Archive

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”.

Beta 2 Delayed

Published by Duckers on November 15, 2007 in Dev Blog. 3 Comments

November 15th is here, but we still have a great deal of tickets left on our todo-lists. We think postponing the Beta 2 release for a couple of weeks will be best for all parties. This will give us more time for testing and quality assurance. In addition we want to include the Frontend Effects library in Beta 2, which still isn’t quite finished. Stay tuned :)

New tutorial: Drawing FSG Scenes

Published by Duckers on November 11, 2007 in Dev Blog. 2 Comments

A new tutorial is now available: Drawing FSG Scenes. This tutorial shows you how to export animated 3d scenes from your favorite 3d modeling software into the Frontend Scene Graph format, and how load it into your own game or application and draw them in real time. Have fun!

Public Beta 2 Release Announced

Published by Duckers on November 7, 2007 in Dev Blog. 1 Comment

Development and testing of Frontend 2.0 is going forward every day, and we are now ready to announce the next public beta release on November 15th 2007. This update will feature the following:

  • A new Utils::Audio namespace for high level sound functionality, and an OGG audio stream loader.
  • A new Utils::Xml namespace for representing and traversing xml data, and an XML loader.
  • A revised version of the FSG  format, classes and loader which now supports skeletal animation and skinning properly.
  • An implementation of the Sound interface for Linux, which now makes Frontend 2.0 fully implemented on Linux :).
  • New classes for managing threads and mutexes added to the core API.
  • Several bugfixes.

In other news, we are also working on a new concept called Frontend Effects and an associated file format (.ffx) which associates shaders, render states, sampler states, textures and multiple passes into a single Effect object (similar to CgFX and Direct3D-effects). This might be included in the next beta if it gets finished.

A port for MacOS X has also been started on and is scheduled to be included in Beta 3.

Thanks to everyone who has helped out implementing, testing and given feedback. Please do so by joining the IRC channel #frontend on EFnet (i.e. irc.homelien.no).

Frontend 2.0 Beta 1 Released!

Published by Duckers on October 15, 2007 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

Finally we give you the first release of Frontend 2.0! This first release, Beta 1 (r617), is feature-complete in the Graphics, Sound and Input modules and will be available for both Windows and Linux. We hope you would like to download, try it out and tell us what you think! Visit the IRC channel #Frontend on EFnet for help, feedback and bug reports.

Remarks:

  • The Utils unit is also almost complete, though OGG audio support is postponed to Beta 2.
  • The Frontend::Sound implementation for Linux is postponed to Beta 2.

Beta 1 Soon Ready for Takeoff

Published by Duckers on October 5, 2007 in Dev Blog. 2 Comments

After almost a year in the making, we are approaching the first official release of Frontend 2.0! Things have really started to fall into place lately, and we are very pleased with the results. Frontend 2.0 gives graphics, sound and gameplay programming in C++ a very clean and intuitive feeling. The next week will go into cleaning and wrapping up a package scheduled for release on October 15th. Stay tuned!

Brand new version under development

Published by Duckers on September 15, 2007 in Dev Blog. 0 Comments

Since the final release of Frontend 1.2, we have turned our focus onto designing and implementing a new, heavily improved version from scratch. Frontend 2.0 is scheduled for Beta release in October 2007, in connection with the kickoff of the Norwegian Game Awards, a game development competition for students.

The last stable release of Frontend, version 1.2, has been available since April 2007.

By the way: This site is under contstruction. The rest of the pages will be up in a couple of days. :)

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