Hi All,

If you use a mutli-core PC, or are thinking about buying one, you may be interested to see the latest performance benchmarks for L3DT Professional for singe, dual, triple and quad core machines (see benchmarks in dev log).

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Edit: I've updated the page to include benchmarks for L3DT running in Linux with WINE, for all the penguin fanciers out there.

Hi All,

In the very latest developmental build of L3DT you may now choose the detail level for your design map. This will be one of the main features in the upcoming L3DT 2.6 release, but you can try it out now in build 2.5.4.7, dated the 22nd of June '08.

In this new build there are six versions of the 'Design/Inflate' heightfield algorithm, with design map blocks ranging in size from 8x8 heightfield pixels up to 256x256 heightfield pixels. The smaller design map block sizes give you greater control, but require more effort when editing large terrain. The larger block sizes make it easier to design very large terrain, but don't give you as much detailed control.

Several wizards and options have been changed accordingly, as discussed below:

Design map / heightfield size wizard

Previously you chose size of your heightmap by selecting the size of the design map in the 'design map size' wizard:


The old 'design map size' wizard

This was unnecessarily confusing for new users who weren't familiar with the concept of a design map, nor why the size of the heightmap was determined by the size of the design map.

In the new release, you now set the desired size of your heightfield in the new 'heightfield size' wizard (see below).


The new 'heightfield size' wizard

After choosing your heightmap size, you then set your design map size by choosing a design map resolution in the new 'design map size' wizard:


The new 'design map size' wizard

This should, I hope, meet the dual goals making the process less confusing for new users, and allowing power users to work with different design map resolution.

Perlin wizard

To improve the standardisation of L3DT's user interface, the same new 'heightmap size' wizard has been adopted for the Perlin algorithm. Previously, the perlin wizard looked like:



This wizard was a little too cluttered, and still didn't provide as much feedback information as was available in the other wizards (e.g. world size, mosaic map size, etc.). This has been fixed in the new release, where you now select the perlin map size in the 'heightfield wizard' (below), followed by a simplified 'perlin parameters' wizard (bottom below):




Changes to map settings

Due to the underlying changes to L3DT's terrain algorithm, the map settings created by this or later builds of L3DT will not be readable by older versions of L3DT. However, maps generated by older versions of L3DT will still be readable by this or later versions of L3DT. Thus, you won't (or rather, shouldn't) loose any data when moving forward to the new build.

Still to do

I still need to do some tweaking of the new design/inflate algorithms to bring them up to the same standard as the default 64x64 block size algorithm. In the mean-time, you may occasionally find some strange results using the other algorithms.

Also, the 'import design map' wizard is now broken, but will be updated in a developmental build in the near future.

Feedback

If you would like to provide feedback or ask questions, please reply to this forum thread.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

Hi All,

I've found and fixed a bug in the L3DTio_Atlas2 plugin that caused blended terrain to appear black in TGEA. The updated plugin has been included with the latest developmental build of L3DT Professional, which is v2.5d build 6, dated the 14th of June 2008. This update is now available on the downloads page for L3DT Professional users.

Update for 'L3DT for Torque' user?

This update has not yet been included in the stable release of 'L3DT for Torque' that is available from the GarageGames site. Due to the rigours of beta-testing, the stable release is still some weeks away. Nonetheless, iIf you would like to access the developmental build with the updated plugin, please e-mail aaron@bundysoft.com and I will send you the required download instructions.

Atlas tutorial

There is a new 'Making blended and unique Atlas terrain for TGEA' tutorial in the wiki, which - as the title suggests - explains how to generate both unique and blended atlas terrain files for TGEA using L3DT. [Note: To follow the tutorial, you must have the updated version of the L3DTio_Atlas2 plugin.]

Screenshots

Here are a few hot-of-the-press blended Atlas terrain, as generated by L3DT and exported using L3DTio_Atlas2:





Best regards,
Aaron.

Hi Everyone,

I'm considering officially supporting L3DT in Linux for the next release, at least for Ubuntu with Wine. From my latest tests, it seems to all run very smoothly, excepting one troublesome plugin (ZeoPerfMon_NT), which I'll remove from the Linux version in due course.

Anyway, before I go ahead and claim that L3DT officially runs in Linux, I'd like to get some user feedback. So, if you're running Linux (any distro)* and have Wine, please give the latest developmental build of L3DT a try (it's on the downloads page), and let me know of any bugs you find.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

* hmmm...since Wine runs on Solaris and BSD, I might even go so far as to say UNIX.

Hi Everyone,

In the latest developmental build* I have extended the support for scripting in L3DT. The headline addition is the new scripting user interface (see below), but there has also been several updates to the scripting syntax to make it more powerful and easier to use. Whist scripting does not offer the same level of customisation that is possible via plugins, it is now at the stage where it can do useful stuff. I have included several example scripts in the installation package to demonstrate these capabilities (as discussed further down).

Scripting user interface

The most obvious aspect of these changes is the new scripts menu, as shown below:



From this menu you can access the script manager to load, edit and otherwise manage your scripts. You can also open the included script editor, or select another program to be your preferred script editor. Finally, the lower section of the script menu is the 'quick run' list; to run a script, simply select it from this list.

Script examples

Example scripts are included with the installation package, including:

• Export fractal - for generating and exporting a fractal heightmap.
• Import tile - for importing a sub-region of the heightmap from a file.
• Re-calculate texture area - for re-calculating a sub-region of the texture map (e.g. after changes to the attributes map).

Some of the other scripts are included for educational purposes, such as 'Hello World' and 'Greeting'.

Supported languages

By default, this scripting interface only supports L3DT's native script language, ZeoScript. This is a rudimentary home-baked language that is good for calling plugin API extension functions (e.g. calculations, file export, etc.), but not much else. It doesn't do loops, for instance.

For users who want more power from their scripting language, I recommend they download and install Carl Douglas' cdPython plugin, which implements the Python scripting language. L3DT's script interface will run python scripts (.py) after the plugin is installed, and I have included a python script example in the installation package.

Other languages can be added in the future via plugins.

Changes to plugins

This release includes a major revision of the parser in the ZeoScript plugin, which made a few (necessary, and beneficial) breaking changes to the syntax of the language. As a consequence of this change, several plugins that ran scripts had to be modified. The change list so far includes:

• Sapphire (3D editor)
• L3DTio_Atlas2 (TGEA Atlas export plugin)
• L3DTio_Spring (Spring RTS export plugin)
• L3DTio_SMT (Spring RTS export helper plugin)
• L3DTio_SMF (Spring RTS export helper plugin)
• L3DTio_Backup (backup/restore/undo plugin)
• 7zWrap (7-Zip compression/decompression plugin)
• atMergeMap (heightfield-combining plugin)

If you find any other plugins behaving strangely, please let me know and I'll update them forthwith.

In other news...

• There is a new georeferencing plugin.
• We're thinking about re-starting the famed Image of the Month Competition. Are there any takers? (if so, please reply here).

Feedback

Please reply to this forum thread if you'd like to post comments or questions. Feedback is always welcome.

Cheerio,
Aaron.

* For the record, the latest build version is build 2.5.4.3, dated 9th of June '08.