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Stolen work.
If you find these anywhere:
http://www.touchofdeathforums.com/smf/index.php/topic,30244.msg272308.html#msg272308
Make sure you tell everyone that they can't be freely used.
Someone stole them from Mithlomion's game Megalith.
If I find anyone using them, I'll ban you from all the communities that I have power on, which is a large portion of these sites, and get in touch with the administrators of the others to make sure you're never allowed to make a mirage-based community again.
Thanks,
Robin.
Absense
Once again I have to open up one of these news bulletins with an apology. Development of Essence - Dx8 is as slow as ever, and will be at a stand still till I get over my phobia of programming in co-ordinate based user interfaces.
Developing the engine has got to a boring stage, which means I don't do anything. I can't work on the engine if it's boring, as that defeats the purpose of it being a hobby. I need to get some motivation first, then I'll manage to whizz through the GUI rendering and sort out the old mapping code.
I have been doing a few things to keep my interested in game development as a whole though. Dave and I have started work on a small project using the new Mirage Source, called Legend of Mirage and I have finally got around to releasing my age-old game, Winds Whisper.
Winds Whisper has been ported to the latest public version of Essence, Beta2, and shows off the true potential of the engine. If you want to see some fantastic features with an amazing community based around them, come check it out some time.
There really aren't any updates to Essence since the last news update.
Yours,
Robin
Long time no news.
Alright. First of all, a huge sorry to all those waiting for the engine. I've been very busy with real life and programming a GUI in Dx8 is the most boring thing I've ever done.
I come bearing good news though. I'm releasing a very early version of Essence DX8 for you to play around with. It boasts the two main features most of you probably use this engine for: Limitless sized maps and Dx8!
Yes. Both are working (although the map system is slow as hell till I get around to caching the damn packets :P) and ready to be used. You can load your own tilesets in and play around with the mapping system all you want. Any maps you make with this version will work fine with the final release, as I wont be changing the maprec any more than I already have been doing.
This release has an un-capped FPS so that you lot can tell me what FPS you get! I really need to sort out some of the code (The multiplication and division used in the map rendering code bottle-neck it so much it makes me feel ill) but if you want it normal speed, just go back into the loop and uncomment out the capping code.
Alright, here it is! Essence version 0.0.1!
Download:
http://www.pwnz.co.uk/downloads/dx8.rar
Feel free to hop into the forums and tell me what you think, but please remember this is a very early test, and the final release will be a lot faster and lot more polished.
Oh, and before I forget, the registration screen isn't programmed in properly, so either use my account or create your own manually.
Yours,
Robin
Text re-write.
Hello again,
It's been a busy day. With help from DFA I found a few problems with the current Dx8 engine, and it was running at around 50fps on my fairly decent machine. I went down to the in-game loop and proceeded to comment out each small piece of code, trying to find out what was lagging it out so much and I finally found out that it was the chat system. I knew that the default text drawing routines were slow, but I hadn't expected a 100fps drop from just a few lines of using it! Bloody hell.
I made a few optimisations to the code, but I simply can't keep that text system in, I'm going to have to write, or find, a custom text rendering system. DFA kindly supplied me with a copy of his for reference and I'll possibly begin work on it later this week.
In other news, due to popular demand (ie. one or two people bugging me about it on msn) I've written up the process which I followed to create Essence's Graphical User Interface as a guide. You can find it here:
http://www.pwnz.co.uk/page.php?id=7
Yours,
Robin
Gui Update
Hello again,
I've been working on programming the ingame Gui for the last couple of days. The new ingame Gui will consist of a series of alpha-blended windows, which contain all the different Gui aspects, such as the inventory, character information, friends list etc. The windows will have two states. Minimised and Maximised. When minimised, they appear as a small icon which is shown under the 'Hp, Mp, Exp' window and when maximised they appear as a full window which can be moved around.
Here's an example of a minimised window:
Here's an example of a maximised window:
After I have finished programming in the drag+drop code, I'll begin work on the rendering of the things the windows will contain, such as the inventory items, the friends list itself and the character information.
In other news, I've begun working on the new Essence Library. The library will be a one-stop-shop for any information you need about the engine. It'll contain programming guides, graphical guides, development guides, command lists, game theory and many other game-making related items. The library will allow anyone to create their own articles, and as soon as an administrator (ie. Rory, ZoSo, Harry or I) validates, and in some cases edits, the article, it'll be viewable by anyone. I've started the library off by bringing the old command list found on the old website and writing up an extensive in-depth guide to packets!
You can access the Library through the link at the top of the page.
http://www.pwnz.co.uk/list.php?c=articles
I've also changed the website's icon. If you're still seeing the old one, please clear your browser's cache.
Well, that's all for today.
Yours,
Robin
Website Skin.
Hello again,
I've been slaving away all day on this thing. I think perfection has become something of an obsession of mine, as I spent up to 3 hours adding in the same white background you get behind the news to every other page on the site.
It was time consuming, but it does make the pages look a lot better, and that's what I'm trying to do. I'll probably be getting Rory to do some graphics for the site, as my Photoshop skills are still not up to scratch, and the banner isn't very awe-inspiring, to say the least.
I haven't had any chance to do much more programming on Essence today due to this work, but the implementation of the GUI is well and truly under-way and it won't be long before I have it all ready to begin packing it full of features again. Huzzah!
I did, however, get a chance to try out the new Eyns engine that is supposed to overtake Elysium in the next few years. It was quite fun, and you can see a screenshot or two on their website, which can be found here.
I'll hopefully have some more screenshots to post tomorrow, and I'll post some updates of the new website skin.
Yours,
Robin
Essence's New Home
Welcome back,
This website is the new home of Essence. The old CMS was causing far too much trouble to be useful, and it was an absolute mess. The forums didn't store your activity properly and the skin was poor.
Well, that's all about to change. With the release of the fantastic new DirectX8 version of the engine, a new site is in order, and here it is in all it's glory. Hopefully with a new site and a new engine Essence will get some of the attention it deserves. Only time will tell, however.
As you can see, the site is a lot smaller than the old one. Personally I was getting quite confused and stressed by how large the old site was, so I'm trying to make this one as small as possible, but still with fantastic functionality and aesthetics.
I'm currently working on the new skin for the website and it will hopefully be completed soon. In the mean time, I've been spending a lot of time editing the scripting of the site to make it as clean is it can be, without removing the more desired functions.
Hopefully this will spell out a new age for Essence, so keep your eye on us.
Yours,
Robin.
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