Blender duplicates groups in the 3D view at the location of objects having the DUPLIGROUP option set. This feature is now supported in the BGE: the groups will be instantiated as in the 3D view when the scene is converted. This is useful to populate a scene with multiple enemies without having to actually duplicate the objects in the blend file.
Notes: * The BGE applies the same criteria to instantiate the group as Blender to display them: if you see the group in the 3D view, it will be instantiated in the BGE.
* Groups are instantiated as if the object having the DUPLIGROUP option (usually an empty) executed an AddObject actuator on the top objects of the group (objects without parent).
* As a result, only intra-group parent relationship is supported: the BGE will not instantiate objects that have parents outside the group.
* Intra-group logic bricks connections are preserved between the duplicated objects, even between the top objects of the group.
* For best result, the state engine of the objects in the group should be self-contained: logic bricks should only have intra-group connections. Use messages to communicate with state engines outside the group.
* Nested groups are supported: if one or more objects in the group have the DUPLIGROUP option set, the corresponding groups will be instantiated at the corresponding position and orientation.
* Nested groups are instantiated as separate groups, not as one big group.
* Linked groups are supported as well as groups containing objects from the active layers.
* There is a difference in the way Blender displays the groups in the 3D view and how BGE instantiates them: Blender does not take into account the parent relationship in the group and displays the objects as if they were all children of the object having the DUPLIGROUP option. That's correct for the top objects of the group but not for the children. Hence the orientation of the children objects may be different in the BGE.
* An AddGroup actuator will be added in a future release.
=============================
* Clean up and optimizations in skinned/deformed mesh code.
* Compatibility fixes and clean up in the rasterizer.
* Changes related to GLSL shadow buffers which should have no
effect, to keep the code in sync with apricot.
New Add mode for Ipo actuator
=============================
A new Add button, mutually exclusive with Force button, is available in
the Ipo actuator. When selected, it activates the Add mode that consists
in adding the Ipo curve to the current object situation in world
coordinates, or parent coordinates if the object has a parent. Scale Ipo
curves are multiplied instead of added to the object current scale.
If the local flag is selected, the Ipo curve is added (multiplied) in
the object's local coordinates.
Delta Ipo curves are handled identically to normal Ipo curve and there
is no need to work with Delta Ipo curves provided that you make sure
that the Ipo curve starts from origin. Origin means location 0 for
Location Ipo curve, rotation 0 for Rotation Ipo curve and scale 1 for
Scale Ipo curve.
The "current object situation" means the object's location, rotation
and scale at the start of the Ipo curve. For Loop Stop and Loop End Ipo
actuators, this means at the start of each loop. This initial state is
used as a base during the execution of the Ipo Curve but when the Ipo
curve is restarted (later or immediately in case of Loop mode), the
object current situation at that time is used as the new base.
For reference, here is the exact operation of the Add mode for each
type of Ipo curve (oLoc, oRot, oScale, oMat: object's loc/rot/scale
and orientation matrix at the start of the curve; iLoc, iRot, iScale,
iMat: Ipo curve loc/rot/scale and orientation matrix resulting from
the rotation).
Location
Local=false: newLoc = oLoc+iLoc
Local=true : newLoc = oLoc+oScale*(oMat*iLoc)
Rotation
Local=false: newMat = iMat*oMat
Local=true : newMat = oMat*iMat
Scale
Local=false: newScale = oScale*iScale
Local=true : newScale = oScale*iScale
Add+Local mode is very useful to have dynamic object executing complex
movement relative to their current location/orientation. Of cource,
dynamics should be disabled during the execution of the curve.
Several corrections in state system
===================================
- Object initial state is taken into account when adding object
dynamically
- Fix bug with link count when adding object dynamically
- Fix false on-off detection for Actuator sensor when actuator is
trigged on negative event.
- Fix Parent actuator false activation on negative event
- Loop Ipo curve not restarting at correct frame when start frame is
different from one.
To take advantage of this feature, you must have a mesh with
relative shape keys and shape Ipo curves with drivers referring
to bones of the mesh's parent armature.
The BGE will automatically detect the dependency between the
shape keys and the armature and execute the Ipo drivers during
the rendering of the armature actions.
This technique is used to make the armature action more natural:
the shape keys compensate in places where the armature deformation
is uggly and the drivers make sure that the shape correction
is synchronized with the bone position.
Note: This is not compatible with shape actions; BLender does
not allow to have Shape Ipo Curves and Shape actions at the same
time.
