RealmForge (now Visual3D Game Engine) / News: Recent posts

The RealmForge 3D game engine for .NET is no longer under development. Its core team is now developing Visual3D Architect .NET (www.v-3d.net) as the first framework and runtime integrated visual design environment for rapidly developing 3D games, simulations, architectural visualizations with .NET 2.0. We are building upon the most successful elements of RealmForge's design but are starting development anew to leverage the design experience of our new team. Development is progressing rapidly and we are providing support for both Suva3D, the Microsoft award-winning Suva3D engine, and Axiom, the redesign of the #1 ranked open-source OGRE 3D engine for .NET 2.0. We have formed partnerships with Suva Interactive, LLC and Mobile Immersion to provide immersive business solutions as well as relationships with various schools and universities to provide project-based computer science courses based around using our toolset in the classroom. We are currently looking for a highly talented 3D modeling and shaders artist to work with us in providing a showcase for our next-generation development solution for interactive 3D applications and .NET.

We are currently looking for a web developer experienced with ASP.NET and familiar with or willing to learn XML, XSLT, MediaWiki and PHPBB forums administration. We need this person to maintain the wiki and forums for RealmForge, Axiom, and CEGUI# as well as redesign and maintain the Axiom and RealmForge websites. Ideally this same person would also become familiar with the RealmForge platform and provide support to users through the forums and write and revise documentation on the wiki, however we are looking for several others to do this as well. ... read more

We are looking for capable .NET developers familiar with both C# and C++ who can assist in bringing the Axiom C# rendering engine up to speed with OGRE, its native C++ counterpart. We are looking for dedicated developers who will work with the existing developers to bring Axiom back to the cutting edge and continue to keep it up-to-date with OGRE while taking advantage of what .NET has to offer in terms of simplicity, portability, and productivity. Candidates would ideally have experience with 3D graphics APIs such as Managed DirectX or OpenGL, however development is much simplified due to the availability of the OGRE C++ source from which Axiom is based. Therefore really only an understanding of the basic math behind 3D rendering is required. We also are in need of platform testers to test Axiom and RealmForge's cross-platform support through Mono.

Lately I have been somewhat preoccupied with starting up my first year in college as a business student at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign, so I apologize for not having been as responsive on the forums of late. This is due to both time restrictions and the large number of help requests that come in.

RealmForge is still in an alpha state and its use is not yet advised for use for those who do not have .NET programming experience due to the lack of graphical tools available for developing games. The number of people who are trying RealmForge out right now is quite encouraging, however I suggest that the less experienced wait until it has reached at least a beta state before beginning full scale development with it. There are still many incomplete features and not too many examples that are indicative of its true capabilities.... read more

There has been problems off and on with the RealmForge.com site displaying errors due to (yet again) problems with my host, StartLogic, and now there has been a serious of vicious hacks on the forums. They were quite discusting and offensive in nature so I apologize to any who saw them. I have since upgraded database versions, but wasn't able to revert back to an old database before more posts were made of these past few days (again due to problems with my problematic host StartLogic). I apologize to those whose latest posts have been erased due to the hackers and issues with my web host.

Sorry for the delay, I have contacted my host and they have (finally) fixed the problem. Post away!

The forums at RealmForge.com (http://forums.realmforge.com) are temporarily down. I apologize for the inconvenience and have contacted my host, StartLogic, to fix this as soon as possible. It seems that all the subdomains including http://wiki.realmforge.com are down, however that is just a redirect page for the actual wiki location (http://realmforgewiki.castlegobs.nl).

RealmForge is no longer using the old SVN repository (and hasn't been using SourceForge.net CVS for quite a while now). We have moved to a new SVN repository (http://realmforgesvn.reigningsecurity.com:3691/svn/Realmforge) which will be able to be easily be accessed using TortoiseSVN (http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org) or any other SVN tool. However at the moment the anonymous read access is not working, so only developers can access it so please download file release instead to get the latest version (as the old SVN repository is no longer current). You can also view the repository on the web due to the WebSVN module (http://realmforgesvn.reigningsecurity.com:3691/wsvn/Realmforge) though this doesn't show the files themselves yet.

