Summer vacations

Published by Duckers on July 14, 2008 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

We are taking some weeks off to do … summer stuff. You should too :)

For instance, come to Solskogen this weekend (July 18.-20.).

Unfortunately we didn’t manage to get Beta 3 finished in time for this… But we’ll get right onto it as soon as we’re back some time in august.

Beta 3 delayed…

Published by Duckers on June 15, 2008 in Dev Blog. 1 Comment

We decided to do a full rewrite of the resource management system and SceneGraph-namespace, so Beta 3 is taking a lot more time than we imagined. We’ll need to take a few more days/weeks to wrap things up.

As usual, you can always visit us at #frontend on efnet.

Whats new in Beta 3?

Published by Duckers on May 30, 2008 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

Beta 3 will add a lot of new features to Frontend 2.0, this list is a sneak-peek:

  • Added support for automatic reloading of resources - Edit a resource, save it and see the result instantly while your game/demo is running!
  • New API components:
    • Frontend::Net - Socket API wrapper.
    • Frontend::Math - Math functions, Vector and Matrix classes moved here.
    • Frontend::IO - Stream, stdio and file system abstractions.
  • Major cleanup - Some last large changes to make Frontend cleaner and easier to use (breaks some backward compatibility, hopefully for the last time).
  • Video tutorials - Step by step video tutorials will be made and released as soon as possible after launch.

Beta 3 release date

Published by Duckers on May 16, 2008 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

The Frontend team has been working on a game entry for the Norwegian Game Awards for the last couple of months, and on March 9th we were declared winner of the competition :) The game was written entirely against Frontend 2.0, and was a good practical test for the OpenFrontend implementation. The process revealed and fixed a lot of bugs and performance issues. The implementation is getting better every day :)

The results of months of debugging and refining will be released to the public in Beta 3 on June 15th 2008.

This summer we will also be working on the tutorials and documentation to make it easier to get started. As we are mostly students you’ll have to wait until we are done with our spring exams ;)

Thanks for your support. Visit #frontend on EFnet for a chat.

COLLADA converter update

Published by Duckers on April 21, 2008 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

We are releasing an updated version of the Frontend Collada Converter which should solve some exporting issues reported when converting output from Maya.

Frontend Collada Converter Beta 2-r217

This fix will be included OpenFrontend SDK Beta 3. Thanks to wez^yaphan for reporting this bug :)

Frontend 2.0 in action

Published by Duckers on April 16, 2008 in Dev Blog. 2 Comments

We present a little list of productions which are developed using Frontend 2.0 by our own members:

The Art of Survival (working title)

A 3D action-strategy game developed for a student game development competition. A demo version will be shown at the Norwegian Game Awards ceremony in Trondheim, May 9th. A video trailer will also be released to the public.

Mercury (PC-demo)

A demo made by the demo group Nazareth Creations which placed 2nd in the demo competition at this year’s The Gathering.

Optimus Prime (invitation demo)

A short invitation demo for this years The Gathering made by the demo group Outracks.

Beta 2-r177 complete package released

Published by Duckers on March 30, 2008 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

A complete package with source and makefiles/projects for all platforms is now available for download. The online documentation is also updated to reflect the new additions. Sorry for the delay :)

Beta 2-r177 is here!

Published by lorents on March 22, 2008 in Dev Blog. 1 Comment

OpenFrontend 2.0 Beta2-r177 is now available! Some highlights of this minor revision:

  • Highly improved framebuffer implementation in the OpenGL backend, increasing the frame rate by up to 100% in some cases!
  • Enhanced COLLADA Converter (including several bugfixes)
  • Improved threading implementation on Linux using POSIX threads
  • Some experimental new additions to Frontend::Utils
  • Visual Studio 2008 support

Tutorials updated

Published by Duckers on January 15, 2008 in Dev Blog. 1 Comment

The tutorial pages are now updated to reflect the incompatibilities between Beta 1 to Beta 2. The primary differences are:

  • Libraries must be built manually (Explained in tutorial #1)
  • The header “FWG/Frontend2Impl.h” is now removed, include “OpenFrontend2.h” instead. The new header includes Graphics, Sound and Input. “Frontend2Utils.h” is still a separate header. (Updated in all relevant tutorials)

If you find any more inconsistencies, please alert us at frontend@outracks.net or visit #Frontend on EFnet (IRC).

Beta 2 is here, introducing OpenFrontend!

Published by Duckers on January 9, 2008 in Dev Blog. 1 Comment

Beta 2 for Win32 is finally ready for download! This new release features the following:

  • New clarified license! We have renamed the FWG Implementations to OpenFrontend, which means you get the source code included in the download. You may now compile Frontend with your favorite compiler and port it to the platform of your choice. No more binary incompatibilities!
  • A bunch of new features in Frontend Utils.
  • Several bugfixes and cleanups. Some minor API changes.

Only Win32/VC8 projects are included by default, makefiles and other project types are coming soon. Please note that the tutorial section still contains several references to Beta 1 specific stuff. We will clean this up as soon as possible. Note in particular that “FWG/Frontend2Impl.h” is renamed to “OpenFrontend2.h”.

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