Updated Minifig

[WhiteHexagon]

For those that haven't read my sig yet ;) I'm busy working on a game at the moment. We have just upgraded our servers to support more players, a bigger landscape, and more building bricks. Now we need to test them and get some feedback :) I'm working full time on this for the next two weeks, so any help testing is really appreciated. Did I mention it's Free!

New features:

* 9x bigger game world

* 8x bigger server resources

* Animated minifig - ie walks at last!

* Improved chat

* Build a 'Home' for your minifig, or collect bricks to use a design from someone else.

* Choose colours for your minifig.

* Locate other players home via shortcut button

* Updated help files via F1

* Updated graphics library

Coming soon:

* Quests to earn new brick types

* Shops to trade bricks against gold

* Accessories for minifigs

* Anyone interested if I make a competition to win a small set for best designed building? we need a few more bricks I think first.

* Tell me your wish list :)

Please remember this is a beta/alpha test software, and there are plenty of bugs still, report them and we will fix them as asap!

btw what do you think of the updated minifig, I think the smile is not quite right, but it's better than the gray blob we had for the main character a few weeks ago :)

PS you need Java to play! read the about page at whitehexagon.com for more info

[oo7]

Looks interesting, I joined. As soon as I set my screen specifications after I logged on I got an error:

General:

An error occurred while launching/running the application.

Title: WhiteHexagon

Vendor: Copyright 1998-2006 Peter Bridge

Category: Unexpected Error

javax.media.opengl.GLException: pbuffer creation error: Couldn't find a suitable pixel format

-----------------------------------------------

There is also a "Lanch file" and "Exception" tab, but it's kind of long.

[WhiteHexagon]

OK, I'll check that one out. Do you know the make of your graphics card?

In the directory you choose at startup, there will be a small file with some properties called

cork.properties

I'd be interested to get that by email or just let me know the GL_RENDERER

you could also try a different screen mode when you login, there is the chance to change that. Try using the same as your OS is using.

Thanks

Peter

[WhiteHexagon]

If anyone else has problems you could also try the Sun demo applications here

Let me know the results :)

Peter

[ScottManDeath]

Mhmm, I think it would be nice to have some way to test it, without actually registering. Maybe something like a guest account. I think many people (including me) are to lazy to register just for some quick glimpse.

And smoothing the normals would be nice, too; at least for curved surfaces ;-)

[WhiteHexagon]

I thought making it free would have been enough motivation :) but point taken, I've now added a time limited acount:

Just click Play from the main website (whitehexagon.com)

and enter the following case sensitive details:

Player: demo

Password: Zk85NX45

And smoothing the normals would be nice

Yeh, I'm not sure what's going on there. I think it's taking some default normals rather than the actual smoothed model normals. I'm still learning blender though and my file format conversion code is a bit flaky :)

Peter

[ScottManDeath]

Cool. Thanks. I will test it tomorrow in the lab :-)

Might sound arrogant, but are you sure you enabled smooth shading?

[WhiteHexagon]

Might sound arrogant, but are you sure you enabled smooth shading?

no problem!

gl.glShadeModel(GL.GL_SMOOTH);

Also using vertex arrays for this part of the code. But as I mentioned, I think it's the model data at fault, but open to suggestions :) I'm hoping to eventually use some Cg here for lighting anyway, but that's a few months away yet. First I just try to get it all stable and something to actually play :)

Another problem I just noticed. When pressing the 'M' key to edit the Avatar colors there's no face, strange, seems like the texturing is missing here. Maybe I have some bad opengl state issues that's causing both problems.

Peter

[ScottManDeath]

no problem!

gl.glShadeModel(GL.GL_SMOOTH);

Also using vertex arrays for this part of the code. But as I mentioned, I think it's the model data at fault, but open to suggestions :) I'm hoping to eventually use some Cg here for lighting anyway, but that's a few months away yet. First I just try to get it all stable and something to actually play :)

Another problem I just noticed. When pressing the 'M' key to edit the Avatar colors there's no face, strange, seems like the texturing is missing here. Maybe I have some bad opengl state issues that's causing both problems.

Peter

Is it your own model format, or some other you could test with another application? Maybe there is some "smooth normals" export option

You could also create your own per vertex normals by averaging surrounding face normals, but that would be hard to do robustly, as you actually want to have some parts of the model (like the head) to have smooth normals, while other parts should have face normals. Your modelling package should have the concept of smoothing groups and with proper export/import, thats the best way to do.

For debugging, I like to call glGetError after each gl call in debug mode. Though that might be difficult to implement in Java without #define with parameters.

Are there any Java OpenGL debuggers out? For native apps, there are gDEBugger and glIntercept, which track all your OpenGL calls and show you some log.

[WhiteHexagon]

JOGL has a debug pipeline, maybe it's time I tried it :)

The model format is my own and far from useful at the moment.

Thanks for the tips :) I thought I had face normals for all the brick type stuff, and smoothed normals for the rest. Another collegue that works on the models will be here on Monday, so maybe then we work out where its going wrong.

If you try the game let me know if the brick picker matrix in the modeller works. I'm using pbuffers but many people seem to have problems in this part of the app.

Cheers

Peter

[prateek]

thx i needed that!!! *y*