I have just been entrusted officially by Christopher McGuirk (leedgitar) with the task of leading the development of the Axiom 3D Engine. Development will continue under the modified branch of Axiom that has been maintained by the RealmForge GDK development team (which I am also the lead developer for). It is hosted at the new Subversion repository that has been setup on a dedicated server for the collaboration among the RealmForge, Axiom, and Might and Magic Tribute (MMT) open-source projects. We are looking for developers to keep Axiom up-to-date with OGRE as well as those who can provide support to users on the project forums. I also the current maintainer for the .NET Prebuild project file generation tool used in both projects and a lead programmer for MMT, the impressive open-source continuation of the popular RPG series which will also serve as a large-scale demo game for both the projects. ... read more

A compiled help file of the API documentation for the RealmForge, Axiom, CEGUI#, and MMT projects is included in the file releases, however there is also web-browsable API documentation available as well (http://realmforge.com/docs/index.html). However, because there is so much of it, it takes a bit of time to load the entire tree (nearly 20,000 pages) in the side menu, so you can download the compiled help file without the entire RealmForge GDK file release as well. The API documentation is in a format very similar to the .NET Framework MSDN documentation.... read more

The RealmForge GDK is the cross-platform game development platform for .NET. It is written entirely in C# to ensure portability and allow the productivity, flexibility, and dynamic nature of the .NET Framework to be leveraged in all aspects of game development. This middleware is architected with both power and ease of use in mind and is released under the LPGL so that it is the free and ideal solution for both commercial and hobbyist projects. This game development kit is characterized by its productivity, ease of use, and highly flexible and intuitive component-oriented architecture. This game engine and development environment consists of a framework, rendering engine, run-time development toolset (In-Game Editor), script and media libraries, and a growing showcase of demo games and tutorials which assist in rapid prototyping.... read more

I have just been entrusted officially by Christopher McGuirk (leedgitar) with the task of leading the development of the Axiom 3D Engine. Development will continue under the modified branch of Axiom that has been maintained by the RealmForge GDK development team (which I am also the lead developer for). It is hosted at the new Subversion repository that has been setup on a dedicated server for the collaboration among the RealmForge, Axiom, and Might and Magic Tribute (MMT) open-source projects. We are looking for developers to keep Axiom up-to-date with OGRE as well as those who can provide support to users on the project forums. I also the current maintainer for the .NET Prebuild project file generation tool used in both projects and a lead programmer for MMT, the impressive open-source continuation of the popular RPG series which will also serve as a large-scale demo game for both the projects. ... read more

An open-source, cross-platform 3D game development platform for .NET which includes framework and toolkit of integrated run-time development tools for rapidly creating cutting-edge script & data-driven games and MMORPGs using any of the numerous programming and scripting languages available for .NET. It's intuitive and highly flexible component-oriented framework is powerful, easy-to-use, and supports all types of shaders and the latest in 3D rendering technology.... read more

RealmForge GDK is a cross-platform, 3D game development middleware written entirely in C#. It serves as a framework and toolkit to rapidly development cutting-edge script & data-driven games and MMORPGs and provides an innovative In-Game Editor. It uses Axiom, the C# port of OGRE, as the rendering engine.

We are currently looking for a developer experienced with C#, .NET, XML, and object-oriented programming. Experience with writing importers is also a plus. If you are not familiar with C# but willing to learn and have experience with a similar platform such as Java then we may also make an exception. The primary quality that we are looking for in a member of this team is dedication and the ability to consistently contribute a good amount of time to it. Many of the developers spend 10-30+ hours a week so the general guideline is at least 10 hours, however depending on the undertaking this may be less. We are looking for several developers that will work on different importers to lessen the load however.... read more

RealmForge GDK is a cross-platform, 3D game development middleware written entirely in C#. It serves as a framework and toolkit to rapidly development cutting-edge script & data-driven games and MMORPGs and provides an innovative In-Game Editor.