This patch introduces two options for the motion actuator:
damping: number of frames to reach the target velocity. It takes
into account the startup velocityin the target velocity direction
and add 1/damping fraction of target velocity until the full
velocity is reached. Works only with linear and angular velocity.
It will be extended to delta and force motion method in a future
release.
clamping: apply the force and torque as long as the target velocity
is not reached. If this option is set, the velocity specified
in linV or angV are not applied to the object but used as target
velocity. You should also specify a force in force or torque field:
the force will be applied as long as the velocity along the axis of
the vector set in linV or angV is not reached. Works best in low
friction environment.
This patch introduces a simple state engine system with the logic bricks. This system features full
backward compatibility, multiple active states, multiple state transitions, automatic disabling of
sensor and actuators, full GUI support and selective display of sensors and actuators.
Note: Python API is available but not documented yet. It will be added asap.
State internals
===============
The state system is object based. The current state mask is stored in the object as a 32 bit value;
each bit set in the mask is an active state. The controllers have a state mask too but only one bit
can be set: a controller belongs to a single state. The game engine will only execute controllers
that belong to active states. Sensors and actuators don't have a state mask but are effectively
attached to states via their links to the controllers. Sensors and actuators can be connected to more
than one state. When a controller becomes inactive because of a state change, its links to sensors
and actuators are temporarily broken (until the state becomes active again). If an actuator gets isolated,
i.e all the links to controllers are broken, it is automatically disabled. If a sensor gets isolated,
the game engine will stop calling it to save CPU. It will also reset the sensor internal state so that
it can react as if the game just started when it gets reconnected to an active controller. For example,
an Always sensor in no pulse mode that is connected to a single state (i.e connected to one or more
controllers of a single state) will generate a pulse each time the state becomes active. This feature is
not available on all sensors, see the notes below.
GUI
===
This system system is fully configurable through the GUI: the object state mask is visible under the
object bar in the controller's colum as an array of buttons just like the 3D view layer mask.
Click on a state bit to only display the controllers of that state. You can select more than one state
with SHIFT-click. The All button sets all the bits so that you can see all the controllers of the object.
The Ini button sets the state mask back to the object default state. You can change the default state
of object by first selecting the desired state mask and storing using the menu under the State button.
If you define a default state mask, it will be loaded into the object state make when you load the blend
file or when you run the game under the blenderplayer. However, when you run the game under Blender,
the current selected state mask will be used as the startup state for the object. This allows you to test
specific state during the game design.
The controller display the state they belong to with a new button in the controller header. When you add
a new controller, it is added by default in the lowest enabled state. You can change the controller state
by clicking on the button and selecting another state. If more than one state is enabled in the object
state mask, controllers are grouped by state for more readibility.
The new Sta button in the sensor and actuator column header allows you to display only the sensors and
actuators that are linked to visible controllers.
A new state actuator is available to modify the state during the game. It defines a bit mask and
the operation to apply on the current object state mask:
Cpy: the bit mask is copied to the object state mask.
Add: the bits that set in the bit mask will be turned on in the object state mask.
Sub: the bits that set in the bit mask will be turned off in the object state mask.
Inv: the bits that set in the bit mask will be inverted in the objecyy state mask.
Notes
=====
- Although states have no name, a simply convention consists in using the name of the first controller
of the state as the state name. The GUI will support that convention by displaying as a hint the name
of the first controller of the state when you move the mouse over a state bit of the object state mask
or of the state actuator bit mask.
- Each object has a state mask and each object can have a state engine but if several objects are
part of a logical group, it is recommended to put the state engine only in the main object and to
link the controllers of that object to the sensors and actuators of the different objects.
- When loading an old blend file, the state mask of all objects and controllers are initialized to 1
so that all the controllers belong to this single state. This ensures backward compatibility with
existing game.
- When the state actuator is activated at the same time as other actuators, these actuators are
guaranteed to execute before being eventually disabled due to the state change. This is useful for
example to send a message or update a property at the time of changing the state.
- Sensors that depend on underlying resource won't reset fully when they are isolated. By the time they
are acticated again, they will behave as follow:
* keyboard sensor: keys already pressed won't be detected. The keyboard sensor is only sensitive
to new key press.
* collision sensor: objects already colliding won't be detected. Only new collisions are
detected.
* near and radar sensor: same as collision sensor.
