News for August 2003

I'm working towards release 2.1. This version should be identical to release 2.0 but for the ability to make very large maps, up to 32,768 x 32,768 pixels in size (1Gpxl). How? Using 'mosaic maps' that automatically load the parts of the map in use and cache the rest to HDD. I've got mosaic maps going for the heightfield, attributes map, normals map, light map and texture map. There are still a few subroutines that need to be rewritten for explicit mosaic-map support.

I'm not going to guess an ETA other than to say at least one month from now.

I've tinkered with a few other things too:

• I've added an export option for the Virtual Terrain Project '.bt' binary terrain file (v1.3).
• I've altered the display & image export functions such that pixel (0, 0) is at the bottom-left of the display, whereas previously it was at the top-left. Why? I wanted a right-handed coordinate system.
• The water-map '.wmf' file is now run-length encoded, which has dropped the size on disk by about 98%.

Oh, I did find a bug in the light-mapping in release 2. If you set the sun direction to be between 90 and 180 degrees, the shadow-casting breaks. I made a silly boo-boo, and the fix will come in release 2.1.

I've made the lake-flooding routine a little more efficient, but the difference is fairly minor. I have updated the .exe on the downloads page, but I'm still calling it release 2.0.

I've also added a bit more to the 'tips on making the water-map' section of the tutorial.

'Escape' is probably a bit dramatic - 'left home' would be a better way to put it. Sick of sitting around on my computer, Release 2 uploaded itself onto the downloads page and is patiently waiting there for you to give it a home on your Win32 PC.

Release 2 is a big improvement over 1.5 - it's faster, it does more, and it's easier to use. Check out the intro page for the new list of features, or go to the gallery to see the results.

There have been some major changes to the heightfield algorithm and the design-map (formerly 'intermediate map'). The light-mapping routine has also been rewritten and is a lot better now. If you're interested in such things check out the tech info page.

Because of the cornucopia of changes made between L3DT release 1.5 and release 2, backwards compatibility has gone out the door - maps made in versions older than release 2 will not load in release 2. Future versions will, however, be backwards-compatible with release 2 (I promise).

I'm eager to get feedback, so please play around with it, try to break it, try to make it do something it can't do, and then email any suggestions / criticisms / thoughts / whatever to aaron.torpy@yahoo.com.

I've found and fixed three bugs that were present in release 1.5. The first was in the flooding routine and caused a rather silly looking 'wall-of-water' effect. It occurred very rarely, which is why I didn't notice it before. The second was that the infinite-wrapping function didn't work properly due to an oversight in the inflation routine. The third was in the shadow-casting routine, which gave erroneous small shadows depending on the lighting direction. The fixes will be included in release 2, which I'm guessing is about a week away.

Release 2 will probably arrive in a fortnight or so. It is getting close to a 'proper' beta-release, and is quite a bit more refined than r1.0 and r1.5. There have been major overhauls of the heightfield and light-map algorithms, and I've also made the UI a bit easier to use.

Enough chit-chat. There is still much programming to be done…