I'm proud to publish this very good news from Aarnout Wieers, who develops an editor strictly interfaced to the engine:

"The first editor developed for Apocalyx is now available for download. Visit the Downloads page to freely get it.
The editor received the name NsEditor and is an IDE like editor with following features:
• Multiple Editor windows
• Syntax highlighting
• Auto completion and suggestion
• Parameter hint
• A direct interface with Apocalyx, enabling semi in-game editing and in-game navigation
• Zip file creation, extension and preview support
• Build in file search
• Templates
• Etc...
Besides the editor functionality, NsEditor also support a game framework. The framework offers two main features:
1. A common and customizable set of often used functions
   This collection of functions defines a higher level language to simplify building a game. It is today just a very basic set of function that further needs to grow.
2. NsEditor supports entities. Entities are similar to components in VB or Delphi. Each entity represents a certain function or action, Eg like adding a flame, a corona, a player, a door, a moving platform, but can also be a counter, activating a trigger, changing level etc... Entities are written in lua and support properties to customize the behaviour of the entity. E.g. for a flame entity you can set the flame size, the flickering speed, the position, the gravity, the color etc... by using properties.
   See more details in the NsEditor user manual.
This first release of NsEditor is an alpha release, not fully bug free and still incomplete. We however believe that the capabilites are high enough to justify this release.
To download the editor, visit the Downloads page.
For any feedback, suggestions or requests, please use the Apocalyx Forums".

The version 0.8.11 of the engine includes only a new library but also some functions to interface it with external programs. These new functions are necessary because of a powerful code editor written specifically for APOCALYX the first release of which is going to be released shortly.
The new library is the GD library, the purpose of which is to provide functions to draw graphic primitives on images. This means that now is possible to draw on textures easily and efficently. GD requires to support the FreeType fonts, thus also other libraries to render fonts in several ways will appear in the future.
To see a simple example of code using GD to draw on a texture, download the demos of DemoPack1 (available in the Demos page).

The single new added demo included in DemoPack1 is:

GraphicToTexture shows how to draw graphic primitives on textures, then applied to objects.

You can download the runtime of the engine and the demo packages from the Downloads page.
Feel free to ask more about the engine on the forums or by e-mail and stay tuned for more good news!

AppMac organizes the first competition of demos based on Apocalyx!
To know more about the event, visit the page on competitions at the AppMac's Site.

For the moment the rules are not very detailed, but it seems to be an informal competition open to all the Apocalyx users. Partecipants will provide their "lua" script and the related "dat" resources file, then some kind of judgement (not yet well specified) will take place.
The theme of the competition is "the future", a quite generic theme so partecipants are free to move in any "future" direction, and the deadline is Janury 1^st 2007.
I hope that some of the partecipants will give their permission to publish their creations on the official Apocalyx site (here) to increse the number of available demos - just as already happened a few weeks ago with Miguel's "Treasure Hunter" demo. Thanks in advance!

Contact AppMac on his site for any comment, suggestion or to ask for more information.

To download the sources visit the Downloads page.

This is the list of improvements:

• LUA
  • Supported render-to-texture through ViewportTexture
  • Supported AVI-to-texture through AviTexture
  • Embedded AntTweakBar to support a tweaking GUI
  • Added getOpenGLStrings() to query OpenGL version
  • Included TexSynth, a 2D texture generator
  • Added luasocket library to support networking
  • Added OdeCylinder to ODE supported objects
  • Added Texture3D class to create 3D textures
  • Added Texture3D support to Patches
  • Added NewZip class to zip data in files
  • Added get/setName() to Object
  • Added picking support through pickNames()
  • Added Image:convertToGray()
• TinyC
  • Added dGeomCylinderGetParams(), dGeomCylinderSetParams() and dCreateCylinder() functions
  • Added dJointIsBreakable, dJointSetBreakable functions
  • Added newZipCreate(), newZipDelete(), newZipOpenFile() and newZipWriteInFile() functions to zip data in files
  • Added imageConvertToGray() function

You asked for it and now here it is: The very early demo of "Treasure Hunter"!
Visit the demos page to download the package.

