Thank you both, Helge and rolz -- I combined both of your ideas keeping the object3D seperate in a GameObject class wich emplements a GameEventListener. It worked like a charm, and gave me much clearer view of how to puzzle all my smaller bits together that I've been experimenting with since I starting working with jPCT.

I have another question though that is perhapse not justifyable on these forums due to the fact that it derives from my inexperience working with full scale applications and especially 3d rendering.

But well, here it goes: I'm trying to get a grip on how I'll manage the animations that follow triggering, for example, a door object. I implemented the door triggering event where the Door(Object3D) was an md2 file with an "Opening" animation. Of course, the opening animation itself was carried out in the Door object and was therefore not in consistency with the frames in the main game. To explain: initiating the door opening animation caused the animation itself too be drawn too fast for the player to see.

In the official jPCT examples, this is solved by calling doMovement() once every loop in the main gameloop, hence the animations are always consisent with the main thread.

So what I'm currently thinking is to have a GameEventManager, which would keep a listing of all GameObjects as well as an AnimationQueue: a Hashlist that contains all the objects that require animating in the next iteration of the main game loop.

The main gameloop would therefore look something like this, with the addition of soundManager:

gameloop {

while (!quit) {
player.doMovement();
GameEventManager.animationQueue(); // If there is something that requires animation
SoundManager.playSounds(GameEventManager.soundQueue()); // Play any sounds that the gameEvents emit
}
}


So, to sum up, my question basically is: is this the way to go? Or is there some other method that's better when making 3D games? For example, should I be looking into threading each type of manager so it runs independantly?

Thanks for reading and helping

-Raven

Thanks for the advice guys.

I'd created a wrap for objects, but the objects extended Object3D ... I hadn't thought of the other option  :oops:

Both your ideas help a lot. Thanks. I'm going to read up on how I could implement a GameEventListener, not quite sure how that'd work yet.

Keep you posted.
Thanks again.
-Hrafn

Hey again.

Actually, my earlier post on Tokima not loading is no longer valid. I just tried it again and it works perfectly. Did you change something? Because I tried it a few times before and it didn't work.

The new demo looks (and sounds!) cool. It'd look better if you'd put some sort of grass texture on the ground and trees, it's kind of plastic-y as it is.

Regarding gameplay.... am I supposed to be able to escape from that little corner I start in? That mini-wall is driving me nuts, I can't get past it.  :oops:

Look forward to seeing more.

Hey Manumoi.

Yeah, I've been trying out MM3D (Misfit Model 3D) available at: http://www.misfitcode.com/misfitmodel3d/.

It's very simple and has a very smooth learning curve -- took me about two days to get familiar enough with it to make a humanoid model, animate it (roughly) and import as md2 into jPCT.

Feel free to ask if you need support.

-Hrafn "Raven"

The polygon ID plan sounds better. Thanks for the advice. This could also prove a very useful discussion for future jPCT-FPS gamemakers.

-Hrafn "Raven"

No, you have to do this yourself. It's easy. Just iterate through the objects of a world, get their transformed center and calculate the distance from the camera's position (i.e. subtract the camera's position and get the length...can both be done by using the appropriate methods in SimpleVector) to each of them.

Ach.. ofcourse. Thanks for answering a stupid question. I thought it the other way around all the time. I implemented this and it worked perfectly.

possibly not best way, but i find this very handy:
i either:
* place dummy objects to mark those positions and save them in a seperate file (like lights.3ds) and then use the center of those objects to place lights
* again place dummy objects but save thier positions with max script (faster loading time and less space)

Hey raft. Thanks for the feedback.
I'm just about to start trying out these methods, so your timing is perfect, however -- I'm unsure of exactly what you mean?

*For your first point: I think you're talking about the same thing that Helge had already already pointed out to me, except that you want me to put it in a seperate file? But wouldn't I then have to align my map.3ds with the lights.3ds after I import them into jPCT?

*Second point: Actually, I'm not using 3D Studio, I'm using Blender (free, open source) -- problem is I have to export the Blender files to as .obj, then import them into another program which can export as .3ds.

There is a scripting system in Blender, maybe I can utilize that. Sounds good.

But discussing Blender actually brings me to another issue I've been dealing with.

I haven't been able to load textures properly in jPCT when using a .3ds file. Has anyone been using blender for models? I'm wondering if my importing and exporting ruins the texture coordinates on objects somehow.

jPCT loads the correct materials successfully, like "steelfloor" (which in Blender links to the steelfloor.jpg). But for some reason adding steelfloor.jpg and naming it "steelfloor" in jPCT produces no results.

Q1: Aren't the 3ds models supposed to find the textures themselves if they are imported into TextureManager?
Q2: It's the name of the material that 3ds models use for texturing that matters, not the .jpg name, right?


Thanks for all your help!
- Hrafn "Raven" Thorisson

Hey all again.

I'm trying to get an object to stay "clear/lit" in an unlit environment.

I was hoping to get it working by setting the object's lighting to NO_LIGHTS while keeping the texture in bright colors, but alas, no worky.

Is there any way to get this effect?

Relevant to this question, is: Is it possible to control the range of a lightsource? In other words, how far a Light reaches?

EDIT: One more question. Given that there are X many objects currently Z-near the camera (or currently in the camera's field of vision) , is there any way to get a list of those objects?

-Raven

Wow. Looks awesome -- great design work there! And great effects when opening the xxxx (don't want to give anything away).  :wink:

The blitted text is good too, however, I would suggest that the "operate" button doesn't move the camera. I also found it a bit hard to know wether I was clicking the right place or wether there really was nothing to click on.

I just wish it was longer! It was really fun and spooky. Reminds me of one of my favorite old games: "Deja-vu".

More!

-Raven