freyja 0.9.5.16

I wasn't able to work on my CELL project Sunday, so I tossed that time into doing some extra features and bugfixes for freyja. In fact by the time I was done I cleared out every bug in the 'on deck' queue except for the Lineage II import from pak bug. Well kids, it is first in first out. This also means it's now at the top of the list.

There will be Windows and Linux i386 packages tomorrow, and I'll likely make new Linux PPC64 and AMD64 packages as well. The screenshot to the right shows users now have a way to reset all editor colors with a single button now, so I don't want to see anymore black screens in the forums. Little things like that can be a big deal to some, since it was the #1 'bugfix' request in the entire project. ^^

Most of the features enhance the user experience in some form or another, however they're quiet subtle. The obsolete flat file formats for freyja model and material got new filedialog and recent files usage for example. The more important issue was the roadmap has been updated. Read the ChangeLog and TODO for details.

The march to 'modular freyja' continues as more subsystems are refactored and new designs are implemented. One of my favorites is the freyja UI will be completely replaced by a new set of libraries and scripts by the freyja 0.9.6 release. Coming up for the 0.9.5.17 release:

• All new native freyja file format, which is zipped XML a la COLLADA.
• New camera system.
• Optimizations to Mesh for improved memory usage.
• True edge based editing. ( No more marking vertex pairs. )
  
• The new Metadata design gets additional major functionality.
  

Freyja 0.9.5.16 binary release tonight.

I have to attend another dinner this weekend, however I cranked out full metadata support before I leave! I think I fixed enough bugs and tossed in enough features for the .16 release now. I'll go back and rework the public TODO as well, since it's become some wishlist dumping ground again. I wrote most of this from 0100 - 0300 this morning. Report any bugs! ;)

This means that editing is about to get a lot easier with far less modes to worry about. Also it means you can import metadata objects which carry XML / plain text with them. You can also use mesh snippets as 'icons'. I don't material support or lighting done for the icons yet, but I did add a cheap outline for them really quick. Right now it has a basic text editing of the XML payload, but later I'll use the new QueryDialog support to dynamically generate widgets for the XML tags optionally. Cameras and Lights will become metadata based soon, which will bring more depth via a property dialog. Also you can edit all metadata objects from the same major mode. Enjoy a some sushi with a yatai on the beach. I could add animation for the icons at a later date. The general ideas are icons are editable meshes, instanced, and are mostly for things like level editing model/waypoint placement.

There will be a binary releases for: Linux PPC, AMD64, and i386; Windows. I'm going to start working on a new SPU accelerated mesa for PS3Linux Sunday as well. I hope to improve speed well enough to release a small game engine to the community -- along with freyja to make/edit content. Basically, I'm making a PS3Linux game SDK. This SDK / engine is known as project kuzu. One of the goals is to make 720p OpenGL games a possibility on the platform. I'll see if I can post some screens of the game engine running on the PS3 later in the week. Well, I have to go. At least it's free food, but hopefully it won't be food from the Outback. ^^

Update: ( 0322 )
Dinner was canceled, so I ended up doing some 'yard work'. I cut down some trees that were in danger of falling over from the recent storms. Needless to say I did not get free food. I *am rather lucid considering what time it is I suppose. Look at all those grammar errors above. This is what Saturdays are for, right?. Cutting a new Open Source project release is serious party time. ;)

PPC64 Ubuntu packages are uploading right now, and I'll toss the other builds up tomorrow. The PS3 I was using for building the packages needed a lot of package updates to say the least. I hope to get the new CELL SDK 3.0 'early release' on it soon, but I hit a few snags today.

Quakewars cont.

For people that liked the model support screenshots here are some screens of basic map support:

freyja freyja everywhere...

Where are the binary releases!?

Well, it's this simple I found some huge bugs and didn't release any. To make up for making elves cry I'll toss you guys a bone. This Monday ET: QuakeWars demo will be released. To celebrate I'm uploading a new plugin to import / export these models, but know that they haven't been tested very well much like the old Md5 support.

Speaking of tests... regression testing is coming to the cmake build system to stamp its foot on the chests of bugs. The current tests aren't very formalized, but I guess that's ok given the current state of development.

This does mean now every new module will need at least a *working* and *active* unit test to be committed now. No more using "cmake sucks" as an excuse. I'll see about scripting some cmake / ctest / svn commit scripts for extra safety. Also the new 'IK friendly' terrain system is up in midgard now as well. Now I just need to make it pretty and toss in some more features here and there for a public release. I'm still trying to get a fulltime job, since contract work isn't paying off for me. This means if I'm doing a lot of interviews and such time for this project will continue to suffer.

Hardware woes...

You guys won't believe this. I've been having to do less work on my main workstation for the last couple of weeks. I had odd heat and hardware issues which caused locks and freezes. This didn't help get much work on this project done in my spare time. Admittedly, I haven't been able to sit down in front of it much during that period either due to jobs. Today I had the chance to break down the system and pull all the boards, heatpipes, and various other parts not soldered into the motherboard. The problems?

Problem one: I found a spot on one board where dust was wrapped around a jumper pretty tight, which may have lead to it's 'acting flaky' during boot. If anyone reading this can find a study on the conductivity of dust I'd enjoy seeing it. I'm almost certain this is why that card was randomly failing to init at boot time, since it no longer exhibits that behavior so far. It was seated well, etc when I pulled it.

Problem two: the GPU had a tiny, tiny dust bunny in the inner heat sink -- under the pretty logo shield and cover. This tiny bunny was causing a 25C-30C rise recorded at the core -- aka Massive Damage. I'm betting the localized heat was much higher. Given the same temperatures in the room for today and yesterday the core readings are 25C cooler by the time the UI loads, and 30C cooler at idle some time after that.

Back to the localized heating on the GPU. The localized heating was likely much higher than the core reading, and it was affecting a small area of the GPU. This must have caused the errors when doing 'heavy' rendering. In turn leading to freezes and lock ups. Also my ambient case temps are down somewhat as well. The moral of this story is that when you clean out your PC -- you need to break it down and clean it out really well. Take off the shields, tunnels over the heat pipes, etc and remove that dust. At least I didn't see any 'whiskers' anywhere -- unless that dust on the jumper was over one. ^^

Hopefully, now that is done I can work on the game engine and freyja for most of the holiday weekend. I'll also bake some pizzas on the stone, and work on the new bokken I'm making. I'm mostly going to focus on finishing up the new plugin systems in freyja, and working on the Lua side of the game engine. The new walkmesh, texture splat, and geomipmapping are getting some love too.