The demo is developed by Miguel Manchego Rivas from Arequipa, Perú. The concept of the game is based on "Tomb Raider" but uses a side camera like in "Duke Nukem Manhattan Project".

The author, with a clever use of scripts, realized some nice effects that I thought very difficult to implement in the current version of the engine. For example, you can see in the screenshots torches, corona lights, exploding boxes, rotating blades and other items that are placed there directly in GtkRadiant, rather then by script as I usually do.

The movement of the avatar still requires tuning, especially during jumps jumps, but the scenery is very nice, so try to move around freely using the arrow keys after pressing the DEL key.

If you want to comment this or other demos, feel free to post messages on the NEW FORUMS.

It's finally available the version 0.8.10 of the engine with new advanced functions. To see some of them at work, download the demos of DemoPack1 (available in the Demos page).

These are the new examples included in DemoPack1:

RenderToTexture demostrates how to render scene in textures, then applied to objects; AviToTexture shows how to render Avi movies in textures, then again applied to objects; TweakBarAndEmitter features a draft of a particle emitter editor that uses the powerful "AntTweakBar" GUI to tweak the parameters of the emitter; TextureGenerator creates algorithmically sample textures through the use of the "TxSynth" library; NewZip shows how to create and fill zipped files; Texture3D describes the creation of 3d textures, then attached to a terrain; Joystick is the bug-fixed version of the same demo included in the previous release of the engine; BallsOnTrimesh is an improved version of the demo that demostrates the use of the ODE inner collision detector, the improvement regards tri-mesh creation from heightfields, terrain-patches and bsp levels (the latter still buggy); SteeringBehaviors is a demo that shows the use of the "OpenSteer" library, an issue related to wrong textures attached to models is now fixed.

You can download the runtime of the engine and the demo packages from the Downloads page. The source code is going to be released very soon.
Feel free to ask more about the engine on the forums or by e-mail and stay tuned for more good news!

This little news is the occasion to inform about the actual development of the next improved release of the engine but also to show a few very nice screenshots that I received some weeks ago.

• The demo shown in the screenshots, known as "Treasure Hunter", is currently in development and was created by Miguel Manchego Rivas from Arequipa, Perú. The concept of the game is based on "Tomb Raider" but uses a side camera like in "Duke Nukem Manhattan Project".

  The author, with a clever use of scripts, realized some nice effects that I thought very difficult to implement in the current version of the engine. For example, you can see in the screenshots torches, corona lights, exploding boxes, rotating blades and other items that are placed there directly in GtkRadiant, rather then by script as I usually do.

  

• Just to wet your appetite, here follows the list of the features that I have recently implemented in the engine. They will be available in APOCALYX 0.8.10, I hope with many others, at the beginning of October.
  • Supported render to texture and AVI to texture
  • Included luasocket library for networking support
  • Added cylinders and breakable joints to ODE
  • Included trimesh generation from heighfields, patches and BSP levels
  • Supported 3D textures, in particular to make terrains more varied
  • Included TxSynth library, a 2D texture generator
  • Added NewZip class to zip data in files
  • Implemented new command line options to facilitate communication between the engine and external editors

  Finally, I'm including in the engine LibUFO, a GUI for OpenGL. After evaluating a lot of GUIs, this seems the better choice for APOCALYX and now I'm half the way to the end.

  If you want to discuss these or other topics, feel free to post messages on the NEW FORUMS.

A lot of users complain about the interface of the default forums provided by SourceForge.
Thomas Dawber kindly offered a space in his own site to host the APOCALYX Forums and provides a more easy to use interface.
To post messages there, follow the link to the NEW FORUMS. The access to the old messages is still active and you have simply follow the link to the Old Forums.

This release of the engine (0.8.9) does not contain yet all the features recently requested by users, but anyway includes new interesting advanced functions. Most of them are demostrated as usual in DemoPack1 (available in the Demos page), in fact these new simple examples were added:

3DAccelInfo lists information about the 3D hardware accelerator necessary to select the best code for GLSL shaders; Speak shows the capabilities of the built-in speech synthesizer; Joystick describes the control interface that manages joysticks; AudioCd describes the control interface for audio CD playback on CD-Rom devices; BallsOnTrimesh demostrates the use of the ODE inner collision detector; Font is a very simple example that shows how to manage bitmap and textured fonts; ToLuaDemo demostrates the use of the tolua++ API to interface LUA and TinyC code; ObjectsHierarchy is a very simple example that shows how to concatenate the transformations of several objects.

