Colourful Behaviour.

Currently I am working on the second phase of the MapData generator, which is to scan the map for scene objects and then adjust the walkable/unwalkable data accordingly. The basics are working fine from a simple AABB check per collision type. Although I am only using the x and z returns at the moment, a more "honest" check would also require y0 and y1 with reference to terrain elevation to be taken into account, but for now this will do as I have another system in mind to further "refine" the AABB space check.  I also integrated a version of my Blitzmax A* system, and have a test "AI Bot" that can path the generated data in the editor and...

Read More

A* Pathfinding MapData Generator.

The Alpha of my MapData Generator, this is the first phase where the terrain is interrogated and using pre-defined criteria an external .dat file is created containing the walkable and unwalkable grid information for a loaded map. This information can then be fed into either my Blitzmax/Leadwerks A* solution: A* Pathfinding Using Blitzmax And Leadwerks Engine or my Lua/Leadwerks A* Solution: AI, Waypoints, A* Pathfinding, Lua & Leadwerks. Of course this is only one way to create the node graph data for A* pathfinding. But for current tests using my Lua A* Library this approach will do just fine. The editor currently has only hard coded settings which in the demo video also checks to see if a grid square is below the waterplane and mark it unwalkable. ...

Read More

R.A.T.S. – Rodent Army Training Simulator

A friend of mine, Paul Thomas, is a developer on the team behind  R.A.T.S. – Rodent Army Training Simulator. I have been following this closely. I will be placing permanent links to his blog and to the R.A.T.S. website. In association with, and presented by  Plastic Piranha,  R.A.T.S. was demonstrated at E3 2011 and  reportedly, got fantastic feedback. I know Paul is hard at work on this, and I wish him and his crew all the best, and look forward to future updates and demos. You can check out the on going development on the R.A.T.S. website or over at 3D Masons. Heres little of the work so far. ...

Read More

CryENGINE3 Free SDK hits 100,000 downloads

Cryteks CryENGINE®3 Free SDK, has hit 100,000 downloads in only five days of its release on August 17th. That is a massive achievment.CryENGINE®3 Free SDK is free of charge for non-commercial use, but they are offering a royalty-only license model to developers who are interested in using the SDK for commercial projects from which Crytek requires only 20% of the developer’s revenues generated from the commercial launch of their game. The free SDK can be downloaded from here Epic Games, announced the Unreal Development Kit (UDK) exceeded 50,000 users worldwide a week after its launch on Nov. 5 2009. In May 24 2011 Unity annouced that its...

Read More

CryENGINE 3 Free SDK Released.

"Anyone can now download a full version of the best All-In-One Game Development Engine, for free and use it without charge for non-commercial game development. You can try out the fastest toolset for creating game worlds and use the power of CryENGINE 3 in your own games." More to come about this, I am just too busy downloading! CryENGINE 3 Free ...

Read More

AI, Waypoints, A* Pathfinding, Lua & Leadwerks.

Over the last few days I have been getting into Lua script. A few days ago, I bounced an idea off of Macklebee about path nodes and waypoints, and things kind of took off in all directions. A special thanks to Macklebee for authoring the random visible node selection routine and other scripts and Lua snippets in this joint venture. Between us over the last few days we now have a small arsenal of different waypoints, path nodes and pathing techniques including a Lua scripted A* solution, which can use pre-calculated map data or be dynamic. Mack is currently working on another interesting idea along this route, and I have more functionality to code for some other ideas I have in this venture, from NPC behavioural information exchanges to waypoint 3D A* pathing, amongst other tweaks and new AI...

Read More

UDK APEX Destructible asset test

Just a quick and simple test of the workflow. I created a "metal crate" in Silo 3D, textured it in Ultimate Unwrap 3D and then imported it into APEX 1.0 PhysX Lab, where it was "sliced and diced" and exported as an APEX Destructible asset, this was then imported into UDK and placed in a default scene. Took about 5 minutes start to finish. ...

Read More

TGC Launch AGK (App Game Kit)

  Well, this product has been in the offing for a while now, but as of today it is officially released. I pre ordered my copy a week or so ago. It did how ever take nearly an hour to get a download slot to retrieve my prize, I guess the bandwidth was taking a hammering over at TGC. I only have had a short time to play with this and go through the examples but it looks fun and relatively easy. The Tier 1 basic is pretty close to Dark Basic Pro which I used to use, and the rest of the syntax is not that dissimilar to Blitzmax or Lua. Tier 2 for this game engine is C++, or what they call native. "The App Game Kit solves many problems...

Read More