This is beautiful Rik! Now that you've got the landscape engine in there do you think you may put some HLSL stuff in there? Come on, it'd be super good!

Matt

It's a big job for sure, but it is one of the obvious "next things" to do.

good job Rik
Edited 2nd November, 2004 10:41

Heh, seems that you finally used my suggestion regarding strips and how to batch to HW for better performace I did on forums so long ago.

I have not merged the changes into my code base yet, can anyone supply any info on performance increases?

Looks like NVidia strikes again! My friend's laptop with a GeForce FX Go5700 crashed randomly with build 2897. I had to disable r_arb_vertex_buffer_object to get my game to run in a stable fashion.

"Looks like NVidia strikes again!"
Love em' and Hate em'

What's the driver version? I'm running 56.72 and it's smokin'

rikh, which files have been modified in this source build? This is because I modified some files of the Cipher engine to add new things, and I would like to know if I can simply copy my modified files over the new source build, or if this files have changed, I'll have to add the changes to 2897 by hand.

Jedive: Can I suggest that you use Araxis Merge to do a folder diff: that's how I do it to check for changes in new cipher versions, as well as what those differences were (by doing a file diff on the different ones).

Visual C includes a tool call WinDiff that does a similar job. It's not as good as Araxis Merge, but it will show you which files are different and what changed.

I believe there are other such tools that are freeware: I think one is examDiff and another one is...er... can't remember the name off pat but it is on sourceforge.net

I use winmerge.

http://winmerge.sourceforge.net/

I've been using Beyond Compare. It's quite a capable tool.

http://www.scootersoftware.com/

@JTilo: That was the one I meant :)

hmmm...

the downloads section shows different build numbers for the tools and the source code... any comments on that????

mohaps

Rikh, any progress going on?

It's pretty quiet around on the forum...

my guess is that Cipher is dead.

Cipher is not dead, it's still alive through the community and throught the silent but still present work from Rik. While the updates are pretty slow, this does not mean that nothing happens.

Toby.

so whens the next available downloads

i hope mdl reaches either 7 or 9
mdl7,mdl9 ect
suport for 3ds or dat,directly
hope it plays avi with souns support or mpeg either

inbuilt ode physics engine
inbuilt gui
and more .......

maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week, maybe in a month, maybe in a year...

but it also could be never...

Alive for some, dead for the dumb. (those who could not or did not read the license).

Sorry !!!

but i am just wanting 2 know as you have'nt had an update since last year.
What have you been able to make since then
full streaming movies,I think not...
Cipher really needs it
as it is a commercial engine.
I did read the license issues & i understand but cipher wont last if it is not updated,People are giving it up,
alot of people a moving on,Time is short,Time we don't have
it would be sooner or later but an engine being updated in 1 year is abit over the top.It would be nice if we helped each other.

i am not bragging any longer,Soon i will not care,Iam on the boarder line of giving it up,your landscape terrain engine is buggy,no gui or Physics support,Poor file formats,
& does'nt support the playing of movies,Don't you think thats abit pathetic,But anyways i understand Rikh is a busy person,but when we all contribute together it will become more clear and frequently updated,but thats up to Rikh & all.

Thanks,

Lets vote on it....

CR, everything else aside, you're being rude. It won't work for you in the industry, and it won't work for you here.

Please understand that even the top-tier engines like Source, Unreal, and the like are still being modified to this day because even a $100K or $350K engine won't have all of the features that everyone needs. This is a $100.00 engine, so I don't see why anyone would expect Rik H. to sit there and try to make it the next Doom engine.

If you don't have the programmers to make the necessary updates to the engine, then perhaps it's best to just make MODs. You can use the "better" engines, and you only have to worry about the art side of it. You can definately save some time that way. One simply can't just say "I will be a game developer, I'll go buy a game engine and make games. BTW, where are my updates? Where is my easy-to-make level editor?" You have to design and conceptualize first, then plan out and choose the engine.