The new features of this release were already listed in the last news (see August 30^th post). More interesting is to list the next to come features that will make APOCALYX jump to its major version 0.9.

First of all, I was greatly inspired by the preview of Half-Life 2 Portal and I absolutely want those "portals" in my engine! The current implementation resembles more a floating sphere in space than a hole in the wall and can't support hall-of-mirrors effects yet, but I'm working on it :)

Other more traditional features will be:

• render scene and AVI to texture (to implement control monitors)
• render reflected scene to texture (to implement a realistic ocean surface)
• objects picking (to simplify the creation of in-engine editors)
• generation of ODE tri-meshes from heightfields, patches and bsp levels
• a sandbox for LUA scripts (to control execution step by step and memory occupation, just like actual SMALL scripts)
• X, MS3D and MDL format loaders and animators
• script interface to Crazy Eddie GUI
• realistic sky renderer thanks to Stellarium
• and more... I wait suggestions :)

You can download the runtime of the engine and the demo packages from the Downloads page. Feel free to ask more about the engine on the forums or by e-mail.

You asked for it and now here it is!
"Sure as a Gun" had to be a third-person shooter similar to "Urban Tactics" but placed in a western background. Now the demo is still in an early stage of development with only a viewer of MD3 models and BSP levels taken from the WesterQuake3 MOD, but I finally published it because some users want to import WQ3 models and levels in their games.
I wish to tank ReD NeCKersoN and the "WesternQ3" Team for the authorization to use their great models and scenery. To know more about the WQ3 MOD for Quake3 visit the site http://www.westernquake3.net
You can download the demo from the Downloads or the Demos page.

The 0.8.9 release of the engine will be available within a few days.
The new features, as usual a little different from those planned, will be the following:

• Upgrade to LUA 5.1.1
• Added support for toLua++
• Added functions to query 3D accelerator capabilities
• Added joystick support (using SDL)
• Added audio cd-rom support (using SDL)
• Added support for the eSpeak speech synthesizer

To download the sources visit the Downloads page.

My intention was to release shortly an improved version of the engine with more features. As usual, the development process takes more time than planned, so I decided to publish at least the sources of the last release.
The features of this new version are listed in the July news. More interesting is to announce what's coming next, at least in my plans. In fact, even some of the libraries listed below are included in the sources since a long time, the integration in the engine has been in the "To Do" list for months and was not accomplished yet.

• Upgrade to LUA 5.1.1 (done)
• Better integration between LUA and TinyC through the toLua++ library (done)
• Include a speech synthesizer thanks to eSpeak (almost done)
• Add the long waited X format loader and animator
• Add an MS3D format loader and animator
• The long... long waited GUI: instead of the simple sjGui, I move to CeGui or OpenGui (If I don't change my mind again... it will be done)
• Night sky with real stars thanks to Stellarium (will it be done?)

The latest version of the engine (0.8.8) is now available for download. This new release comes with several new important features such as a new tiled terrain, finite state machine (FSM), steering behaviors and networking support.

• the new kind of terrain is that flat ground with seamless tiles attached that was already featured in the Dragon's Ride demo
• the FSM support regards new LUA functions that make easy to connect several states with transitions triggered by events
• "steering behaviors" are those algorithms that steer automatically generic vehicles to mimic some kind of intelligent movement
• the support for network connections is accomplished thanks to the RakNet library: be aware that RakNet may be used for free only in freeware projects, while any other use require the purchase of a license from the owners

You can download the runtime of the engine and the demo packages from the Downloads page. Feel free to ask more about the engine on the forums or by e-mail.

