INsanityDesign

Two days ago, the USA version of The Chronicles of Spellborn, published by Acclaim went F2P. Today they made this step official. You can go to their website, register a free account and download the about 3GB, install and start playing. I recommend it, as TCOS features a new, active and live fighting system (which I like very much). It also has a very believable world, which does not follow any large license but cooks its own soup. Something I like, as it also encourages you to explore. Now, you can make up your mind yourself as it is free! For those that already played TCOS at the beginning, please note: It has changed nearly completely in my opinion! It is far more user friendly, the interface got better, the guidance, the environment more lively…
It was announced some weeks ago that the European Servers shutdown and The Chronicles of Spellborn will nevertheless continue as a F2P, beginning from next year. This is fantastic, as so many good but not great MMOs (like Tabula Rasa) just get lost in the Windows Trashcan because of shutdowns. The European servers have been shutdown already, but now Acclaim announced that the US Version is F2P from today on but will not feature any updates or patches until the official relaunch. In my opinion it is worth it. And as it is free now it has enough content to keep you playing for a while. And let’s see… maybe you like it!

The Chronicles of Spellborn

The Chronicles of Spellborn was a bold try to do something completely out of line from UO, Everquest or World of Warcraft. The studio from Netherlands licensed the Unreal 2.5 engine and created their own story, their own environment, their own world! Main focus was put on the fighting system, which features a complex looking but very special and good kind of active and live fighting, with skill-based tiers. Moving, jumping, attacking from behind gets more interactive and it encourages to test your skill-tiers, similar to Guild Wars, because of the alignment and limitations in the slots.
Unfortunately TCOS could not fully keep up to the (and my) expectations. It was polished but too little content was available. Some people also argued that the quest descriptions were missing concrete directions. I liked that, as it was no following arrows and points but really reading the quests, the logs, the text. As the quest and discussion system also features some kind of answer selection, sometimes you can change your stand and the mood of NPCs to you. Something I also like.

So, just head over to the official website and download the game. It is worth at least a quick look and maybe the community will bring Spellborn back to live, somehow like Ryzom.

Pictures taken from the official Website: http://spellborn.acclaim.com/

Just a quick post about a short parody trailer of Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” made by Gamervision. Just watch and laugh your guts out like I did… the Mushroom Kingdom awaits you!

I am currently a little bit experimenting with Android and its SDK as I am proud owner of a HTC Magic as well as I am pretty impressed by the SDK, Android itself and the ideas and principles it follows.
More precisely I am playing around with the graphical functionalities of Android, especially OpenGL. Android contains an OpenGL ES implementation, therefore I am playing around with some OpenGL codes and test the capabilities and results.

So, I was testing some texturing and of course wanted to test the mipmapping possibilities. Here I tripped over some “problems” you have to avoid by going another way.
In a probably classical way you could use glu to build the mipmaps

gluBuild2DMipmaps(GL_TEXTURE_2D, 3, sizeX, sizeY, GL_RGB, GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, data);

You hand it the width and height and the texture data and it creates all your needed mipmaps. Problem solved! Unfortunately Android only provides a very small GLU implementation with some helper functions and does not provide you that functionality. Therefore, you would have to go another way.
A possibility on an Android system could be to test for version 1.1 of your GL and use the according hint, as 1.1. adds automatic mipmap generation

gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureID);
gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR);
gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST);
if(gl instanceof GL11) {
  gl.glTexParameterf(GL11.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL11.GL_GENERATE_MIPMAP, GL11.GL_TRUE);
  GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, 0, bitmap, 0);
} else {
  buildMipmap(gl, bitmap);
}

For the emulator this might work but not every mobile device running Android must have a GL11 instance. Therefore, this solution can work but does not necessarily have to.
Mike Miller had a similar problem/idea and suggested the following functionality

private void buildMipmap(GL10 gl, Bitmap bitmap) {
  //
  int level = 0;
  //
  int height = bitmap.getHeight();
  int width = bitmap.getWidth();

  //
  int[] textures = new int[1];
  gl.glGenTextures(1, textures, 0);
  textureID = textures[0];

  //
  gl.glBindTexture(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureId);

  //
  while(height >= 1 || width >= 1) {
    //First of all, generate the texture from our bitmap and set it to the according level
    GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, level, bitmap, 0);

    //
    if(height == 1 || width == 1) {
      break;
    }

    //Increase the mipmap level
    level++;

    //
    height /= 2;
    width /= 2;
    Bitmap bitmap2 = Bitmap.createScaledBitmap(bitmap, width, height, true);