Shape Action are now supported in the BGE. A new type of actuator "Shape Action" is available on mesh objects. It can be combined with Action actuator on parent armature. Only relative keys are supported. All the usual action options are available: type, blending, priority, Python API. Only actions with shape channels should be specified of course, otherwise the actuator has no effect. Shape action will still work after a mesh replacement provided that the new mesh has compatible shape keys.
GLEW
====
Added the GLEW opengl extension library into extern/, always compiled
into Blender now. This is much nicer than doing this kind of extension
management manually, and will be used in the game engine, for GLSL, and
other opengl extensions.
* According to the GLEW website it works on Windows, Linux, Mac OS X,
FreeBSD, Irix, and Solaris. There might still be platform specific
issues due to this commit, so let me know and I'll look into it.
* This means also that all extensions will now always be compiled in,
regardless of the glext.h on the platform where compilation happens.
Game Engine
===========
Refactoring of the use of opengl extensions and other drawing code
in the game engine, and cleaning up some hacks related to GLSL
integration. These changes will be merged into trunk too after this.
The game engine graphics demos & apricot level survived my tests,
but this could use some good testing of course.
For users: please test with the options "Generate Display Lists" and
"Vertex Arrays" enabled, these should be the fastest and are supposed
to be "unreliable", but if that's the case that's probably due to bugs
that can be fixed.
* The game engine now also uses GLEW for extensions, replacing the
custom opengl extensions code that was there. Removes a lot of
#ifdef's, but the runtime checks stay of course.
* Removed the WITHOUT_GLEXT environment variable. This was added to
work around a specific bug and only disabled multitexturing anyway.
It might also have caused a slowdown since it was retrieving the
environment variable for every vertex in immediate mode (bug #13680).
* Refactored the code to allow drawing skinned meshes with vertex
arrays too, removing some specific immediate mode drawing functions
for this that only did extra normal calculation. Now it always splits
vertices of flat faces instead.
* Refactored normal recalculation with some minor optimizations,
required for the above change.
* Removed some outdated code behind the __NLA_OLDDEFORM #ifdef.
* Fixed various bugs in setting of multitexture coordinates and vertex
attributes for vertex arrays. These were not being enabled/disabled
correct according to the opengl spec, leading to crashes. Also tangent
attributes used an immediate mode call for vertex arrays, which can't
work.
* Fixed use of uninitialized variable in RAS_TexVert.
* Exporting skinned meshes was doing O(n^2) lookups for vertices and
deform weights, now uses same trick as regular meshes.
The best rules for stereo rendering are now applied to Blender. Here is the new situation:
1) The focal distance is now settable through the GUI: select the camera (each camera can have a different setting) and go to the camera data (F9): the "Dof Dist" and "Dof Ob" can be used to set the focal distance for that camera. The "Dof Ob" is interesting because it sets the focal distance so that the center this object will appear at the surface of the screen when running the game.
2) The eye separation is automatically set to focal_distance/30, which is considered to be a reasonable value. If you need a different value, you can always use Python scripting.
Notes:
- If you switch camera during the game, the focal distance will also change unless you have set the focal distance by scripting, in which case it overwrites the focal distance setting of all cameras.
- If you don't set the focal distance in the camera data or by scripting, the default value will be used. The default value corresponds more of less to the near clipping plane which means that all the objects will be very far with little 3D effect.
- If you don't set the eye separation by scripting, it is automatically computed as focal_distance/30, regardless on how the focal distance was set.
The current layer information is now stored in KX_GameObject and inherited from the parent object when dynamically added. This information is used during the rendering the select the lamps. As the selected lamps are always coming from active layers, their position and orientation are correct.
This patch modifies the BL_ConvertMesh method from the data conversion module in order to reduce the number of polygon
material objects that are created.
Normally, there should be only one material object for each material bucket(the group of meshes that are rendered together
with a single material). However, the number of materials that are created right now in the converter is much higher
and eats a lot of memory in scenes with large polygon counts. This patch deletes those material objects(KX_BlenderMaterial)
that are used only temporarily in the converter(and are now deleted only when the converter is destroyed, at the end
of the game).
For a cube that's subdivided 7 times(90+ k polygons) I get 200 MB usage in the game engine in 2.45 and 44 MB with a
svn build with this patch applied if the "Use Blender Materials" option is activated in the Game menu.
