All good things start with something simple ;-)

Can your Phrogram do this

Program MyNewProgram

 Method Main()

  Define ball As Model3D = CreateSphere(1)
  Define box As Model3D = CreateBox(1, 1, 1)
  Define x As Integer = 0
  Define z As Integer = 0
  
  ball.Material = Wood
  box.Material = Metal
  
  While Not IsKeyDown( Escape )
       box.MoveTo(x, 0, z)
       ball.MoveTo(-x, 0, z)
       x=x+0.003
       z=z+0.01
       RenderFrame()
  End While
 End Method

End Program

 

Yes after a hiatus I am back working on Phrogram 3.0/Game Console/{some other name we have not yet thought of}. I'm not going to say too much about the technology or the features right now because we have not finalized some things but we've taken a bit of a different direction from last year so there was some work to undo and redo.

Watch this forum for more pictures and videos in the coming weeks.

 

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

Ermm...no it can't!

It errors on line 10/11

Can be more specific of course but think this is enough to know that I think this has something to do with the XBox 360 stuff you had unique testers for...

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TomDad. Tom is my son...and I'm his Dad. So we are TomDad Software.

The future of Phrogram is wooden balls!

Yes the testers we were recruiting last year were never used - for various reasons we backed off on what I was working on then. This is the next, and more realistic shot at the target.

...and yes its supposed to fail on that line... at least on your version of Phrogram.

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

This is awesome, Zman!  I guess I need to buy an XBox 360?  :)

W00T ZMAN!! This is awesome!

And welcome back Jon!..
 

<huge grin> 

OK, you got it comin' to ya: Questions, Questions, Questions!

1. Do these "Materials" use predefined textures at all times, or can we choose our own?
2. Will there be more lighting options? Such as Point lights and Spotlights? ( whenever you use shaders, you need lights or else the shader cannot "shade" properly )
3. Will there be transparent textures? Using an Alpha channel or a "mask" bitmap( or both )?
4. Will we be able to use the mouse in 3D mode, to interact with 2D/3D objects?
5. The Big One: When is the beta coming out? 
   

</huge grin>
 

Right now I'm really just proving some concepts the final feature set is not fixed in stone. So if you promise not to whine too much if things don't make it to the final version I'll give you some guesses.

1. Materials are not just textures. A material includes (under the covers) various kind of textures, bump maps and even shaders. e.g. a metrial could be fur or grass! Right now my guess would be that we will include some predefined ones. Making new ones mostly involves writing shaders which is way outside the scope of our target audience. Textures alone will be something you can change much like you can today.

2. Probably

3. The system we are using to render should handle alpha channels properly. Is there a specific case you are thinking of here? alpha on models is generall not a great idea becuase if you are not careful you end up seeing inside the model.

4. I dont know - great feature idea. How would you like to see this as code - write me the Phrogram code you would expect to see.

5. When I know I will tell you.

Our #1 feature requirement for 3d is animated meshes. I have spent the last 2 days trying to get that working properly... hopefully I will have a video for you tomorrow. On good question about animated meshes is where you will get them from. People often ask for the feature and I want to make sure it will work with the meshes you are creating so let me know what formats or even send me animated models (zman@thezbuffer.com) . The plan is to be able to use models with multiple animations e.g. walk, run, jump, fight etc. However I do not think we will introduce complex things like blending where you merge the fight and walk animations for example.

 

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

I promise! So... Anything you just said may or may not be included - probably best to think of it as "don't count on it"? =/

1. Yes, I am aware of that. The picture of a material that I have in my head is basically a texture that has a shader assigned to it(or vice-versa). This could include bump maps as you said, which would require an extra texture (or two?) for the map.
   
2. Yay! :)
3. The specific case I have in mind is home-made 3D particles. This can be done easily if the renderer supports alpha channels ( the last time I tested, about a year ago [a whole year, wow... doesn't seem like that at all :) ] , it did not [using a png file for the texture - I don't have the file with me so I can't give you the specs, sorry ] ). Another thing is extremely low-poly fences ( chain-link fence, for example - a plane with two-sided normals and a repeating texture ) and windows.
4. Working on it...
5. Thanks! :)

 

Animated meshes, w00t! Animated models and formats...I'll get back to you on that. About the blending problem: if you've never used it before, you'll never miss it. Problem solved. :P

OK, I have an example of how I would use the mouse in 3D mode. This is assuming that color values of shaders can be modified in real-time and that the model3D would automatically check if the mouse is "inside" it using

 Model.ContainsMouse or Model.ContainsPoint2D( Mouse.Location).

They would do the same thing. The latter is more flexible, however.

 If Model.ContainsMouse = true then 

    Model.Shader.Color.Red = 0
    Model.Shader.Color.Green = 250
    Model.Shader.Color.Blue = 100

    If Mouse.Event = "Buttondown" then

        SelectedModel = Model

    End if

Else

    Model.Shader.Color.Red = 150
    Model.Shader.Color.Green = 150
    Model.Shader.Color.Blue = 150

End if 

 

I'm pretty sure you are confused about what shaders are or how shaders work.

I'm guessing what you are trying to do here is tint a model a certain color if the mouse is over a model.

Some questions:

Are you expecting the model to just go that color? Or are you expecting the whole model to be tinted by that color? Don't forget the model will also be affected by the lights in the scene.

What do you expect ContainsMouse to do when the cursor is over 2 models - think about it you are in 3d space now the cursor can be over multiple things as they go into the distance. Should we return true for every model or just for the closest one to you?

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

I'm pretty sure you are confused about what shaders are or how shaders work.

I think I may have used the wrong term. I meant "Model.Material.Color". Correct me if I'm wrong here. A shader is something that gives a model a certain appearance, e.g. water or glass or metal or wood. It has to do with how the rendered object appears. Does it reflect a lot of light? Absorb a lot of light? How about reflections of the object's surroundings? Bump-maps?  That kind of stuff. If I say "Shader.Color", then  I don't really know what will happen.. However if I say "Material.Color" then I know that the material ( texture+shader+color ) will be affected, eg I can change the overall tint ( Model.Material.color ) of the object so the user knows when the object is selected.

Are you expecting the model to just go that color? Or are you expecting the whole model to be tinted by that color? Don't forget the model will also be affected by the lights in the scene.

What the pseudo-code above would do is give the model a green tint. Not change the whole model to green, just change the amount of red, green, and blue light that affects it. Did that make sense?

What do you expect ContainsMouse to do when the cursor is over 2 models - think about it you are in 3d space now the cursor can be over multiple things as they go into the distance. Should we return true for every model or just for the closest one to you?

Just the one closest to the camera.

A shader is a program that gets run on the graphics card that gets to modify vertices or pixel colors. You use shaders to do things like relfections and bump mapping. We will NOT be providing interfaces to write your own shaders for Phrogram.

Saying Material.color makes more sense and yes I would imagine it would provide a tint too. AS always no promises becuase it depends on many things.

 

 

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

It's been about 3 months or so since the last post...

How's it coming along? Got any new videos/pictures?

Pictures of installers are very boring ;-)

[And learning Install Shield is also very boring]

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Managed DirectX and XNA ? Check out http://www.thezbuffer.com

Pictures of installers sounds very hopeful!