Posted on: March 27 2011
Comments: 6Beautiful:
..and somehow depressing.
[Read more]Posted on: March 23 2011
Comments: 1I just released an update for my web editor 'WebsitePainter'. New features are for example a german language translation (wasn't too difficult since it is my native language), support for Quicktime videos, Youtube videos, HTML 5 audio, support for creating external CSS files, improved FTP upload, and new templates. One of the templates looks like this:
I like this one especially because I took the picture of the rocks myself. They look quite unreal, but yes, they really exist. :)
[Read more]Posted on: March 22 2011
Comments: 3Finally, Firefox has been released in version 4. This release also includes WebGL, yay! So if you try out some demos, like the WebGL Demos of CopperCube, and it tells you that your browser doesn't support WebGL, this might be because Firefox thinks your 3D drivers are too old. There are two solutions for this:
Either: Enter "about:config" in the browser adress bar, hit enter, end enter "webgl" in the filter field. Change the value "webgl.force-enabled" to 'true' (simply double click it). That's it.Or: Up...
[Read more]Posted on: March 18 2011
Comments: 8From time to time I play online games. As player name, I usually choose the one I used in nearly all games since about 15 years, and that is 'Irrlicht'. I eventually also implemented a now quite popular open source 3D engine and named it accordingly. Yesterday, I played a round of Starcraft 2. So this short chat started in game:
Other player: Irrlicht?
Irrlicht: Yes?
Other player: Did you name yourself after that programming package?
Irrlicht: No. I named it after my player name.
Other player: What?...
[Read more]Posted on: March 14 2011
Comments: 6Because of the recent events, I came across molten salt reactors. Never heard of those before, but apparently, they are much safer, cheaper and basically better. There is for example not the risk of a reactor meltdown because of their architecture. The only apparent reason that they are not in use is political: The companies building the current types of reactors simply didn't want to switch, since they had all work done already for building the types of reactors currently in use. Interesting stuff.
[Read more]Posted on: March 10 2011
Comments: 12Since I started my company Ambiera a few years ago, it was a lot of fun. And as several people predicted, I also had a lot of strange experiences. One of them happend some weeks ago:
A guy approached me and seemed to be interested in buying my companies flagship product, CopperCube. But he didn't want to buy a license for the editor, but the editor itself, so he can sell it himself. Basically, I'm open for all kinds of business requests, even if this is selling one of my main products. If the buyer guara...
[Read more]Posted on: March 07 2011
Comments: 5Didn't know about this free wikibook: Irrlicht - from Noob to Pro, a german book about the irrlicht engine created by Onkeltorty. Great work!
[Read more]Posted on: March 06 2011
Comments: 2I just browsed to one of the online game magazines/websites I read, and was presented with their main page, looking like this:
I know the only source of income for those websites are ads, but seriously, Krawall? Really? Take a closer look. Do you see where the actual content of the website is?
Yes, it's only that small white rectangle in the middle. They can't be serious about that. And it doesn't look much better on other websites. Dear gaming sites: Don't be surprised that most of your users now pre...
[Read more]Posted on: March 04 2011
Comments: 0Khronos just released the final WebGL 1.0 specification. That's great. Also, all major browsers except from Internet Explorer are already working on supporting this: Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. I also like this report from golem.de (german), they are showing my WebGL 3D engine, CopperLicht as first video :)
[Read more]Posted on: March 03 2011
Comments: 6The more I used 7-zip, the more I liked it. It compresses much better then for example .zip, and that's what it is good for. But I wouldn't recommend it for doing backups and similar. If there is one byte damaged, you usually can forget the whole archive. For .zip, every file is compressed separately, so it isn't that severe, if something goes wrong, it is usually possible to repair the damage or even work with it.
[Read more]Posted on: February 27 2011
Comments: 2Adobe just made the hardware accelerated Flash API publically available as beta, its code name is 'Molehill'. The 3D editor CopperCube has been released in version 2.5 at the same time, and it supports this already. I also created a small demo using Molehill:
You can view the demo here. There is also a youtube video of it. All in all, it opens great possibilities. Real, fast 3D running in flash applications. Nice :)
[Read more]Posted on: February 25 2011
Comments: 0Oddly, the thing I'm most excited about of the upcoming Skyrim release at the end of this year is that its soundtrack is again based on the Elder Scrolls theme. Also loved the Oblivion 'tes4title' theme. After playing hundreds of hours with this sound in the background, I still can't get enough of it. :)
[Read more]Posted on: February 20 2011
Comments: 9WTF, sending a .zip file with a couple of .dll files (such as irrKlang.dll) to a gmail adress won't work. GMail will reject that mail. It will also reject .lib files. Ah, and these as well:
"ade", "adp", "bat", "chm", "cmd", "com", "cpl", "dll", "exe", "hta", "ins", "isp", "jse", "lib", "mde", "msc", "msp", "mst", "pif", "scr", "sct", "shb", "sys", "vb", "vbe", "vbs", "vxd", "wsc", "wsf", "wsh".
Ridiculous.
[Read more]Posted on: February 15 2011
Comments: 2Funny blog post (by Caterina Fake of Flickr) with lots of very interesting comments by people having trouble with their names. Worth a read.
[Read more]Posted on: February 09 2011
Comments: 12If you are looking forward for the close release of Duke Nukem Forever as much as I do, you probably already know the original Duke Nukem 3D. But if you never played it, here is maybe something for you: Tim12345 created a small flash 3d game using CopperCube. It is a very small demo, but gives quite a good feeling about how the game was like:
Controls: cursor keys or WASD to move, mouse to Look, E or space to shoot.