    //Clean up
    bitmap.recycle();
    bitmap = bitmap2;
  }

  return textureID;
}

The code is pretty straight forward. It just creates always the mottled bitmap and adds it using GLUtils to the according level, beginning from 0 to whatever level the size 1 for width or height will be.
Unfortunately again, this did not work for me. I tried this in an existing code I had, a special plain project just for mipmap testing, with different AVDs and with different circumstances. Nothing worked! As soon as I added another layer the texture stayed white. I am aware that as soon as you set the texture parameters for mipmapping

gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR);
gl.glTexParameterf(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL10.GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL10.GL_LINEAR_MIPMAP_NEAREST);

it wants all layers. The function posted by Mike provides these but still it did not work for me. I had no idea why it did not work, because that it is a common solution, trivial and eventually should work. (Nevertheless, I solved it. Read at the end of this post why it did not work for me.)
I do not remember why I tried the following, but after many hours and lost hair I replaced the line of GLUtils.texImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, level, bmp, 0); with the following, actually resembling what GLUUtils should provide, but based on an older SDK version

ByteBuffer bytebuf = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect(bmp.getHeight() * bmp.getWidth() * 4);
bytebuf.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder());
IntBuffer pixelbuf = bytebuf.asIntBuffer();

for(int y = 0; y < bmp.getHeight(); y++)
  for(int x = 0; x < bmp.getWidth(); x++) {
    pixelbuf.put(bmp.getPixel(x, y));
  }
pixelbuf.position(0);
bytebuf.position(0);

gl.glTexImage2D(GL10.GL_TEXTURE_2D, level, GL10.GL_RGBA, bmp.getWidth(), bmp.getHeight(), 0, GL10.GL_RGBA, GL10.GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, pixelbuf);

This basic self-implementation of what should be done by GLUtils works for me. But please note that it is just a working example and does is neither optimized nor necessarily the finite solution to this task.

I also figured out why the GLUtils did not work for me: It was only in the Emulator and it was only on one of my machines. And especially that machine it did not work on has a very basic, cheap, old graphics card. But for a whole overview and if you step into the same trap, I posted everything so you know what could be a reason and how to solve it.

So, now after all these tests I have done I have three implementations that work for me. On the one hand side, the use of GL11 and the self-implementation of a mipmap building method in two ways. In conclusion after all these tests and also minor performance tests I did, use one of the suggested methods from above or let me know of other possibilities. I would start with the GL11 test and then go over to the implementations. GLUtils should always work. Hope this helps…

Me and a friend just did a german-it-crowd-computer-nerd-translation of “Our father” inspired by a friend of us. I just had to post it as we think its perfectly fitting:

Platte die du bist im Rechner,
Geheiligt werde dein Speicher,
Deine Bits kommen,
Dein Raid geschehe,
wie im Router so im Desktop.
Unser täglich Video gib uns heute.
Und vergib uns unsere Crashs,
wie auch wir vergeben unseren Controllern.
Und führe uns nicht in ScanDisks,
sondern erlöse uns von Defrags.
Denn dein ist das Bit und das Byte
und die Error in Ewigkeit > /dev/null

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/58519

How? This cannot be possible. This must be a joke. Please be joking. In reality they finished Duke Nukem 4 Ever and will release it. Broussard told everyone that they hit a milestone. This must be marketing.

Update 5

Somehow the Duke still lives (of course)! Scott Miller posted at his Facebook site that the current state is more of a pause than the death of the Duke (who can never die as we all know ^^’). Also some new images emerged with the post. I think they are great and have to still believe that I will see the Duke again.

Update 4

Now, some new footage popped up. Actually it is no new footage but the full segment not shown on the Jace Hall show, when he visited 3DRealms and had the chance to play it. I think it looks actually good and somehow finished. The idea with the controlling tentacles look good and the weapons are awesome as always. I really hope we will see this game in some time…

Update 3

After more and more news about how 3DRealms possibly refused 30 Millions and Take 2’s action of suing 3DRealms for 12 Millions and Source Code as well as Assets the first, more or less official statement has been made by the remaining executives at 3DRealms. It seems that 3DRealms still exists as a company but had to let go of all their developers in the beginning of May. Everything stated can be interpreted in many ways but I still have hope. It was also reported that Miller, Broussard and other Executives will give a full official statement some time later. So let’s hope everything gets at least clarified.

Update 2

Voodoo Extreme got their hands on 28 Hi-Res Screenshots of the “probable” game. The screens also contain a set of Story Tables/World Chart offering what Duke Nukem Forever could have been. The video below already showed our favourite “Stadium” level (but I liked “L.A. Rumble” more ^^’) and it seems that this would have been the entry into the game, as Duke plays his “historical documents” as a game, in the game. I am sorry, but again I need a moment…*morphingtoweepingwillow*

Update

One of the 3DRealms Animators Bryan Brewer, who worked on Duke Nukem Forever, released a Reel of his work done for the game. If this is the real deal, and this is actual gameplay footage with some story hints and everything, this would have been exactly everything a Duke3D BNC-Net gamer could have wished for. I am sorry, but I need a moment…*cryingoutloud*