Re: Next Autocubic Project: first release...

[Andrea V. <and...@gm...>]

Hi, Christian,

> ....it would have been less work to do this in a real 3D engine.

So, do you want that I switch to another engine?
Well, I don't Known...I have to learn other tools,
(and probably not so simple as Pipmak....) and I haven't all that time...
I really spent few time to obtain something working....
(just one afternoon which I had little to do, to get the 
autocubic core working...)

So, for the moment not, because I like the clearness and 
the semplicity of Pipmak, and, in the while, 
I can give my small contribution to the development.

> 
> Random observations:
> 
> - The "transparent walls" button causes a crash, this is fixed in r205. 
> To make it work, I had to make these two additional changes:
> 

Well, thanks, the button "transparent walls" button come from old 
autocubic version, and I haven't do nothing to make it work...
Fixed in the update.

> 
> - The buttons panel does not stick to the top right corner when the 
> window is resized, but stays at a fixed distance from the top left. Is 
> this by design? If not, you can change it by replacing "absx = 0, absy = 
> 0" by "relx = 1, rely = 0". Is there a reason why you're making that 
> panel fill the whole (initial) window instead of just the size it needs?
> 	

I knew that problem, but I had not even thought of a solution .. 
I will try your fix.
The reason was that when I wrote that piece of code 
(at time of MyHouse Virtual Tour) I didn't known all the possibility
of Pipmak! 
Fixed in the update.


> - The fog seems very strong. Would reducing that have any undesirable 
> effects?

In the last demo there are a bug which draw fog twice...
apart from this, it 's possible control fog with these vars:

fog_dist_min      = 4   --  start draw fog at this distance
fog_dist_max      = 11  --  end draw fog at this distance
fog_level         = 0.5 --  transparency of single layer
fog_lum           = 0.9 --  0=black 1=white

Fixed in the update.

> 
> - Some walls of the big double-H-shaped tower are invisible from within. 
> Is that a bug in the code or just an omission in the model (does the 
> inside and outside of every wall need to be specified separately)?
>

Yes, it's true, this was a test, if you don't specify an inside texture 
(parameter "i") the walls disapear if you go inside...
but it can useful if you create building which you know that you will not
ever enter into

In the update you cannot pass through the walls
(but you still fly over using arrows...)

I have update the map, and now you can go inside double-H tower, 
from the top there is a nice sight over all area!!  

The big problem of autocubic "engine" is the number of patches and the 
number of images...I'm trying several method to reduce this number...

For example if I substitute getimage with newimage the elaboration time 
increases greatly....., 

I need newimage to cut windows and doors holes, these patches aren't 
cached by pipmak and consume time and memory....
now I have create a second image-cache managed from lua, 
to reuse that images and I get a nice speed up...
 
> - Along the southern border of the road area, a sidewalk edge is missing 
> between road and grass (road and grass are at different heights, but 
> without a step in between).
> 

Yes, yes... there are some missing parts...

I have to completely change the way to create objects, because for the 
moment it's very hard create model....
I want to add the possibility to naming some part (for example an house)
and relocate and re-orient as I want without the need to rewrite the 
model in another position....
I will put a complete description to how create models in the wiki,
So everyone could create their own models and we could start an 
autocubic contest!!!

> While I'm at it, some comments about your Random Forest Generator, which 
> is quite impressive as well (you didn't ask for criticism there, but 
> you'll get it anyway):
> 
> - Sometimes you have several trees at the same point, and because the 
> depth sort isn't stable, changing the sun angle or fog level will bring 
> one or the other to the foreground.
>

Yes, it's true, the initial idea was to have only one tree for box,
I have to modify it...
 
> - You can see the ceiling of the sky box because the top pixel row of 
> each of the side images is slightly brightened (this is in autocubic too).
>
I will try to correct pictures!
 
> Does your request to have it on the showcase page still stand?

If you think that might be useful to demonstrate some features of pipmak,
you can go forward, I will try to fix bugs..
Forest generator code is simplest than autocubic code...


There are a bug in Pipmak 0.2.7 concerning overlay nodes....
I haven't test this with last r205, so probably it could be already resolved,
but it seem a different case from calling gotonode after closeover...

When you open the map using buttons in the upper right corner,
and you move in the 3d space, your position (red point)
in the map should change consequently (like a screen of a car navigator...)

To do this in a first time, I closed and reopened the overlay, but this make
Pipmak crash, so I try to create a message "update" to the overlay...
the handler of the message simply do a gotonode(overlaynode) which reload the
node but it crash the same...

The strange thing is that this happen only running project using the 
zipped one file style, but if you uncompress file .pipmak and run it from
a folder, all things run correctly.... 

This is only a Windows problem?

Bye 

Andrea