Wanton Hubris

I’ve spent the last week or so trying to convince QBSP to accept raw triangles. This has been challenging to say the least and what’s funny is that it -almost- works. Almost. The problem is that the triangles are not being added into the clipping hulls correctly so they don’t block players, weapon fire or monsters. They do, however, appear in the drawing hull and Quake happily draws them for me.

There are other problems as well like - if the triangle mesh I’m feeding isn’t convex, it doesn’t carve into the existing BSP correctly (convex meshes work fine).

It’s all very shaky and almost-working-y but I think I’m going to take a step back and take another crack at dissecting the mesh myself before saving out the MAP file. What I mean is that I’ll take the imported mesh and break it down into convex shapes and write those out individually to the MAP file.

To that end, I’ve spent the weekend solidifying my CSG and math routines to the point where I’d be tempted to call them “rock solid”. I can’t find any maps now that display artifacts when loaded so that’s a good sign. I would sometimes get stray polygons shooting off into infinity and stuff like that but that all seems to be fixed now and happily working.

I’ll post another update once I’ve had a chance to throw these new math routines at some mesh dissection concepts I have bumping around in my head.

Soon. Heh, sorry! No, it should be done within the next few days assuming that things go as planned. It’s forced me to clean up my 3D code somewhat though and I’m kind of getting happy with how it works/looks now. I used to have a bunch of functions where I could ask a plane which side of it a vertex was sitting on. I’ve condensed that down to one now:


-(ESide) getVertexSide:(TVec3D*)InVector
{
float distance = [self getDistanceFrom:InVector];
float delta = fabs( distance - dist );

return S_Behind;
}


Not very exciting, I know, but I haven’t posted anything in a few days and was feeling bad. I hope to be back soon with cool shots of a kick ass new feature!

I don’t know why WordPress sucks SO MUCH at posting source code but if anyone knows how to make that look nicer, I’m all ears. Unbelievable that it’s 2008 and it doesn’t “just work” yet.

This is the starting area. It’s not complete but this is the direction that it’s headed.

So I’ve never owned a grill before. I know that calls my manliness into question but it’s true. My wife and I went out today and bought one because we figured it was time.

As we’re loading it into her truck, a guy comes up and offers to help out. I gladly accept and once we’re done he compliments me on the grill.

As we’re pulling out, another guy walks by and upon seeing the grill, gives me a big thumbs up and a smile and jokingly calls out, “When’s the barbeque!?”

We get home and I ask my neighbor to give me a hand lugging it into the backyard. He does and then we have a conversation about the grill, it’s specs, and we left off with my being tasked to report back to him later as to how this grill performs.

I feel like I’ve gained membership into some sort of club that I had no idea existed.

Real life is impeding on my Quaking so I’ll be back in a bit. We’ve got a few weeks of crazy hours coming up. Be back when I can!

My email is acting up at the moment so if you’re getting errors sending me anything, that’s why! I’ll post again when it’s sorted out. I don’t have a lot of time to work on this so it might be a day or two. Hooray!

Work is pretty hectic at the moment which is why I haven’t done much in the last week or so. I’m also not sure what to work on next. I have a few options but none of them are lighting my fire. I’ll have to think about it some more.

In other news, today is my birthday! I’m 38. Ye gods.

Very cool portal engine someone is doing using Ogre3D as a base. The videos are killer!

http://freegamer.blogspot.com/2008/02/stop-press-portalized-open-source.html

So many possibilities!

Just a public service announcement here. I just bought this so I can confirm that it is legit:

https://www.macheist.com/

You can get almost $500 worth of apps and games for $49! And 25% of that goes to charity. It’s a fantastic promotion and the apps they offer are pretty cool. I already had a few of them and it’s still worth buying for that price.

It’s only going to last another day and a bit though, so get over there if you’re interested!

My lovely and talented wife had a couture jewelry show in New York so I went along as her resident pack mule.  Hey, those boxes aren’t going to get themselves up 3 flights of stairs! The best part was that I got to wear a tuxedo for the first time in my life. I dare say, I clean up real good!

While she was doing her show, my traveling companions and I hit the town a little and saw some of the sights.  I’ve never been to New York so everything was new to me.We stopped by ground zero to see what we could see (which isn’t much since they have most of it blocked off from viewing now).  I also rode the New York subway a few times, saw the inside of Grand Central Station, marveled at the incredible diversity in the architecture, experienced the insanity that is Times Square, saw the Rockefeller center Christmas tree and visited the “Top of the Rock”.  What a view!  My god, it was intense.  We were so high up that Central Park was simply a medium sized chunk of the yawning vista before us.  I have no idea how a city that large continues to function successfully but it makes me happy that it does.

One of the best parts of New York was the food and the feel of the place.  We spent our first night with friends at this tiny little corner store/restaurant near their apartment.  It was incredible!  The food was amazing, the atmosphere in the place was pitch perfect, and I had one of the best times of my life.  Simply amazing.  We left very late and very drunk.

On our last morning, we stopped into a diner near the hotel and it was perfect.  It was that perfect New York diner that you see in the movies.  A little grungy, a little dingy, but filled with character and uniqueness.  As an added bonus, the waitress was rude.

Huzzah, New York! 

I didn’t think I was going to like New York all that much but I have to admit that it started to grow on me. I came to respect and admire it and, yes, even love it in some ways. I can’t wait to go back again.