DeleD Community Edition

Jeroen

I'm working hard towards a next release. DeleD now has lightmapping and so the fileformat will have to be adjusted so it can cope with lightmaps as well. That means we're implementing materials. That's quite a lot of work (most importantly, the GUI). But because we don't want to keep you all waiting for the LITE version with lightmapping, we're working on an intermediate solution with texturepacks and materials. The fileformat will most likely be 087b (notice the b). When done, we'll release the LITE version and then we can concentrate on full material support and fileformat 0.87.

We're well on our way, things should not be long now.

Jobyman · Member Joined: 21 Oct 2004 Posts: 42

woooo gotta rewrite my importer again Smile

Looking forward to messing abotu with them lightmaps.

Daaark · Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:23 pm Post subject:

Are the changes going to be big or small to the structure of the file? Should I not bother to write my loader until 0.87 comes out? Confused

Jeroen · Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 10:32 pm Post subject:

Hopefully, a 087b format isn't needed after all. In 087, the texturepacks will not be used anymore. They will be replaced by materials which will be included in the DMF file. Furthermore, polygons can have multiple sets of UV coordinates if the material of that polygon has multiple texturelayers (because of lighting for example).

Go ahead and write your 086 loader. The 087 format will be different, but not that much. Smile

Daaark · Posted: Mon Nov 08, 2004 11:01 pm Post subject:

Assuming that you are ready to reveal this stuff, What exactly is a material in Deled?

Diffuse Map
Light Map
* Map? (bump, normal, whatever..)
Specular
Shinniness

Jeroen · Posted: Tue Nov 09, 2004 7:44 am Post subject:

A material contains 4 texturelayers (max), the last one is the lightmap. I will create a material editor with which you can create and edit individual materials. The upcoming LITE version will, however, convert old texturepacks to materials because I do not have enough time to create that material editor anytime soon (while I still want to release the LITE version asap).

The big technical challenge right now is to write code that can load a 086 DMF file (which still uses texturepacks etc) and making sure it creates and uses materials correctly while still being able to use the user-interface like you're used to with ordinary textures (in other words, migrate a 086 file to 087). This seems to work now (except for the GUI) but needs to be tested in detail of course. Then every bit of code that uses textures, should use materials instead. Lots of work ahead of us... Wink

Jeroen · Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 9:53 pm Post subject:

Keeping ya'll posted... Wink

We are working hard to replace textures into materials in DeleD. This is quite a lot of work and has its impact on the load/save/plugin/userinterface/lots-of-other-areas of DeleD. Don't worry though, we'll manage to implement it of course!

Daaark · Posted: Wed Nov 10, 2004 11:34 pm Post subject:

Why not just dump the texturing from the old files, and keep only the geometry? You are not even version 1.0 yet, stuff like this can be forgiven.

Jeroen · Posted: Thu Nov 11, 2004 9:22 am Post subject:

I don't think people will like it if we just dump the textures. So I've written code to convert a texturepack to a materiallist. Works like a charm. Things I have to consider:

- load/save different fileformats (08,086,087)
- plugins that communicate material data
- GUI
- every bit of code that uses the old textures

So you see, quite a lot of work. But it's fun developing and will be worth it for sure. Very Happy