News for July 2006

I've included a new treat in v2.4.0.21: the ability to overlay arbitrary terrain features just as you do with the volcano, plateau and mountain overlays. For a demo, please read the tutorial.

This is very likely to be the last feature included in v2.4a.

Cheers, Aaron.

I've uploaded a new dev-build on the Pro downloads page. This version has the ostensibly complete 'calculation queue' wizard, which has been a popular request for several months now (in various guises). I could go on to explain what it is and what it does, but I think you'll 'get it' when you see it. Documentation will follow this week or next.

Otherwise, build 2.4.0.18 is the same as 2.4.0.17 from about a week ago.

Suggestions and bug-reports are welcome!

Cheers, Aaron.

Users of L3DT Professional may be interested in a new developmental build (v2.4.0.17) that I've uploaded to the pro downloads page. This build includes a few features I've been cooking-up, including:

You can now make high-resolution alpha maps. This should appeal to Battlefield2 modders, as well as game developers that are working on their own pretty renderers.

The 'per-pixel land types' option in the texture wizard now works when you don't have a design map.

I've increased the maximum non-mosaic export size from 8192×8192 to 8193×8193 pixels. This is to accommodate renderers that use 2^n+1 map sizes.

I've added preset bars for the texture and 2nd light-mapping wizards.

There's also a new 'auto' button on the toolbar, which executes all remaining calculations using their default presets. Note that these default presets can be altered using the presets bar in each wizard, or by using the 'settings→presets' menu option. I'm still working on a user-interface for this option, in which you will be able to select the operations to run.

Penultimately, I've added an option to clamp the grey-scale range for bitmap/jpeg/png image exports. When exporting a heightfield, this option may be enabled by clicking on the 'options…' button in the export wizard (with BMP/JPEG/PNG the selected format), and setting the 'Export→MinGreyscale' and 'Export→MaxGreyscale' entries to values greater than zero.

And finally, there have also been a couple of bug-fixes, most notably:

• A problem with importing 8-bit bitmap heightfields.
• Colour-clipping in the texture generator producing odd green patches.

And that's it. If you want to give it a try, then you don't need to uninstall your current version of L3DT - the dev-build will install alongside any other versions.

Cheerio, Aaron.