It took a lot longer than expected but the the ocean waves plugin is now available for max9 (32 and 64 bit).
Download it here

It seems Max2009 plugins are once again incompatible with previous versions. So the 2k9 version is “under construction”.
This time they found a new trick to annoy us programmers: Switching compilers! “The sdk hasn’t changed!!111” but you’ll have to recompile it anyway!
Oh and they’re called Kinetix Discreet Autodesk now I think.

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I started my new job at Barco Aerospace a while ago. I’m working there as a developper for avionics solutions. It’s a step away from computer games and graphics but it has been a very interesting experience so far.

On the OceanWaves front, I am planning to release a 64bit version soon. Also, here is a nice render Willi Hammes made with the OceanWaves plug in:

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The plugin was made shortly after I finished my thesis and is based on the same “Tessendorf” Ocean wave simulation math. I finished and cleaned it up a while ago but then forgot about it again. And now finally managed to realease this plugin!
Download and more info …

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Splash Damage is looking for a Graphics Programmer to join their studios in London, England.

Job Description
Splash Damage’s Graphics Programmer will be responsible for implementing and refining graphics features in our games. They will work with Splash Damage’s Programming Team on all issues relating to graphics, and work closely with the Producer and Art Team to co-ordinate graphics deliverables.

• Work with the Art Team to define graphics requirements
• Implement graphics systems and refine as needed
• Work with hardware vendors to implement new graphics features

Essential Skills and Experience

• Prior graphics programming experience, either commercially or on a completed engine mod with multiple releases
• Strong interest in researching and implementing new graphics related technologies
• Expert in OpenGL, including the newest extensions ( e.g. shaders, vertex buffer objects, frame buffer objects ) and low level issues
• Experience with writing and maintaining shaders, both in high level languages (cg, glsl ) and assembler
• Experienced and proficient in C++
• Ability to write clear, maintainable, portable code
• Good verbal and written English skills
• Strong math background

Preferred Skills and Experience

• Knowledge of id technologies (esp. Doom 3 and/or Quake 4)
• Experience with particle systems
• Experience with Direct X
• Experience with console development
• Experience with multi-threaded development
• Basic knowledge of 3D modelling packages

In the first instance, please register your interest by mailing jobs@splashdamage.com with the appropriate position in the subject line. We do reply to all applications.

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I just discovered that Tenebrae now has a Wikipedia article I don’t know how long this has been there, but somehow it is very cool seeing your own work end up on Wikipedia.

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I recently started working on a visual shader editor, the end result should be something similar to the “Unreal Engine 3” shader editor ( pic ). I mainly started this as some kind of experiment, but I’m not totally convinced this is an usefull tool for artists. It seems very difficult to hide the specific limitations of the graphics hardware and all the mathematics behind the various lighting equations. The key is probably provinding the right blend between high level specialized building blocks ( e.g. “phong lighting” ) and low level generic components (e.g. “multiply”).
Types also seem to be some kind of a problem: Do you want implicit clamping of “colors”? Do scalars automatically get coerced into grayscale colors? What about texture coordinates? These ideally have to be 4 dimensional vectors, making them incompatible with color inputs to blocks. Provinding “typecast” building blocks is akward, so you want some intelligence from the network compiler without breaking to many formal type rules.
I currently have some “forward” typing system where types flow from the input blocks to the result block. Each block can have a few types it accepts as inputs and based on that the output types get defined (basically each block acts like an overloaded function)

I’ve also given .NET, managed extensions for C++ and windows forms a try for this project. Altough it mangles the syntax of C++ big time ( ugly __shit everywhere, dynamic_cast < horrors > ... ) it provides a very nice Java like rapid prototype enviroment. Creating a similar tool using just bare C++ and MFC would certainly have taken much more time.
Maybe I’ll give C# a try in one of my next experimental projects as this seems to get rid of a lot of the syntax hacks of managed C++. I could just as well use java+eclipse then I guess, altough it’s nice to have a nice visual forms editor. (and JBuilder is crap!)

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The official website for “Enemy Territory Quake Wars” is now online, you can find it at http://www.enemyterritory.com/ . There are also some screenshots floating around the web for example here at 3D gamers
I’m currently working on ETQW as a graphics programmer at Splashdamage in London.

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I’m back from E3 for about a month now so time for some postmortems!

Left here on sunday morning and arrived there on the sunday evening (thanks to the timezones!) without any notable trouble. The monday was kind of boring, in the morning trying to find out where our badges were, as Activision was kindof unsure who exactly had them. After driving to their offices in vain we got them from someone at the convention center itself, so we could quckly pop in and see our stand (then still under construction). The thing was huge, much bigger than I anticipated, and the finish looked kindof metal as well. (I feared it would look to plasticy) People where rushing to finish everything and they politely indicated that we should bugger off, by almost driving us over with a crane.
That afternoon we went to the Grove, wich is basically a themed shopping mall. From the outside it looks like any other American mall comprex but once inside there is a big open air fake european village, cobblestoned streets, fountains, a little park and even a tram driving up and down the street. All of this complete with a French restaurant. (They got very good food there for American standards ;) ) I guess you have to come all the way from europe to see,... an european village :D

On tuesday we went to universal studio’s, wich to my surprise turned out to be some kind of themepark. Honestly I taught it would be something interesting about how they make movies, but oh no, they had a speaking Shrek donky bot instead, and cartoonists, and 30 minutes from here panels and… the one ride that shows you something that relates to the word studio, is the one where you get so sit in some oversized golf cart and they drive you around the film sets. Half of these are actually fake and set up as part of the ride, since they got these piston animated walls crashing down, complete with parking the golf card on some shaky plate! All of this acompanied by this overly girly guide who taught she should attempt to act as she was taken by surprise when the next wall came pistoning down. At least we got to see one real actress!

