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.