- check that an object has been created before setting the physics environment
- check that there is an active camera before using it
- when a camera is deleted, remove it from m_cameras list
rayCastTo(other,dist,prop)
Look towards another point/KX_GameObject and return first object hit within dist with a property that match prop, None if no object found or if it does not match prop.
Parameters:
other = 3-tuple (xyz coordinates) or object reference (target=center of object)
(type = list [x,y,z] or object reference)
dist = max distance of detection (can be negative => look behind)
If 0 or omitted => detect up to other
(type=float)
prop = property name that object must have
If empty or omitted => detect any object
(type=string)
This adds fractional FPS support to blender and should finally
make NTSC work correctly.
NTSC has an FPS of 30.0/1.001 which is approximately 29.97 FPS.
Therefore, it is not enough to simply make frs_sec a float, since
you can't represent this accurately enough.
I added a seperate variable frs_sec_base and FPS is now
frs_sec / frs_sec_base.
I changed all the places, where frs_sec was used to my best knowledge.
For convenience sake, I added several macros, that should make life
easier in the future:
FRA2TIME(a) : convert frame number to a double precision time in seconds
TIME2FRA(a) : the same in the opposite direction
FPS : return current FPS as a double precision number
(last resort)
This closes bug #6715
Standard framerates not supported / breaks sync -- 23.967 29.967 etc.
https://projects.blender.org/tracker/?func=detail&aid=6715&group_id=9&atid=125
Please give this heavy testing with NTSC files, quicktime in/export
and the python interface.
Errors are most probably only spotted on longer timelines, so that is
also important.
The patch was tested by Troy Sobotka and me, so it most probably should
work out of the box, but wider testing is important, since errors are
very subtle.
Enjoy!
using mface->flag for both.
Also found that the cdDM_drawMappedFaces and cdDM_drawFacesTex_common could get normals mixed up when rendering hidden faces. because hidden/invisible faces used continue without advancing to the next normal.
copy system with rigidbody constraint will link new constraints to new objects (instead of old)
fps from blender will be used when baking (left shift/ctrl/alt + P)
- GEdon't crash when attempting to add constraint on game objects without physics controller
- GEimproved some physics -> graphics synchronization issues
- small experiment with game engine timing to smooth framerate/reduce tearing
Although we will delay the main Rigid Body user interface after 2.43 release early 2007, I need some constraint data/UI to make progress with COLLADA Physics.
Added RigidBody constraint UI
LR_ALTKEY+LR_CTRLKEY+LR_SHIFTKEY+ P will bake rigidbody
Contribution by RCRuiz, Ramon Carlos.
All data layers, including MVert/MEdge/MFace, are now managed as custom
data layers. The pointers like Mesh.mvert, Mesh.dvert or Mesh.mcol are
still used of course, but allocating, copying or freeing these arrays
should be done through the CustomData API.
Work in progress documentation on this is here:
http://mediawiki.blender.org/index.php/BlenderDev/BlenderArchitecture/CustomData
Replaced TFace by MTFace:
This is the same struct, except that it does not contain color, that now
always stays separated in MCol. This was not a good design decision to
begin with, and it is needed for adding multiple color layers later. Note
that this does mean older Blender versions will not be able to read UV
coordinates from the next release, due to an SDNA limitation.
Removed DispListMesh:
This now fully replaced by DerivedMesh. To provide access to arrays of
vertices, edges and faces, like DispListMesh does. The semantics of the
DerivedMesh.getVertArray() and similar functions were changed to return
a pointer to an array if one exists, or otherwise allocate a temporary
one. On releasing the DerivedMesh, this temporary array will be removed
automatically.
Removed ssDM and meshDM DerivedMesh backends:
The ssDM backend was for DispListMesh, so that became obsolete automatically.
The meshDM backend was replaced by the custom data backend, that now figures
out which layers need to be modified, and only duplicates those.
This changes code in many places, and overall removes 2514 lines of code.
So, there's a good chance this might break some stuff, although I've been
testing it for a few days now. The good news is, adding multiple color and
uv layers should now become easy.
remove constraint fixed,
Bullet timestep now subdivides Blender game engine timestep, so it runs 60 hertz,
SphereShape reverted to old style, so no support for non-uniform scaled spheres for now,
Armatures are back
Split screen
Double sided lightning
Ambient lighting
Alpha test
Material IPO support (one per object atm)
Blender materials
GLSL shaders - Python access
Up to three texture samplers from the material panel ( 2D & Cube map )
Python access to a second set of uv coordinates
See http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=58057
