, im doing so now.  examples 01 - 04 can be downloaded here.  i hope to finish them all before the end of the week.

as for BlitzMax, its a pure joy to work in.  a very well designed language (IMO) thats fun and easy to work with.  a real beauty is that its cross-platform for the big 3 and has things like networking, sound, and joystick input built-in.  my only real beef with the language is the lack of method/function overloads.  i know thats a big OOP theory battle, but in my mind they are extremely valuable.   any method in Irrlicht that has an overload will have an alternate name in the BlitzMax mod.  also, there was no (clean) way to directly access fields so they are wrapped in get/set methods.

the mod itself is something im very proud of.  my main design goal was to come as near as possible to the C++ Irrlicht API.  this allows the regular API docs to be extremely useful and its pretty easy to port examples and code snippets from the Irrlicht forums when you get the hang of it.

anyways, again welcome!

Gman, one thing.
If I leave the code in to select the video driver, when I run the generated executable it doesn't start but remains running as a process, eating resources. Examples only work if I assign a driver (be it opengl or D3D) in the beginning, getting rid of the selection code. Weird, but I got no problem assigning the render driver without choosing it

regards,
Alvaro

Thanks Gman. I'm using BlidePlus as IDE, I got it yesterday since they say it's so good for Bmax. After I become a bit more familiar with the Blitzmax demo and the Irrrlicht integration, I'll also buy blitzmax, meanwhile I'll sqeeze the 30 days of the trial out!  . I'll also wait for your whole package of examples to make sure the code is fully compatible with Irrlicht 1.5. 

I'm going to check the option you suggest in the Blitzmax IDE options to see how things go.

Thanks for the help.

Alvaro

awwwh! great! Thanks Gman. I'm downloading both the new mod and the examples right ahead. Great work! you move fast! Looking forward to the full set of examples to try them out.

Regards, and thanks

Alvaro

Last edited by afecelis (2009-02-28 15:26:18)

you are very welcome   im still thinking the driver selection issue is related to the compile mode setting in the IDE.  ive never used blideplus so im not sure where to change the setting at.  the setting needs to be changed so the compile is in console mode (as opposed to GUI mode) since the driver selection appears in the console similar to the C++ examples.

one really cool thing you will hopefully see is the near 1-to-1 conversion between the C++ and BMAX versions.

You nailed it!  The option to compile as console in Blide is not among the compiler's options but in the "Publish settings". Now everything is running perfectly, no code changes needed in the examples! Awesome! 

cheers,
Alvaro

PS. One last question, in examples that load animated meshes like Sidney or the fairies, why are their animations playing so extremely fast compared to their speed in normal Irrlicht?

Last edited by afecelis (2009-02-28 18:21:34)

greetings

PS. One last question, in examples that load animated meshes like Sidney or the fairies, why are their animations playing so extremely fast compared to their speed in normal Irrlicht?

that one i havent figured out.  there is nothing specific that i am doing that would cause it as far as the module goes.  even the hello world one does it.

Gman, forgot to ask. Any plans on integrating Irrklang for audio?

i believe there is already an IrrKlang module floating around out there somewhere, but in any case BMAX already has a built-in audio module that has worked just fine for me so far.  there are also other audio modules available for BMAX.

BMAX has 2 built-in audio modules.  free audio which is written by BRL and an OpenAL module.  there is an OpenAL3d module using the OpenAL module.  free audio can simulate using depth and pan effects.  there are also numerous other modules available (found on the BMAX forums).  one is BASS, there is also a maxmod module although im not sure what the sound system is underneath.

as for an example, check out the code in the BMAX help docs for the SetChannelDepth() function.  using depth, pan, volume and the position of the active camera, you can write an animator that will handle 3d-like sound.

greetings   ive had most of them dont for a while but didnt find the time to post them.  i have all but 16 and 17.  17 i cant do since its mobile and BMAX doesnt support it.  16 is giving me a bit of a hassle (or it was when i was trying to get it going).  the latest can be downloaded here.

Hi Gman,

Back with a couple of Mac Os questions 
Do you always create your mods around official Irrlicht releases? or are SVN versions supported? I'm getting this error now:
"The Irrlicht library version 1.5.1-SVN does not match the mod version 1.5"
Should I use the official 1.5 instead?

regards,
Alvaro