Congratulations to Cyan Worlds for MYST on iPhone

Tuesday, May 5, 2009 in Gamimg | 5 comments

I thought I should congratulate Cyan Worlds on a really good port of the original MYST to the iPhone. That they managed to accomplish this at all is pretty amazing, but they went beyond getting the game on there and really tried to adapt the control interface for the touch screen.

And according to numbers on the App Store, they are doing quite well, at number 10 overall in the US. Considering the game is a massive 727 MB, that’s quite an achievement.

And before you ask, no, I don’t have Riven X working on the phone… yet. There are a number of technical challenges standing in the way, most notably the sheer amount of assets in Riven and background movies (the phone may not be able to handle those at all). In any case, I am focused on finishing the desktop version first.

Speaking of which, I should have the first development release of the 0.8 series out shortly.

NVidia releases beta OpenGL 3.1 drivers

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in Computer Graphics | No comments

Get the from http://developer.nvidia.com/object/opengl_3_driver.html. I’m sure AMD will follow suite in short order. IHV support is incredibly important to the ongoing success of the OpenGL standard, so a big thank you to them.

OpenGL 3.1 officially released

Tuesday, March 24, 2009 in Computer Graphics | No comments

The spec is available at http://www.opengl.org/registry/doc/glspec31.20090324.pdf

Some of the highlights:

  • ARB_draw_instanced is now core (instanced draw in vertex shaders with an instance ID built-in)
  • EXT_copy_buffer is now core (data copies between buffer objects without round-tripping to SRAM)
  • ARB_texture_buffer_object is now core (using buffer objects as the backing store for texture images)
  • ARB_texture_rectangle is now core (non-power of two textures with non-normalized texture coordinates and additional restrictions)
  • ARB_uniform_buffer_object is now core (using buffer objects as the backing store for many uniforms)
  • New signed normalized texture format
  • Modified NV_primitive_restart is now core (server-side primitive rasterization restart)
  • All of the OpenGL 3.0 features marked deprecated in Section E of the OpenGL 3.0 specification are gone from the OpenGL 3.1 specification, with the exception of line widths greater than one.

In addition, GLSL 1.4 has been released in tandem with OpenGL 3.1. The spec is available at http://www.opengl.org/registry/doc/GLSLangSpec.Full.1.40.05.pdf. Some of the highlights include support for uniform buffers, rectangular textures, texture buffers and instanced drawing. In addition, all OpenGL “fixed function” built-in variables, namely built-in vertex shader inputs, built-in state uniforms (with the exception of depth range parameters) and all built-in varyings have been removed.

Of course, in both cases, the removed functionality has been moved to ARB extensions (ARB_compatibility), as was described in detail in the deprecation model section of the OpenGL 3.0 specification.

Khronos to reveal details about OpenGL 3.1 at GDC

Monday, March 23, 2009 in Computer Graphics | No comments

From http://www.khronos.org/news/events/detail/gdc_san_francisco_2009 and Khronos announces highlights from the News Conference and Developers Sessions at GDC 2009:

Streamlined OpenGL 3.1 Specification Released
Just nine months after OpenGL 3.0; Adds cutting-edge GPU functionality

The press release also mentions that OpenCL 1.0 implementations are close to shipping, which is extremely impressive considering that the specification was not released too long ago. In any case, this is going to be an interesting week for the OpenGL and OpenCL communities.

A note about the end of a journey aboard a Battlestar

Sunday, March 22, 2009 in Real Life | No comments

I wanted to commemorate, after watching the finale of what has undeniably been one of the most successful and powerful television show in the past 5 years, the end of Battlestar Galactica. On the finale itself, all I have to say is Bravo. It was a masterpiece of storytelling and it dared our imagination. As a whole, Battlestar Galactica took millions of us through a 5 year long journey amongst the stars and the lives of incredibly real yet larger than life characters.

It will be remembered. The lives that have touched ours, despite having been created by the talent and dedication of writers, composers, actors, artists and so many others, will be remembered.

So say we all.

Riven X 0.7.3 released

Sunday, March 8, 2009 in Projects | 33 comments

Riven X 0.7.3 is now available. It fixes an issue on Tiger where saved games would not be selectable in the open saved game dialog.

Download Riven X 0.7.3 (5.1 MB).

Riven X 0.7.2 is now available

Sunday, February 22, 2009 in Projects | 17 comments

Riven X 0.7.2 is now available. It fixes a number of critical bugs that were causing crashes. It also addresses problems with the jungle elevator when using the original CD edition. Finally, the Save and Save As… menu items are once again functional.

Download Riven X 0.7.2 (5.1 MB).

Riven X hot fix release for Tiger

Monday, February 16, 2009 in Projects | 31 comments

Riven X 0.7.1 is now available through Sparkle and on this site. It addresses a crash-on-launch bug afflicting Tiger users.

Download Riven X 0.7.1 (5.1 MB).

Riven X 0.7

Sunday, February 15, 2009 in Projects | 9 comments

Riven X 0.7 is now available. This release introduces fully functional implementations of the rebel tunnel and boiler puzzles. In addition, several levers and switches have been made operational throughout the game. Finally, significant engine enhancements have been made. See the release notes for more details.

I’m sorry that it took so long to produce this new version, but the amount of work done on the engine cannot be understated. I feel that, with a few exceptions, I now have a near final engine in terms of functionality. There certainly is room for a lot of optimization, but nevertheless I should now be able to implement the core gameplay puzzles much more rapidly.

The next release of Riven X will focus on exactly that. I will also try to produce more frequent intermediate releases, perhaps every 2 weeks.

I hope you enjoy this new build, and make sure to file bug reports for any issue you encounter!

Download Riven X 0.7 (5.05 MB).

AMD to release full OpenGL 3.0 drivers today

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 in Computer Graphics, Projects | No comments

From FireUser.com:

The first official driver release with the full support for OpenGL 3.0 on Radeon HD 2400 and above is built into ATI Catalyst Release 9.1, set for public consumption on January 28, 2009. It will be available for download on the AMD Support & Drivers page. This release will enable full and forward-looking GL3.0 contexts on Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Linux.

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