IMO, it is a nice tribute. There is also the corresponding thread in the CopperCube fo...
[Read more]Posted on: February 09 2011
Comments: 6Irrlicht.Net is a new .NET wrapper based on Irrlicht 1.7.2. When I stopped developing the original Irrlicht.NET a few years ago a lot of people were sad because of that, so this new wrapper started by Martin Risell-Lilja will probably make a few people happy again. :)
[Read more]Posted on: February 04 2011
Comments: 5Finally, the first browser with enabled WebGL has been released today: Chrome 9 has just been released, and WebGL is now on by default. This means that a lot of people now will be able to see and use 3D WebGL applications in websites. If you have chrome 9, here are some WebGL demos for you. Nice!
[Read more]Posted on: February 03 2011
Comments: 2Just came across the game Duty Calls. If you've ever played Call of Duty, it's worth a look. The game is quite short and probably takes longer to download than to play, so you can also see the whole gameplay here:
Great work :)
[Read more]Posted on: January 28 2011
Comments: 9I just calculated that for what we spend on the so called 'financial crisis' every year since 2007, each country in the world (there are ~192 countries) could run three own NASA like space programs. Three NASAs for every country in the world. Maybe we should somehow get rid of all those banksters, and the world would be a better place.
[Read more]Posted on: January 26 2011
Comments: 2After overcoming various troubles caused by the GNU build system for building a specific library, I was confused that the library finally was built, but nowhere to be found. A bit of investigation revealed that the library indeed was ready, but intentionally moved into a hidden directory by the script. For whatever reason. But it is always great spending senseless hours in the command line. With all the scrolling cryptic lines of strange text, for average people passing by it looks like you are an awesome h...
[Read more]Posted on: January 22 2011
Comments: 4Two interesting videos have been revealed lately: The Duke Nukem Forever Trailer (yes! it finally will be released, incredible, btw) and the Crysis 2 Multiplayer Trailer. But am I the only one noticing that both use the same music? There are multiple themes in both videos, but the main theme is exactly the same song on both videos. Strange.
[Read more]Posted on: January 20 2011
Comments: 6Just read this article: What If US Collapses? Soviet Collapse Lessons Every American Needs To Know. Although from 2006, it's still up-to-date and quite interesting and shows what might happen if the USA collapses, comparing to what happened when the USSR collapsed. Doesn't look too good, but who knows, maybe it won't collapse too soon after all.
[Read more]Posted on: January 20 2011
Comments: 4Currently testing bitplane's Irrlicht website update automatic rss syndication with this blog post. Does it work?
[Read more]Posted on: January 19 2011
Comments: 0I just released CopperCube 2.2.3 and CopperLicht 1.3.3.
Both releases include quite a lot of changes and new features. In CopperCube for example includes editor improvements such as viewports for cameras and scaling in all direction by holding down shift, improved first person shooter camera control for Flash and WebGL (looking by moving mouse as discussed on this blog already), lots of various enhancements to actions and behaviors,
access to CopperCube variables via Actionscript, JavaScript and Squirr...
[Read more]Posted on: January 16 2011
Comments: 4I just created a new Quake 3 demo for WebGL. It features the new control method with the mouse which I blogged about earlier, the possibility to jump using space, heavily improved collision detection and response (performance much better now) and faster 3D rendering.
The latest Firefox 4 beta 9 has a problem with its z-buffer (its precision is much too low, I guess they are now using 16 bit by default now?), but fortunately, you won't notice this in this new demo.
[Read more]Posted on: January 10 2011
Comments: 3As developer, you are used to receive bug reports in all forms. Sometimes they are detailed and useful, in most cases not. Sometimes they are angry, sometimes funny. But I've never before received a bug report like I received it yesterday:
It is in comic form. A high resolution pdf with 3 pages of self made comic, describing the bug. Kudos to shmilblick for this original idea. It not only made me laugh, but also described a bug which I was able to reproduce in no time. :)
[Read more]Posted on: January 06 2011
Comments: 3Tim12345 did it again: He created a new interactive 3d game entirely in CopperCube, including 6 levels. It's a tribute to a popular game from 1986, but now in 3D:
Controls: cursor keys to move, mouse to Look, space to shoot.
There is also a corresponding thread in the CopperCube forum. Nice work! BTW: there is a successor to the original Castlevania available currently, named Castlevania : Lords of Shadow.
[Read more]Posted on: January 04 2011
Comments: 0Ever wanted to discover a planet? You can do this now: www.planethunters.org
You only need to mark dots in the lightcurves of stars on this website, and you can discover exoplanets with this. You will even get the credit if you find a planet. This is not a web game, but real. It's great in so many ways.
[Read more]Posted on: December 30 2010
Comments: 8I'm currently adding a new method to CopperCube for controlling the first person shooter camera when using 3D Flash (molehill) or WebGL. The problem with first person shooter controls in embedded applications in websites is that you don't have control over the mouse cursor position as programmer. But modifying the mouse position is essential for this type of control. So a workaround is to do something like this: (Note, this is not molehill but the software renderer of course, since it is not yet public):
...
[Read more]Posted on: December 20 2010
Comments: 8If you are a programmer and have a blog or a company, from time to time people will come to you and tell you about their great idea for an application or a website. And they want you to implement their idea, usually for free, or if you are lucky for a percentage of the profit hopefully made when it is done. It's a revolutionary, great idea after all, and you can be lucky to be a part of it, right?
Sometimes those are very friendly people with a great vision, simply looking for a talented programmer to br...
[Read more]