Quick update on stuff

Volumetric stencil shadows in C++ (openGL + SDL)

Finally returning to android coding after a large break from it...

I moved house and didn't have the internet for a while so I ended up doing some C++ coding... Nothing amazing, but I did learn real time volumetric shadows through opengl (which I can't currently use in Android... But maybe I can when I FINALLY shift over to OpenGL ES 2.0).



I also finally have a elipsoid -> polygon & elipsoid -> elipsoid collision library up and coded (In C++... but will convert to Android after my current project).

If anyone else is finding a pain to get their head around 3d collisions, you can get the paper I learned from here:  collision.pdf . It's very useful... though you'll have to add to it and rewrite some of it if you want it to be used for something specific (like a game engine). My advice is to add an "isStuck" variable and to save a safe location to jump back to if the elipsoid is ever "stuck". I also think there is a point where the tutorial might set the distance from intersection point to Zero... Which can cause a division by zero... But it's not a big thing... In the CollideWithWorld function, there is a point where is checks if the "collision Package"'s "nearest Distance" is equal or lower then "very Close Distance", I just changed the ">=" to ">" from what I remember.

I recently got a message from someone asking if I could give them the code I used for exporting 3d models from Blender to a custom format (Written in Python) and loading them into an Android game (written in Java) to which I WAS going to write a tutorial about both sides, but I couldn't respond to the persons message because of there privacy settings... But I still might write the tutorial at a later date... Currently my exporter and loader use ASCII which I think may be causing some slow downs when importing them into my Android engine... So I'm currently on a mission to understand binary exporting and loading... I've heard this is faster so I hope this information is correct.

When I have the binary exporter/loading code written I'm going to write a tutorial on both ASCII and binary custom 3d models which will include all the source code and explanations.

Started Android games development

Late last year I purchased an Android phone (just an Optimus p500),
I purchased the phone because my last phone (a cheap thing I've had
for quite a few years); died... I figured if I got an Android phone I
could teach myself how to code for it.

Not coming from a Java background made it a bit confusing at first...
Not really the Java part... but I eventually got it... Multithreading was
a bit confusing for me... but I eventually got that too...

I started with a simple "touch the smiley faces to make them pop"-app,
but then moved onto OpenGL ES 1.1... Being the impatient kinda guy
that I am... I decided to port my flash gFPS engine to android.

Unfortunately OpenGL ES doesn't like dynamic creation of meshes...
And the entire map was drawn from the ground up for every render in
the flash engine... I originally wanted real-time editing in game (for
rocket blasts and such), but this just wasn't working... So I ended up
dividing the 50x50 maps into 10x10 models to display when on screen.

Over time I added 3d model imports for static and animated meshes
(the animation is just vertex based), dynamic lighting (very simple tile
based lighting) and some other stuff....

If you go to my youTube page you can look through my development
videos... My youTube page

I've been finding it hard to find time to finish this project, but I'm hoping
to write in a Finite State Machine and handle all non-engine code through
it... if it's succesful, I'm hoping it will speed up the development and
if it works well, I'll probably write a short horror adventure using a slightly
modified version of the engine after this project using more complicated
FSM connections.

I'll probably post an *.APK file link for testing reasons soon (my internet
connection is being slow right now).

I'm hoping to be a bit more active from now on, so expect more updates...
Maybe people might actually start reading this so that I'm not just writing
to myself.... YAY! :D