This issue boils down to just one thing though: As stated in the FAQ section of the website before you buy Cipher, you need programmers to make any sort of game with this engine, and Rik is not on any of our payrolls.

I mean no disrespect to you CR or anyone else here. I'm simply just voicing my opinions and experiences. I VOTE to please keep the forum discussions at a professional level.

Sorry CR, you are brong, no matter how many updates rick released for a month, you are always unhappy. For a simple reason, youll never make a game because youll never want to understand how cipher works... read first the manual.
To make a good game with cipher you dont need waitting a new update, because today, cipher is more powerful than many others engines, like blitz (we are a blitz license user) "dark SDK" (yes its true)....
To make a "toy" game, blitz and dark may be all that you need, for example you program in blitz in "basic" languaje.....
with these engines in fewer hours you can make a prety "little" demo
However cipher is a real framework, requires a little more experience in programming than others because its written in C. And you can do a entire game with this engine...

if you dont like some features, change it, its easy, and apport something to the community, the community not works only for requesting help.

"no Physic support"...
http://www.cipherengine.com/discuss/viewthread.php?t=2220

in 20 minutes you can integrate in cipher every physic engine. its most easy integrate this in this engine that for example in bitz, because you want to make a wrapper for the physic library, and cipher framework its separad in entities.

Sorry to all about my misbehavior,

Now i understand,If you really want something you have to do it yourself,

My Apologises!!!
2 everyone & Rikh ecspecially

Sorry once again...

CR

"Now i understand,If you really want something you have to do it yourself", not really CR, we're just saying that a lot of your complaints have to do with stuff you can already do in cipher but stuff that you don't want to learn how to do. Either that or your complaints are asking for more format support that would make cipher support formats that would be useless to have. as i have said before, it seems to me thqat you want to have everything already done and laid out for you so you can easily make a game but this isn't what we call game design, if you want that go to modding and mod your favorite game or something.

ok i understand jarrod,
the biggest problem i am having now is
well my 3dsmax got stolen from my house,Lucky not cipher,
The Barstards !!! ...

And i am wanting to know if its possible to do animation
without 3dsmax, I have used milkshape3d & Anim8or with no such luck,Even Blender exporter on downloads section, I have 3d gamestudio & i was kind of wondering if i could do the models and animation & convert them to cipher

As you have seen what i have already post.

This as follows....

1.Create model,animation,Skin,with 3d game studio A6

2.export model to .3ds format

3.use cipher model converter (The updated .3ds one on downloads section,

4.put Cipher.mdl into the game if works,fully animated with skins (boned animated) maybe skeletion animated but i dnt care i just want to get a model animated.


Thats all everything else is all fine.
Edited 14th August, 2005 07:25

3d studio max... got Stolen? From your House?
Just download the trial and enter your registration info

that got taken also
my serial was attached to my cd case
so i would'nt loose it,properly a dumb idea,

Its my fault but since i dont have it anymore what alternatives do i have so i can animate my 3d models

Get Gmax, discreet's Game Devlopment Suite - a cut down version of 3dStudio Max that is made specifically for games.

Edit: URL - http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?id=5562445&siteID=123112
Edited 15th August, 2005 09:50

CR, it's very strange to "loose" 3D Studio Max. If you're a genuine 3D Studio owner, you can simply ask Discreet for your serial number by email !

true but anyway....personally if i loosed one of my license... I would search for it and yes i'm sure you're supposed to have a registred e-mail to your license...

By the way he dont seem to care much about loosing 2000$ well lol

That'd be $3000.

ahh well 3000$ if you want anyway thats a lot of money isnt it?

Well to me this entire situation doesn't make any sense. If he didn't actually buy 3ds max then what is the problem with him getting it again? If he did then what is stoping him from getting it again? Even if he lost his serial he can still get it again, yet whats stoping him from getting it again?
Either way you look at it he should be able to get himself 3ds max one way or another, so whats the problem cr?
Edited 4th October, 2005 11:38

Today Autodesk and Alias announced the signing of a definitive agreement for Autodesk to acquire Alias.

