Category:Site information

Hello ? Anyone there ?

Site updates have been going pretty slow as you might have noticed by now. And there's a good reason for that also. Last month I've been working on some old projects and files I had buried somewhere far far away on some of the darkest sectors of my fileserver's raid array. Files so old, the dust came off when I first opened them after all those years. I even didn't believe it when I saw the files modification dates... 1998... Has it been that long already ?

What am I talking about ? Id Software's Quake II ofcourse. Quake, aka the decades defining first person shooter, is making a steady revival with Quake Live recently going from beta to public. But Quake is more than that. Quake and the idTech engine that has powered it through many generations of revolutionary graphics, John Carmack's brainchild, is also one of the only commercial 3D OpenGL renderer's of which the complete sourcecode has been released to the public. The Quake engine is also one of the best documented and most modded game engine's on the web. Add a well thought through server client model to the mix, and an engine that has a great modabilty, and there you have it:

The perfect base for an open source project. 

Back in the old days, I worked with a small team on a exiting Quake II modding project, called the Voodoo Mod for Quake II. A dark themed Q2 mod which featured some alternate fireing modes, custom textures and some maps and this all in a somewhat voodooish setting. Now with the recent release of Quake Live, I thought it would be a great opportunity to share this project and my custom Q2 maps with the community. 

After a few days off gathering all files related to this project, updating and improving some of the maps I made for it, I figured, hey, why not make it a complete Quake 2 Total Conversion project. Doing some research, I stumbled upon some pretty nice Quake 2 source code ports, like APRQ2, EGL, Berserker and many others. Each of which deserves a review on it's own, but I'm afraid I dont have the time for that ;)

Anyway, after some initial testing of all available source ports, EGL was the one that came out as the best candidate for my project. EGL featured an updated version of the Q2 engine, with some spectacular client side rendering effects and supporting high resolution textures, but still maintaining protocol compatibility. And best off all, EGL seemed to be completely compatible with my voodoo mod client dll. 

So to keep a very long story short, currently I'm working on a stable preview of my standalone Q2 Total Conversion project. I hope this was enough to keep your appetite going for now, I'll be adding some project info and screenshots soon.

Content Tags: 3D, Computer Graphics, Development, OpenGL

Content Type: Personal, Site information

Average: 4 (1 vote)

Code highlighting, some early steps

Content Tags: Internet, Webdesign

Content Type: Site information

Hi all. Another small update to the site. This time I'm working on code highlighting, something every serious blog about development cannot go without.

The code sample below comes from my Collada Loader sample, and shows the render void, which is used to draw a 3D model to a DirectX 10 device. Here you can see the code highlighting module in action: 

        public override void Render()
        {

            //Enable depth buffering
            FDevice.OutputMerger.DepthStencilState = FDepthStencilState;

            //Set input layout and primitive topology
            FDevice.InputAssembler.SetInputLayout(FLayout);
            FDevice.InputAssembler.SetPrimitiveTopology(PrimitiveTopology.TriangleList);

            //Set vertex and index buffers
            FDevice.InputAssembler.SetVertexBuffers(0, 
              new VertexBufferBinding(FVertexBuffer, PositionColored.SizeInBytes, 0));
            FDevice.InputAssembler.SetIndexBuffer(FIndexBuffer, SlimDX.DXGI.Format.R16_UInt, 0);

            FWorldMatrix = FObjectMatrix * Matrix.Translation(FPosition) * Matrix.Translation(FLocation);

            FEffectWorldMatrix.SetMatrix(FWorldMatrix);
            FEffectViewProjectionMatrix.SetMatrix(FView * FProjection);


            //Apply Shader pass(es)
            FPass.Apply();

            //Draw the mesh
            FDevice.DrawIndexed(FIndexCount, 0, 0);

        }

Note you can double click the code sample to select the code and copy it into your clipboard.
I'm still working on integrating the code highlighting with the [code] tags, so users can also post highlighted code in comments and forum topics. I hope to get this done very soon.

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Movin' the shack

As the title reads, I moved my little development shack to a more professional and robust web host.

The sourceforge project hosting has been a good temporary webhost, and I sure would like to thank them for their great community service, but in reality it's just too slow and rigid for my purpose. Therefore I moved my site to a more professional host, futureweb.be, which has shown me a very good service and great support.

This has multiple advantages:

  • I can host larger files on my webspace that are not directly project related
  • Better download speeds
  • More configurable webserver
  • Less downtime

Content Type: Site information

Average: 2 (1 vote)

Tom's Dev Shack was born

It's a cold rainy day in the early spring of 2010. The thought of a new personal website has been flashing around in my overstimulated mind for a few days now. For nights I've been up 'till the early hours thinking of what it would look like, what I would put on it, even how it would impact my life. Suddenly the idea was ripe. It was ready. It was time to conceive.  I whipped up my favorite FTP client, logged into my SourceForge account to get my hosting details, prepared a database and started bashing away at the content creation. Two days later, the first concept preview of my new site was ready to show off to my friends. They liked it, you're looking at it now, so I hope you like it too. So far for the conception of my new home on the web.

 

So lets talk about the content, because lets face it, a tight website design without any content is a waste of internet bandwidth. 

 

The purpose of this site is threefold:

  • It is my home on the web. My communication forum to the world. The minaret on my mosque. The place I can yell to the world and let everyone know about my ideas, thoughts and visions.
  • It is the place where I host my projects, share my code to the open source community, provide file downloads to the general public. It's a central place for all info related to my projects. It is also the place where you can get your questions answered, bugs solved and give input on my projects and thoughts. Project related documentation and updates will be posted on this site.
  • It is also a showcase of my skills. A place to elaborate on my resume, a reference for potential future employers and/or customers for information on who I am and what my skills are. There is also an overview of the services I can provide.

With all this in mind, I'm sure you have a good understanding of what this is all about and are ready to enjoy the rest of the content.

Content Type: Site information

Average: 2 (1 vote)

Welcome to my new blog

Welcome to my new blog. I will be adding some exciting content very soon !

Stay tuned,
Your host, Tom

Content Type: Site information

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