A new demo is finally available! Its name is Dragon's Ride and features a simple shoot'em up with very basic functionalities that simulates in 3D a 2D shooter with horizontal scrolling.
The demo (that does not need the APOCALYX runtime because includes its own executable) shows also a new kind of tiled terrain that is going to be included in the version 0.8.8 of the engine in two flavors: a simple flat version and the more complex patched heightfield with lightmaps attached.
Feel free to ask if you want to know more about the demo or help to improve it adding more levels, enemies, sounds, kind of shots etc.
You can download the demo from the Downloads or the Demos page.

To download the new executable of the engine or its sources visit the Downloads page.

Because of lack of free spare time, some long waited features are still waiting.
In this new version you can find a better integration between the LUA interpreter and the TinyC compiler: Now they can share pointer to engine objects, so instances created with LUA can be modified by C code. Another feature is the capability to access the entities stored in BSP files. Finally, the terrains known as Patches can now be dynamic and the heightfield or lightmaps attached can be modified after creation.
These are only minor changes in comparison with the planned features:

• the long waited simple GUI (sjGui library)
• a kind of terrain textured with tiles (TiledPatches class)
• more improvements in the integration between LUA and TinyC (through toLua++ library)
• further support for music and sound formats (OggVorbis library)
• improvements in the AI tools (interface to the OpenSteer and FSM libraries)
• a more robust and simple to use networking support (RakNet library possibly with the support of Speex too)
• night sky with real stars (thanks to Stellarium)

My idea was to publish the new version of APOCALYX with an in-game GUI and networking support, but the implementation of the two features takes more time than supposed initially.
However, in the meantime, I have modified the BSP levels renderer: It finally supports levels created with GtkRadiant (while in the previous versions only Q3Radiant levels were rendered correctly). Thus I decided to publish this intermediate release because a wider support of BSP levels was requested by a lot of users.
The BSP renderer includes the usual limitations: Only static textures with lightmaps are applied to the meshes (no Q3 shaders are considered), but now also transparent textures are considered; you must simply add an alpha layer to a PNG or TGA image and the texture will appear transparent or semi-transparent where the alpha value is different from 1.
Also the sources are available. They are not necessary to "normal users" because the engine is completely scripted, but they are provided for the users that need to modify the C++ code. The sources can be fully recompiled under the Code::Blocks IDE with the Free Borland C++ Command Line Compiler 5.5.1 installed, in fact a project file for Code::Blocks is included in the package.
To download the executable of the engine or its sources visit the Downloads page.

The full sources of GUN-TACTYX are available for download!
They are downloadable from the Downloads page.
The sources can be fully recompiled under the Code::Blocks IDE with the Free Borland C++ Command Line Compiler 5.5.1 installed. The users interested in modifying and recompiling the game can forget the difficult procedures needed by the command line compiler because the entire process is accomplished by a very easy to use IDE.
Both the tools are completely free! To know more about Code::Blocks visit http://www.codeblocks.org/. You should download the version without the default compiler installed, then you must download the Free Borland C++ Command Line Compiler 5.5.1 from Borland at http://www.borland.com/bcppbuilder/freecompiler/.
You can find information on how to get the free Borland compiler and install it from the Code::Blocks site itself, but feel free to ask for help if anything does not work.

Waiting for the next to come 0.8.6 version of the engine (finally a simple GUI is included), it's now available a movie that features some of the capabilities of the engine.
The short movie has a resolution of 320x240, is 20 Mb in size and lasts 5 minutes. My few comments at the beginning are in italian... sorry :)

Most of the stuff that you are going to see is already available as interactive demos (visit the Demos page), so there is nothing new except the first images of two forthcoming demos "Meteor Hunter" and "Sure as a Gun". The latter is based on the beautiful models and scenery of WesternQ3, a MOD of the old Quake3, and I with to thank Red Neckerson for giving his permission to use that great material.

Finally here it is: APOCALYX can now be fully recompiled under the Code::Blocks IDE with the Free Borland C++ Command Line Compiler 5.5.1 installed. The users interested in modifying and recompiling the engine can now forget the difficult procedures needed by the command line compiler because the entire process is accomplished by a very easy to use IDE.
Both the tools are completely free! To know more about the Code::Blocks visit http://www.codeblocks.org/. You should download the version without the default compiler installed, then you must download the Free Borland C++ Command Line Compiler 5.5.1 from Borland at http://www.borland.com/bcppbuilder/freecompiler/.
You can find information on how to get the free Borland compiler and install it from the Code::Blocks site itself, but feel free to ask for help if anything does not work.
The sources (a slightly improved 0.8.5 version that is going to become 0.8.6 by the end of the month) are available at the bottom of the Downloads page.

