The Online Reference is now updated with the changes in Beta 3. Have a look at it here.
Archive for the 'Dev Blog' Category
Finally we are ready to make Frontend 2.0 Beta 3 available to interested users! This release features among a lot of other things, the following upgrades from Beta 2:
- Refactored, heavily improved and optimized base class library (string, IO, containers, maps, algorithms, vector math etc).
- Complete sound implementations for Linux and Windows.
- New Frontend::Net interface for network programming, with complete implementations for Linux and Windows.
- Completely rewritten and elegant resource management system in Frontend::Utils.
- Brand new extensible scene graph framework in Frontend::Utils.
- New Frontend::Utils::GUI library for easily integrating user interfaces into Frontend::Graphics applications.
- Loaders and Savers(new!) for several new formats, including support for loading scene graphs directly from COLLADA files.
As we are continuously working on Frontend, we will now allow registered users to access the subversion (SVN) repository directly, and thus be able to receive updates regularly. We are currently revising the licensing model for Frontend 2.0, so it is for now required to register in order to get access to Beta 3. See the download page for more information.
We are back on track and getting closer and closer to a release of Beta 3. We apologize for the months of delay, but we are certain that in the end it will be worthwhile. We are using this time extensively to add new nifty features and to make sure the framework is intuitive, efficient and flawless. This way we hope that Beta 3 can be the last version where we have to do significant breaks with backwards compatibility. After numerous iterations we are now arriving at elegant solutions in many different areas, and a lot of things has fallen into place just recently. A set of newly added complexity-hiding utility classes will hopefully make Frontend 2.0 Beta 3 easier to approach for beginners than ever.
Beta 3 will be ready for release some time early this fall - stick arround.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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