Thanks to Tom, the official forums related to the APOCALYX 3D Engine has been hosted at xfuj.com for a long time. Now SourceForge.net has provided phpBB support to their users, so I have decided to free Tom's server and move to the new phpBB server. Thank Tom for you great service!

The new APOCALYX Forums are divided into the usual sections:

• GENERAL SUPPORT
  This section is devoted to questions about the general usage of the engine, such as, but not only, the use of a particular feature or library, report strange behaviors in your own code, or ask for help in the development of tricky algorithms. Also questions about the Lua scripting language are welcome, because Lua is the main language used in the development of APOCALYX-based demos and games.
• GAMES DEVELOPMENT
  This section is devoted to questions about the development of games using THIS ENGINE (not games development in general), such as, but not only, the application of particular features or libraries to realize a certain technique useful for your game, report strange behaviors in a large project, or ask for help in the development of the game itself.
  Remember also that I post daily news about the development of my own games on the APOCALYX 3D Engine BLOG.
• ENGINE DEVELOPMENT
  This section is devoted to questions about the LGPL C++ sources of the engine, such as, but not only, the included source code of a third-party library, report strange behaviors in C++ code that you have modified, or ask for additional built-in features. Questions about the C++ language are NOT welcome, because the modification of existent code requires a very good knowledge of C++.
• TOOLS SUPPORT This section is devoted to questions about the third-party tools that you may used to develop your APOCALYX-based demos and games, such as, but not only, the use of a particular source editor (there is a very good one, currently in development, known as NsEditor), the use of certain resource editors (like the BSP editor GtkRadiant), or the other tools listed in the Tools page of the official APOCALYX site. In this case, I can't guarantee to help you much with my answers, because my knowledge of those tools is not advanced, but I'll try to answer anyway.

I hope that these new forums are going to be a useful tool for all the APOCALYX users.
Feel free to post frequently! I'll answer as soon as possible.

The 0.9.3 release of the engine includes some improvements and bug fixes. To download the engine in a easy-to-get 60 Mb installer go to the Downloads page.

• New features:
  • Added MDLModel functions: setTransition(), setTransitionTimer(), getStoppedTransition()
  • Added IM (Imaging Toolkit) support in IUP GUI
  • Added primitives: Cylinder, Disk, PartialDisk, Sphere
  • Added setPointerVisible(), isPointerVisible()
  • Added string.pack(), string.unpack()
  • Fixed bug in collisions between ODE objects and BSP geometry
  • Added support for Arbitrary Precision Math (MAPM)
  • Added support for Video Capture functions (experimental)
  • Added support for MySQL databases
  • Added support for SQLite databases
  • Removed AngelScript language support
  • Removed SMALL language support
  • Removed CSL language support
• New demo (in Full-Installer):
  • Mushroom's Ride shows some of the engine features at work.

Finally, here it is: a new APOCALYX demo, Mushroom's Ride. Move the fairy through the stone blocks to collect as many mushrooms as possible. As usual, the sources are included so users can easily modify and extend the demo at will. In fact, the source is written in a "*.lua" file, that one can modify with a simple text editor, while the data is included in a "*.dat" file, that is nothing else than a ZIP renamed. Enjoy the demo!

Great news from Nout! After a few weeks from the first annoucement, another release of his game editor is available for download. Nout says:

NsEditor is a script editor customised for use with APOCALYX plus a game framework, using entities, strongly tied with the editor. Download now the new version of NsEditor!

In this version only minor improvements have been added and a few bugs are resolved:

• the property editor keeps the picklists updated after changes are made to the zip file
• Files are put in picklists selectively
• ScriptFiles directly point to the script directory
• A default tool directory was added
• The APOCALYX screen starts by defualt with a larger screen size
• A script file can be opened directly from the property window
• etc...

Thank you Nout for this great tool!

Great news from Nout: the last release of his game editor is available for download! Nout says:

NsEditor is a script editor customised for use with APOCALYX + it is a game framework, using entities, strongly tied with the editor. The idea for NsEditor was born about 2.5 years ago. The main driving force was to make it easier and faster to develop a game.

Want to give it a try? Then download the complete package at FileFront.
For any questions or remarks, please use the APOCALYX forums, under Tools, NsEditor V03.

In most games, quite some features that are needed repeat. Eg. you often will need a player that can walk around, a weapon, pickable objects, a menu, controllable avatars, lights, moving objects, a HUD, a conversation or text message, collision detection etc. Entities are small pieces of code that own one of these functions and the framework is the core code that makes all these entities to correctly interact. With a rich library of entities, building a small and working game takes some hours (assuming you have the media available) rather then weeks. The framework is open and allows to interleave entities and standard coding.

The main features NsEditor brings are:

• Script editor with multiple editor windows, syntax highlighting and function parameter list preview
• GlGooey skinner built in
• Media previewer built in
• Entity property editors with picklists
• Zip file support (adding, deleting, preview)
• World Editor for APOCALYX (Goto, Select, Move, Rotate, Scale objects + Resize bounding box, top, side, front view, automatic BBox calculation etc.)
• Function and variable lists for all entities, with a goto feature
• A today still very poor working debugger (to be improved in the next release)
• The full framework including about 40 entities, all of them open source"

Thank you Nout for this great tool!

The 0.9.2 release of the engine includes improvements in the rendering of several model formats and bug fixes. To download the engine in a easy-to-get 60 Mb installer go to the Downloads page.

• New demo (in DemoPack3):
  • TheTrenches shows how to animate MDL models.

A long time has passed since the last movie about APOCALYX and a lot of new demos were created in the meantime, so I collected several cuts, joined them together in an AVI file and uploaded its 20Mb to YouTube.
If you are interested, visit the APOCALYX BLOG to get a direct link to this new movie.

Ok, I know it's boring to wait for news about the APOCALYX 3D Engine on the official site (here), so I have decided to start a blog that I'm going to update often with news about the recent developments. Visit it at http://apocalyx.blogspot.com

The 0.9.1 release of the engine is now available as a single 50 Mb installer for Windows: a must for those lucky enough to navigate through a fast internet connection. Visit the Downloads page to get the installer.

It's now available a series of four tutorials by Roswell_r that cover is a very simple and clear way some basic topics about the engine programming. Visit the Tutorials page to get the sources and read the tutorials.

The 0.9.1 release of the sources are finally available. Visit the Downloads page to download them.

The 0.9.1 release of the engine includes two new libraries, an additional model format and bug fixes.
The libraries are IUP, a GUI with native widgets, and libSQL, to access MySQL databases. The new model format is MDL, the Half-Life 1 format.

• New demos (in DemoPack3):
  • ModelMDL and ModelMDL_2 show how to manage MDL models;
  • ModelMS3D_2 and ModelMS3D_3 demostrate some bug fixes in MS3D models support;
  • NativeGuiDialog shows the interaction between a Windows dialog and the engine, thanks to the help of the IUP library.

You can download the runtime of the engine and the demo packages from the Downloads page. For more detailed descriptions of the demos, visit the Demos page. Feel free to ask more about the new engine capabilities on the forums or by e-mail.

Here you can see a few screenshots from the demos.