CAST II version 0.99

[Mirage]

Hello everyone!

Version 0.99 of my engine has been released.

Whats new:
Particle System Editor

Particle systems in CAST II has a number of properties which can be represented as a set of control points or color gradients. Actual values are interpolated between the points. Now it's possible to easily edit such properties in CASTEd.

Select a particle emitter or affector in objects tree and select Window->Graph Value editor in menu to open graphic editor.
To add a control point click on an empty space on graphic. The point can be moved by mouse with pressed left button. Double click removes a point.

Material Editor

The editor opens by Window->New material option or CTRL+W shortcut.
Here available some quick settings for material as well as a list of image resources which can be used as a texture.
The editor can create a new material or modify an existing one. To modify just select a material or a visible onject in objects tree.
So now it's very easy to change a texture of an object.

Other changes
New classes, bug fixes, etc.

Download (~20MB)

[WILL]

So how goes the CAST engine development? Are you planning on making a demo or a game under the new engine/library?

[phibermon]

I've been following cast for quite some time, love it to pieces, very elegant design. I'd highly reccomend anyone looking to develop a 3D engine or game to examine cast carefully, it's a wealth of knowledge

[Mirage]

So how goes the CAST engine development? Are you planning on making a demo or a game under the new engine/library?

Slowly. Very slowly.
I'll post here when there will be something new.

I've been following cast for quite some time, love it to pieces, very elegant design. I'd highly reccomend anyone looking to develop a 3D engine or game to examine cast carefully, it's a wealth of knowledge

Thanks.
But seems that all sorts of wrappers of c++ stuff much more interesting to the community than native pascal development.

[WILL]

But seems that all sorts of wrappers of c++ stuff much more interesting to the community than native pascal development.

Nonsense! Native Pascal development all the way!

[phibermon]

Well I think people need educating Cast 2 is quite possibly the most advanced native 3D engine that has ever existed in an Object Pascal environment. There have been many other projects over the years but only cast has the tools to allow for full scale development.

Particle Editors, scene editors etc it's tools like these that abstract away from the inner complexities and allow people to focus on creativity.

I'm no expert, but I know enough about the game industry to know that in commercial games? Engines are all pretty much as good as each other, same features etc it's the tools the engine ship with that make developers choose an engine such as unreal or crytek.

Many people that come here want to make games but what they end up doing is making engines. It's quite rare in this day and age where commercial devs write engines, they use them, sometimes extend them but rarely write them from scratch.

There's a whole world of game development techniques that just don't seem to come up on these forums and I think they would if more people picked an appropriate existing engine for their desired goal and skill level and stopped worrying about the core, let people such as Mirage do that for you!

I can personally promise you, as I know an individual that works as a developer for a games company, that the most of the people writing commercial games *don't know how* to write game engines. (in fact if you REALLY want to work making games, you should be learning how to model in 3D, not code. because that's 90% of the time that goes into a game)

Believe me, playing around with path finding, steering algorithms and just general game logic is a lot more fun than writing a Graphics sub system! (well, for most anyway)

EDIT : CAST II is a lot more than just a graphics sub system, it's very nearly a complete Game Engine.

[NecroDOME]

(in fact if you REALLY want to work making games, you should be learning how to model in 3D, not code. because that's 90% of the time that goes into a game)

I simply do it all!! , Code, engine, graphics, sounds etc

@Mirage, nice to see your engine growing!!
Keep up the good work!

[phibermon]

There's a certain attraction to doing it all I just feel that with the smaller set of Object Pascal coders, and even smaller sub-set of those interesting in developing games in the language, it would be nice to see people coming together more and establishing common code bases. It would do wonders for the learning curve (as the greater shared experience could be disseminated down the skill levels) and in terms of 3D game development, I certainly think Cast II has a lot to offer.

With that in mind, I'm going to start a thread..

[WILL]

I think that there needs to be a couple of games made with CAST II to demonstrate what it can do. Sort of a proving stage of any game engine, I think. Maybe we can get Mirage to flesh something out for the next PGD Annual too.

[Mirage]

CAST II v0.995 is available.

Main changes:

Added experimental physics subsystem based on Newton 2.

Added resource carriers -- helper classes to load/save resources from/to external storage (e.g. file or URL). To add support of a new 3D model or picture format (or to add support of loading resource from archive or network) a corresponding resource carrier implementation should be written.

Added automatic resource update -- if associated with a resource (via "data carrier" property) external storage contains a newer version of the resource it will be updated from the external storage.
For example, there is a mesh with texture and the texture's "data carrier" property pointing to a file. If the file was edited and saved in a graphical editor by an artist and he alt+tabbed back to CASTEd the texture on the object will be automatically updated.

Added TItem.IsInScene() method.

Added an include file with compiler options (base.inc).

Fixed some memory leaks.

Added FPU control word management.

Main changes in CASTEd:

Added interface localization support.

Added some physics-related properties (more to add)

Material editor improved

Added syntax highlighting in shader editor (thanks to SynEdit)

Added resource carrier based on Vampyre Imaging. Which means support of such formats as .psd, .png, .dds, Jpeg2000 and more.

Faster mesh optimisation

Fixed 2D items visibility problems (GUI, editor controls)

Now GUI items can be added only as a child items of GUI root item.

Added default material for new scenes.

Moving an item with Win key pushed will clone the item.

http://casteng.com/downloads.shtml