The long-awaited v0.6 release has finally been made, it contains the source code, the pre-built binaries, dependencies, and the Axiom source code as well. It is much smaller however, because the RealmForge Media Library is no longer included but provided as a separate SourceForge.net file release. This version should be much easier to work with and setup and much more stable, you can find documentation at the project wiki (http://wiki.realmforge.com) and the Getting Started page there will provide setup instructions.... read more

RealmForge GDK is a cross-platform, 3D game development middleware written entirely in C#. It serves as a framework and toolkit to rapidly development cutting-edge script & data-driven games and MMORPGs and provides an innovative In-Game Editor.

Though no news release has been made lately, we have been hard at work on RealmForge and making great progress and v0.6 should be released shortly. The new website (http://realmforge.com), forums (http://forums.realmforge.com), and (http://wiki.realmforge.com) are currently up and running however, so check them out. Sadly due to server problems, all existing posts and accounts on the old forums were lost, sorry for the delay and inconvenience. However, new boards have been added to the forums and the wiki now provides a wealth of information for users and developers alike. The wiki will be updated often with new and revised information and should be incredibly useful.

The intro video for the Forging of the Realms demo game was just released. It is a stunning pre-rendered 45 second clip, but is not yet overlayed with music. Note that this was developed using Carrara and is not in-game rendered and that the clip is DivX encoded.

The latest addition to the development team is Clint Herron (HanClinto). He will be working on Networking, Remoting, Server, and everything MMORPG.

A new developer, Reese Hodge (Quattro), has been added to the development team. He will be working with me (xeonx) on the In-Game Editor and the use of WinForms and wx.NET (wxWidgets) for architecting development tools.

The problem in the v0.5 release has been found fixed! You can download the patch and just unzip it into the bin directory of the v0.5 release.

It seems that Axiom changed the values accepted for rendering screen size from 0-100 to 0-1 with *note warning*, *no error thrown*, and *no documentation available to discover it in*. I think that an error for an invalid parameter would really have been in order and saven us a lot of greef. I will be releasing a fixed RAGE assembly to patch it up.

There are some problems with the v0.5 on different machines. We will resolve these over the next few weeks, so just hang tight for the following v0.6 release or try out v0.4. Sorry about this inconvenience, its difficult to catch system-specific bugs. Though the screenshots section of XeonxStudios.com has been updated yet again to give a glimpse of whats going on.

New screenshots have been added to the homepage (http://xeonxstudios.com?url=Screenshots) as well as under the new SourceForge.net project Screenshots page. The RealmForge project summary has changed and the it has be re-classified under in the Trove Categories.

RealmForge GDK is a cross-platform, 3D game development framework and toolkit written in C# using Axiom for rendering. It will allow for the rapid development of cutting-edge script & data-driven games and MMORPGs.

The long awaited RealForge GDK v0.5 has finally been released. It is the first version to make great headway on the In-Game Editor, which now is partially functional (though still not useable for game development). This is thanks to the use of WinForms instead of either wx.NET (wxWidgets) or GTK# (GTK+). The WinForms implementation for Mono (the cross-platform, open-source implementation of the .NET Framework) is still in development though, so a temporary wx.NET version will be implemented after the In-Game Editor is completed. Until this is completed though, RealmForge will be windows only (though not for too long). ... read more

The v0.4.5 version was released as it is the last version of RealmForge to use wx.NET as the primary Editor GUI library. Sorry about the delay in releasing this, we have all been hard at work on the v0.5 release.

A whole slew of updates have been made the project homepage site, the most important of which is the new RealmForge Overview document that was added. The Links section has been fixed, the downloads section has been updated with the latest downloads, the Forums link on the menu has been updated for the new forums, and the additional links have been added under RealmForge on the menu. The most important update is that the RealmForge > Overview link on the site menu now links to the new Introduction to RealmForge including critical information for both users and developers as well as a bried introduction to how the In-Game Editor is used as well as some common troubleshooting information and general info about the RealmForge GDK. Its a bit long, but check it out as its very useful. Please at least glance it over before posting questions about not being able to get RealmForge to work as it contains setup instructions.