Does that mean Maya will become the property of Autodesk? i.e , 3ds Max... interesting.

thats very interesting.

I would assume it will belong to them

yeah maya is a property of autodesk now. thats a bit funny. I seen it too when someone putted it on my 3d forum.

Personnaly i dont like that much. If two competitor are working along...Where will be the competition. AH yeah there is xsi and blender. May be other package like c4d but the 2 big software will work along.

Blender
XSI
Silo
Wings 3D
Lightwave
Mesa
Modo

There are a lot more.

but not as big as maya and 3dsmax.
when i say big i say really involved in dev of game and movie etc...

3dsmax and maya are the most important software in 3d graphic. like xsi

Silo
wings
modo are just modeler not full creation toolset.
i dont know mesa by the way.

i did say maya and 3dsmax were alone... I just say that the other application are not really their competitor. Silo is build not like max or maya this is an other kind of application. Its based on workflow. And modeling only. zbrush is an other kind of modeler... But modelers wont kill full feature packages. Blender could do it.

umm.. can people please stop bumping this? It gets me excited and then I get angry.

Please start a new topic.

Yo momma.

LOL

Happy 1 year anniversary people...

I wonder... does Rik even so much as drop by these forums anymore? Anyone know?

Sad as it is, I have well and truely moved on from Cipher... :-(

cheers :))

I emailed him a couple of days ago and he said hes been working 15 hour days (ouch)

too bad about cipher... im trying to scavenge some time to do some game programming, however working and school are getting in the way.

actually i have some problem with my cookies. they seem to work sometimes.

So most of the time i dont have access to licensed section because i cant log on.

Firefox is having problem with this website.

hmmmm.... i use firefox and it works just fine. i'm sure you have it set to accept cookies, try clearing everything under privacy and logging on.

Oh man i didnt accept cookies?
but but every other website that use cookies work just fine...
And uh?!? when i look if there are cookies. The only thing i know is just after i set a cookie here. when i look at what time the cookie will end it's writting the hours and day and year i created the cookie.

By the way i just used cookies of an other website. It is loging in 1 time on 4. it seem it is pretty random. the new cookie i made will last until this month in year 2006 so i dont understand why it dont connect everytime.

Heh, stop bumping it ;) Thought maybe there was some news!
M

HLSL SHADER NEED !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It will never come.

why?

because HLSL is DirectX not OpenGL. But anyway, Cipher will not get too soon unified suport for lighting and full support for shaders. If anything will come out , will be something which will be just clumsly integrated in engine, which wont support modern games features and lighting

@Dan

You are a realist, aren't you?

Matt

The language is different, getting the same results, using either Directx or opengl is possible, the hardware remains the same, some folks just don't have any ambition or the know how, but are stuck with a lot of can't do, which will get you nothing.. very sad.

ah sorry dan my "why?" was for him i posted at the same time. ahahah i know that dx isnt opengl...

I prefered to do it simple. thats funny...my answer was just fitting with your answer.

by the way using CG could be done as easy as glsl if i'm right. And if i did understand right. Cg shader are looking like hlsl shaders. so it should not be hard to modify .fx to .cg. Anyway if someone need it... he will need to do it.
Edited 27th February, 2006 06:47

exactly

Cg is Nvidia. Thus Cg in OpenGL will always perform better on Nvidia cards, since is optimized to ouput Nvidia code. Untill recently CgFx couldnt even be made to work on non-Nvidia cards. The lkesson here is : relay at least of possible on code writen by a hardware vendor. You never know
whats there :P Stick to standard.