Wednesday, first real day of E3, whee! Full of youthly passion I got up early that morning ready to spot some games! The first thing I got to see was,... people, as soon as you even dared to show up in the hotel lobby, there they were, lots of them… all wearing these funny badges around their neck, and some game T-shirt they got for free last year (I saw lots of them with Doom3 t-shirts man they were sooo last year!) after following the hord to the convention centre, we had to have our bags checked, in case anyone was trying to smuggle games in I guess, no place for that on a professional event!
We were lucky that day, the show opens at nine for people with exibithor badges but only at 10 for “the hord”, so we could sneak in and have a look around while it was still relatively quiet. We had a mission to go out and spot the main things and then go and brief Paul about that, so he could answer any questions the press may have for him… that meant straight to the Microsoft stand to see the XBox 360. They surely had some nice games but they weren’t that amazing, in the end they just looked like PC games made for the most powerfull pc’s around. Next on our list was Battlefield 2 a bit disappointed about the graphics but it still looked like a cool game.
During lunch we luckyly escaped “the hord” once again, we went to eat at the Activision buffet and got sometling light and healty instead of chips and burgers. They also did these very small (in diametre not in height) pizza’s as well, basically a small bread with cheese on top! Appartenly the food you buy on the floor is shit, well not really of course, it just tastes bad. And man the qeues for food are just as bad as the one for starbucks, long, to get coffey from a cardboard cylinder. In the afternoon we saw more games!

Thursday meant more gamespy-ing (sponsored link!) wich involved pushing people aside or queuing to get into cramped little exhibition theatres (thanks god they were aircoed most of the time!) after seeing some more of the supposedly 5000 games on display at the show (whee we made one of them!) we discovered the Nintendo stand, qeues again, but now they were handing out these cute Nintendogs keychains (i.e. little furry dog keychains) so we dragged ourselves into the que and totally surrendered our free will, swore an oath to Nintendo, and told them we hate Sony, in order to get hold of one of these cute things.

Later that day the activison party was on the agenda, splashdamage had only got four invitations and I was not on the list, but I went anyway assuming I was going to get in. At the door they started being fussy since apparently they were overbooked according to fire regulations so a strict invitation only rule was enforced… lucky someone from activision saw us and started talking to us while we were still standing in the doorway, the people at the door kindof lost interest as the two people behind us were also trying to get in without invites. I quckly sneaked in for an evening of walking dinner and italian import beer! Later that night we went to the fancy-trendy pool-bar on the roof of one of the the downtown hotels. LA weather provided that we could sit there comfortably enjoying the view :)

Friday, the last day of the carnival, in the morning I went around to see even more games, I even went to see all the weird stuff in the Kentia hall (where the really small and unknown companies have their exhibits) I saw 10 different cd-rw repair kits, a few weird input devices, and some korean company wich sold boxes with flashing leds. I’m unsure what they were for but I think they were to give like a piece of jewelry to someone, as soon as you opened it the whole thing starts flashing, sweee-eet! Luckyly for my sainity the show closes at four on friday, so around three I headed over to the Activsion stand to await the end (of the show that is!)... at four they actually play some weird sort of “last post” theme to indicate the show is over, kindof sad, the end of three days of people, people, people and some games.
That evening we were celebrating! Our game had had a good reception among the public and we were going for dinner (in the italian restaurant at the Grove, they probably taught we were homesick or something) and later to the new Star Wars movie(eek forgot the sub-title again), anyway ten minutes into the movie I fell alseep, only to be woken up like one minute before the end. I guess I was just really tired, or was it the movie…. the two extra dry martini’s I had a the restaurant (complete with olive!) won’t have helped keeping me awake either.

Saturday I met again with Willi (first met him at E3 on thursday, after having known him online for about two years) we went to see Blur Studio’s where he works, they got some very cool offices altough he didn’t seem soo exited about them… I guess if you have to work there every day ;). Later we went to Venice and mussle beach, the name gives it away, body builders, but in fact there are more werdo’s there, the guy dressed in white with a turban and an electrical guitar on rollerscates being the one of the extremest examples :) It looks very nice to live in LA, large spacious appartments, nice weather, beaches, big paying movie companies,... London certainly lost some credit there, oh well we still got time.

Sunday, more sitting in metal crates trying to stay hydrated… we had a cabin attendant that looked like Marget Tatcher.. I guess that’s what you get when flying BA, let’s try Singapore Airlines next!

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Tomorrow we leave early moring to e3, we’re going to be there all week :) So hopefully we can get some time off in LA.
It’s still been busy the last few days finishing off the trailer.
The game announchment is out but somehow we can’t find it anywhere on the internet (yet!) so it must still be lingering in people’s mailboxes.

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Wha I finally got around to registering a webserver and a hostname! Having a nice php based website management tool also means I can do more updates! So expect to see some bloggy or .plan style ranting about graphics and whatever else I feel like ranting about :)

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