OrbWeaver

Bloom is a poor-man's HDR, it was available in Lost Coast as an alternative (although I actually preferred it to the HDR as implemented in that demo).

As far as portalling is concerned, it is not the light's origin that is important but its bounding box (the pink box). If ANY PART of a light volume extends into a given portal area, the light is active when that portal area is visible.

Not sure which page you're looking at - http://bytonic.de/html/benchmarks.html indicates that the latest version (0.9.4) runs at comparable speed if not faster than the original C. Java takes care of memory automatically, there are certain hints you can give it, like "please run the garbage collector now" or assigning an object to null to get rid of it, but basically the language and runtime environment take the responsibility away from the programmer for almost all memory-related tasks. There is no delete in Java, for this reason.

It's obvious to anybody who knows the inner workings and limitations of the D3 engine along with the technique behind the lightgem. To an outsider the natural reaction is "A pipe? For render data? WTF?"

Yes, but it is much simpler because the CPU does not see enough of the code at one time to really optimise it. Branch Prediction is still a darn sight better than nothing though. The problem with Java, as everyone knows, is its memory footprint. I think this is a design decision since memory is cheap, and you can do more optimisation and get better performance if you don't mind inflating the memory usage a bit. I expect that we will see the likes of D3 on Java, but it will be using even more memory at that stage.

Oh, so that's what the render pipe is for.

Quake 2 has been ported to Java and runs with good performance - check out http://bytonic.de/html/jake2.html In theory Java applications can run faster than C/C++ because the VM performs run-time optimisation based on common code paths, which simply cannot be done with precompiled binaries. In practice the frame rate can be limited by factors such as the Java/OpenGL bindings.

That's what ZB does. Might as well get used to it.

That is true. I first played TDP on a P166 with 32 MB ram and SOFTWARE rendering (Videlogic GrafixStart 410 if I remember rightly). Frame-rates were in single figures, and if you exploded a zombie with a fire arrow there would be about 5 seconds of disc thrashing before the explosion happened, at about 1 FPS. It is amazing now that it was acceptable to play under those conditions, whereas these days I would not tolerate less than 20 FPS in any game.

I play at 1280x1024 on a Radeon 9800 XT and it is playable, although visible slower and less smooth than other games. You may find you can improve performance by changing certain graphics card settings outside the game, for example if you are forcing 8x AF in the drivers you are going to get a slowdown.

Quite possibly, and there may well be applications for which C# is suitable, including some games. This doesn't mean that it's the overall best language and everyone should switch to it however. C++ added major new functionality to the C language. C# is just Microsoft's attempt to jump on the Enterprise Language bandwagon, since they can't control or kill Java like they wanted to. Most people today will not bother learning C++ unless there is a specific need for it, like modding Doom 3 or something. I don't like pointers and machine-dependent stuff so I would not be very good with it, but it does have its devotees. How old is old? Apples had graphical interfaces before Windows even existed, and there are version of Windows much older than 95 (Windows 2.0 anyone?). If you compare a very old Apple with Windows 95 this is not a fair test since the Windows version is probably more recent than the Apple. I don't think Windows is fading quite yet, and as we were discussing, if Microsoft succeeds in killing OpenGL then there will be a lot less incentive for companies to develop for it, which exludes Linux automatically (unless Wine's implementation of DirectX can take over). What's up with all the persecution complexes this week? HINT: people not agreeing with your choice of language/company/text editor/game does not make them a hater or a know-it-all.

Indeed. Some will, some won't. Even people who don't hate Microsoft don't necessarily want to be in its pocket. Nor is C# the only high-level language available by any means - Java, Python, Perl, PHP all have their uses and will not be replaced by C# for many applications. Microsoft use anticompetitive and illegal business practices, deceptive FUD campaign against competing products, fund kamikaze lawsuits against their competitors, conduct personal smear campaigns against those who try to move away from their products, and lobby for IP legislation that will benefit them but drive smaller enterprises out of business. No matter how good or bad their technical projects are, there are many who would not wish to associate with them or their bullying tactics. You are aware that Microsoft have never invented anything? They are very good at marketing, but everything they produce was invented elsewhere and picked up by Microsoft as a commerical product. Microsoft wrote Windows, but they certainly didn't invent the concept of an easy-to-use graphical operating system - that was done by Apple and Xerox before them.

Very probably. In general, you can optimise for high speed or small memory usage, but not both. No points for guessing which one is a priority in console development.

Indeed, it's not great loss. It is just funny though that he shot himself in the foot by bleating about how his good name would be tarnished when he was the one desperately begging anyone and everyone to join his project, even if they had no experience or skill whatsoever.

That's a strange way of doing a model skin - are you taking a stock photo of the object and then mapping faces directly onto it?

The ironic thing is that his name will now have been so damaged by the UC debacle that nobody who has read TTLG will ever join up to one of his projects in the future.

I think they just gave up when it came to animations. Clearly the artists went to some trouble but the developers never got things properly set up in game for some reason.

The mansion is wood panelling like an old WWII TV set, the "mechanist" (or whatever you want to call it) will be more metallic and industrial, like the viktrolas at Soulforge.

Yup, the whole thing screamed "amateur job" from the very beginning, and when Kingers eventually realised this he closed the project, without consulting other team members, in order to avoid tarnishing his name (or something).

The first skin is almost done actually, I am planning to do a "mansion" skin and a "mechanist" skin at the same time. If c777 is doing the same one then that's 3 skins - even better.

What, like with the Unforeseen Consequences "project"? <shudders>

All of the D3 animations were excellent, and there are creatures with 2, 4, 6 and 8 legs IIRC. I don't think six-legged spiders are scary though; I guess they did this to improve performance but it doesn't look the same without the usual 8.

The lightgem appears different, and it does not function at all in the first level. I have not heard of any differences in its behaviour though. There are problems with ambient light in T2X - in some areas it is almost impossible to find an actual shadow, as opposed to a dark area that leaves you visible.

Speaking as somebody who has never programmed either: 1) I have seen suggestions that OpenGL is easier/more pleasant to code for, although this may be subjective and without merit. 2) More importantly, OpenGL is an open standard which is available on multiple platforms. DirectX is only available from Microsoft on Windows operating systems, which severely limits the portability of games written for it. I have no idea whether there are any technical or performance differences between them.

My mistake, I saw this thread on Doom3World and assumed that you were one or other of those zombie guys since the avatar is the same.