As for integrating yourself shader into an engine. It is not hard at all. Hard is to do anything meaningfull with them once you have them integrated. Dont be stupid and think that once you integrated shaders you will automagically have Doom3 lighting at a good performance , and ubercool shadows, This is simply an area whichr requires many many changes to Cipher engine, many which are delicate, and require a lof of changes and research. Optimizing a shadow system , for example, can be pretty hard. I know ppl which worked 6 months to optimize their shadow systems , and they had them
up and running in 3 weeks or so.

Also, I see a trend of ppl which say "if you dont have a feature, add it, you have the source". While I agree to it per se, it is totally unrealitic unless you have a strong team of programmers with at leat one programmer dedicated to engine updates. If you just want to make a game, you are
very much fuked up. And many ppl I know prefered to make
games , not to code engine code. I learned a lot from Cipher, I am very happy that I bought it, but there are better alternatives then it out on the indie market, better supported with tools and features which supports gameplay.

It is extremly unrealistic to think that even a small team of programmers could gap 5 years of technology advances
and transform into a cutting edge engine. It is also unrealistic to think anyone will waste time to do this
when there are other posibilites , such as licensing other engines at affordable prices, which have better graphically support, and way better support for gameplay than Cipher.
things just dont work this way. You raher for another 100 - 1000 US$ than spending countelss months updating an engine
with questionabe results. This leaving aside that not everyone out there is a Carmack :P

SO lets get to the bottom of this: A game engine is to make
games with it. If you want to make games, you dont want to waste your fucking time updating an engine. You cant afford it, money wise and time wise. Cipher is kinda limited in support from gamplay offered. It is *perfect* for some kind of games as it is, games which dont reaquire advanced gameplay support. But updating the engine and writting support for it for a good FPS game with Cipher, youll usually be left with just one possibility: either work on engine, or either work on game framework.

Unfortunatelly , Cipher becomes obsolete as technology. It was OK when it got out, thus even then it was a little
late. Cipher is small , clean and beautifull. But that doesnt make from years of technological gaps, and for some solutions which where rushed into the engine rather then beeing completed and throughly designed. If your aim is to make a game, as I said, your in many cases much better with other engines. Even some completly free ones.

You may think otherwise, dream that it is not so, but I tell you one thing: wait and see, and time will prove me right, if it didnt already did. Just look at how far the comunity managed to bring cipher in several years =). Yes, Im ironic.

Dan

@Mattxl

Certainly im not a dreamer.

I'm a dreamer,... but I don't live in dream land, waiting for hand outs.

That's right JTilo! That's my life philosophy. I come from a long line of dreamers. Most of them ended up getting rich because of following those dreams. Not that I want to be rich, but it shows that dreaming pays off at times.

Matt

>> but it shows that dreaming pays off at times.

Id call that beeing goal oriented. Dreams are most of the time
lacking any substance. But then again, this is philosophy & semantics, so its hardly any good to discuss it in a public board.

Dreaming... goal oriented... not too different.

Matt

And this all? Since 2004 there are no more news.... Chiper has died?????

Chipher is not dead, its just in hibernation.

Cipher is only dead to those who don't want to work with it.

Matt

Cool! Mattxl, that must be where I got that projectile code from. Thanks man!

Everything that human beings have manifested into the real world, was once a ?thought?. (The things dreams are made of.)

Although an exception might be the turd.

Do you use my projectile code? I haven't heard from anyone who uses it. If you do use it, what do you think? Does it work well?

Matt

Matt, could you send the decal code you were working on?

I could but it involves modifying the engine alot. I would have to dig it all out but if you still want it I can get it out for you.

Matt

Yeah, I've been using the projectile code since you put it up, saved me a lot of time, works well, a very nice user contribution.

I'm glad it's being put to use.

Matt

Engine stuffs ok... I would appreciate it Mattxl, thats if you have time on your busy schedule and stuff...

Sorry about the delay dakz0rz, work has kept me really busy.

Matt

Hey - wtf happaned to cipher? Im here wanting to buy this engine and theres no buying allowed. wtf is that? lemme give you money for your product :-O

That's very odd...
I'll try to find out for you.