Soory about interrupting what’s going on. Sounds like a cool program, Ivor.

And Ivor, I’m downloading the demo now.

akh: who’s $pecter?

Read above notes and feel free to download.

Id be quick though, it appears filefactory likes to delete inactive files that are uploaded without a user account. Should be good for a few days at least.

good thing i wont be here tomorrow ;D or later today.

and one other thing, pilotteaml has made a word comic about us and inuyasha, it’ll be on one of the automated posts, and i’ll try to make a sprite comic with the same dialouge, so if you’re featured in the word comic send me some sprites of yourself!

to

“timings are in place however the rest of the functions are not present”

Right, its ready, Ive had to compress the file into a zip, due to the demo being timed on an ogg that is over 3meg, its been compiled as one file. I havent implemented the spectrum scanner, but the functions and effects are based on timed events within the file. It zips down to about 1.9meg, which is lucky, and it also highlights the problem when working with with bass.dll (for the spectrum analyiser data, which I aint going to code myself)

Ive used distro 9+ of directX however I cant say if there are any problems with more recent vers, in particular with Vista, as I refuse to put it on my machine.

It may actually be changed somewhat and go down the opengl route, this will mean I can make a linux distro aswell.

Dont expect all singing, all dancing. This is purely a tunnel drwho effect with a scrolling text at the moment. The timings are in place however the rest of the code is not present. There are further layers to be introduced to this, even on the “intro” screen, which include various 3d shapes rotating and falling to a point on Z. These are randomly generated and will be ghosted, to make the screen “noisier” without distracting the eye too much from the scrolling text.

The scrolling text is currently Ariel 60 italics. This is to be replaced with a bitmap font that is being created by someone else. The problem that I encountered was this:

The scrolling text is a 2d text effect being displayed over a 3d effect. Not so much of a problem if it was static, like a HUD, however with it scrolling it requires clearing before moving itself left on every refresh. Now a total screen clear is out of the question, the 3d effect would flicker horribly since it would be cleared and then re-rendered. Without doing a clear the scrolling text would simply keep printing itself, moving to the left and then printing it again, completely smudging the scroll text in the background. It would look horrible.

So/ At present while the text is still a system font and I cannot get away with using sprite techniques, therefore when the text is printed to the screen everything but the letters that are printed AT THAT TIME are blocked out in black, and its alpha set to transparent, solving the problem in a rather lame way.

The next issue with an effect like that is the refresh rate. Without regulating the 3d effect and text, the text would refresh at the same speed as the 3d effect. If this happens the text whizzs past without the user being able to read it. The other alternative being the text is readable but the 3d effect chuggs along in the background. Not good. I wont bore with the ins and outs, but the text is now regulated to a speed relative to a sound file that you cant yet hear. This will enable me to tie it into the effect of bouncing when the music picks up…etc…

Anyway, Im sure Ive bored you silly enough. Give me a little while, Ill have a link to download the beta. oh and dont knock the logo, its something I knocked up in about a minute and is only there so that the rest of the screen effects can be placed, pending proper logo.

Whats next? After the extra effects are added to this and its working, the “Intro” part of the demo will play for around 30seconds before dropping into the next bit. The code is already there, however its not yet executed. The second part of the demo has you panning around a 3d city with various effects and shinanagens going on. Scrolltext will be moved to the bottom of the screen instead of center, and there will be a few more bits and pieces going on.