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March 6, 2002
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I got quite a few requests for it, so I've put up a link to the LW7.0 compatible Plugins. Please be sure to read the README - I've retired all the input plugins by rolling them into their respective export plugins. This reduces the size of the distro, and cleans things up a little.
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February 3, 2002
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Finally we win one! The Pats are Super Bowl champs! ... 14 point underdogs ... can't play on turf ... offense can't keep up ... too small and slow ... the Rams had God on their side ... and none of it really mattered.
"Greatest Show on Turf" my butt ...
I know Kordell said last week that "The Best Team doesn't always win" ... and I know the week before that the refs gave them the game (2 full-field drives and 2 field goals after that point notwithstanding) ... what happens this week? Will there be any respect for New England, or will the Rams contend they really won this since they were the ones throwing the passes the New England defense? Stay tuned ...
Regardless - that was a Great game!
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January 22, 2002
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Nothing like a little balance to kick off the year ...
First: The Bad News ... I've gotten a few emails from people saying that the plugins crash with LW 7.x and - alas - 'tis true, the ones that I've got up here do just that. Basically, out of 5 or 6 different ways to do something, I picked the one NewTek broke while they were fixing something else .. but at any rate, it should've ignored the surfaces rather than crashing. This happens after you hit 'End Preview'.
And then: The Good News ... Although I havn't actually upgraded myself to 7.x (I tend to treat LightWave releases like Star Trek movies and skip the odd numbered ones), I do seem to have gotten this fixed thanks to some remote debugging help from Hays Clark and Mikael Bowellan. Eventually I'll update the files here, but if you need it before then drop me a line and I'll just shoot it right on over dere.
Chris Cookson has been making some wonderful progress with the rtcw file formats - checkout his max scripts over at gmax at Digital Arenas. Eventually I'll roll his work into some export plugins for that game. Sounds like the game code will be released soon anyways, so the timing is good.
I'm also working on gaudy-ing up the site. Since I missed out on the over-colorful, teched-out web page design phase everyone else worked out of their system in 1997 I thought I'd play a little catchup.
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November 02, 2001
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Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween. Thought I'd trot out the pumpkin template that I cobbled together for the front porch. It started with the house - that started as something I got off a Hallmark site, I think - but then it just ... grew. The end result is a wraparound template. You'll actually have to do some math if you want to get it to print out right.
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October 03, 2001
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Hey folks ...
Sorry for the lack in software updates - number of reasons, primarily it's because I've been focusing on restructuring the code to be more STL-friendly, so that's been eating up what time I have spent on this. New stuff would be available if it existed. The reason for this restructuring is two-fold. First - it's good practice for me professionally (note the updated Resume - hint, hint ). Second - it's just cleaner. I'm also compartmentalising my XPanel controls so they can be used for the import plugins as well.
I played the Return to Castle Wolfenstein multiplayer test. Fun game, great atmosphere - My suggestion is to watch Easy Company's exploits via Band of Brothers on HBO, then play this. Talk about 'getting in the game' ... Of course, what intrigued me most of all were the models, so I did some investigative work into the formats in the .pak file. Wolf's .pak is actually a compressed .zip file - last I checked, the Quake3 ones wern't compressed. Basically, there are 3 model types in there - MD3, MDC and MDS.
MD3 seems to be the basic, garden-variety model from Quake3. A lot of the attachable stuff uses this - vWeps, ammo packs, stuff like that.
MDC seems to be similar - all the pieces using this are world models like the gibs and such. This wasn't what intrigued me.
MDS was what intrigued me. This seems to be an upgrade of the MD4 - or at least the MD4 as released in the FAKK2 tools. I'd made some tools to work with that, but when I gave up on actually using it in Quake3's engine, I stoppped work on them. MDS is Skeletal in nature and has multiple tags - I figure for attaching things since they are all named. This is something the MD4 (again - as presented in the FAKK2 tools) lacked. Bones effect vertices based on weights - multiple weights can be attached to each vertex, resulting in some smooth mesh deformation. Pretty cool - here's hoping the .dll code is released like it was for the Rogue and Xatrix packs for Quake2 so mod groups can take advantage of it.
I've started spending time biking in F. Gilbert Hills State Forest in Foxboro. This is quite a bit of fun - there are a lot of hardcore, nasty mountain bike trails there, but for those of us not actively trying to kill ourselves, the doubletrack-y roads (marked primarily as being for dirtbikes) are fine too. Just leave yourself some time once you get in there because it's easy to lose your way once you start the whole "I wonder what's down here..." routine. Just ride it out - the park is surrounded by roads, so if you're not circling, you'll find your way out.
Last but not least - I've gotten interested in Sun's JNI, and how it could apply to LightWave plugins. I spent some time last weekend working with it, and I've built something that incorporates it by linking with a JVM at runtime, and exposing Java as a plugin language. Is this something people would be interested in, what with LScript doing the fine job that it is? I'm going to keep playing anyways, because it intrigues me, but if it's something people might want, I'll play a little harder. Like with powerbars, gatorade ... really carb up.
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