The latest version of the engine (0.8.5) is now available for download.

Among the new features you can find:

• The LUA version was upgraded from 5.0 to the latest 5.1
• It is possible to grab screenshots from portions of the screen
• Images can be resampled and saved in PNG format
• Supported new primitives (points, lines and polygons) both in 3D and in the 2D overlay
• It is possible to show different perspectives of the world in viewports
• The OpenAL version was upgraded from 1.0 to 1.1 so it is possible to capture sounds
• Included support for pathfinding using the A* algorithm
• Next to come the built-in support for Finite State Machines
• Next to come the built-in support for Steering Behaviors
• A bug related to mass objects in the ODE interface was fixed
• Removed the AngelScript interface in favour of CSL (C scripting language)

The latest version of the engine (0.8.4) is available!
Thanks to the users who posted requests for improvements and bug reports on the forums, a more clean version of the engine is now ready.
The main fixed bugs are relative to the new viewports feature and to the ODE (Open Dynamics Engine) interface. All the old LUA demos still work with this new version.
You can download the runtime of the engine from the Downloads page.

A new version of the engine (0.8.3) is out!
This time, bug fixes apart, there are also new important features:

1. Support for different viewports.
   It is now possible to open several views on different worlds. The viewports live in the overlay that is superimposed to the main 3D world, but also the main viewport is moveable and resizable. Ask for sample sources, if you want more details about this feature.
2. Support for transparent textures in Quake3 BSP levels.
3. Support for animations played in reverse order in MD2 and MD3 models.

The new version is accompanied by a new demo.
The "Physics Demo" is based on the same particle-based rigid body physics engine used also by the simple flight simulator "Zeke on Your Six!".
The demo contains the usual cloth simulator examples but also a few examples that show other possible applications of the same principles.
You can download the new demo and engine fron the Downloads page.

"Zeke on Your Six!" is an old demo that I wrote for the August 2003 contest "Four Elements Demo III" of GameDev.net. It was meant to be a simple flight simulator written for the particle-based physics engine, know as SimulAxion, included in APOCALYX. Then it had to became a game... unluckily never completed. At that time the demo for the contest was almost complete but the fundamental part was missing... a flight physical model! This little particular apart, "Zeke on Your Six!" became the sixth best demo of that contest ;)
Now the time has come to renew the demo and make it more interesting adding a simple algorithm to simulate an airplane. The flight model was taken from Web-Discovery and is quite simple (simplicity does not preserve accuracy, of course). I rewote it in LUA and adapted the simulation loop to SimulAxion. The result is the new "Zeke on Your Six!" demo that you can download from the Demos page. Feel free to improve it in any way: As usual, the source is in the text file with ".lua" extension and the resoures are in the ZIP file with ".dat" extension.

A new version of APOCALYX is finally available. Its number is 0.8.2 but differs a lot from the previous one in several aspects. Read the changes in the download package to discover the differences.
Unluckily, the new features were not fully tested yet and the development of the next demos will be a good excuse to find hidden bugs (that's why it is still marked as alpha). Anyway, this version is better than the previous one, because several bugs were fixed, and works fine with the current set of demos.
In the Downloads page you can find the new files. They are Apocalyx-exe-0.8.2-alpha.zip and DemoPack1-lua-0.8.2-alpha.zip. The former contains the engine, while the latter includes the only demo package that had to be modified.

There is also the file Genesyx-exe-0.8.2-alpha.zip. GENESYX is a reduced version, in features and size, of APOCALYX. The features that lacks are: Cal3D model format support, BSP levels management, old-style emboss bump mapping, ColDet collision detection library, TinyC compiler support, AngelScript interpreter support, ODE open dynamics engine library, SimulAxion particle-based physics engine, WinSock support. The smaller executable is provided for applications with limited requirements and some of the demos of the APOCALYX engine don't work with GENESYX, because of the subset of functions supported.