darek | 
06 23rd, 2008
NLGD expo in Utrecht was very successful. People likes Apricot and our tools. Most important thing was that organizers supplied free beer for us ! Also we meet some cool guys from other teams/companies (cheers!) so it was very good experience. We have some photos, and also movie with current work-in-progress Apricot powered by Crystal Space 3d engine.
Apricot: Crystal Space Preview #1 from Pablo Vazquez on Vimeo.
very cool.. where do we found out how many Apricot DVD’s have been pre-orderd?
Hey nice vid! Impressive the amount of surprises going on here…
Thank you for this follow up.
I still can’t believe that Blender has realtime shadows… Looks like
christmas… but… It is June! Dude…! This is the happiest Monday of my life. 😛
CS sure is a great rendering engine… However, I still think that the User Interface (you know, the squirrel’s life meter and stats) looks better on BGE.
That looked very juicy, and admittedly better than the BGE demo. Apricot, you’re rocking my world!
I love BGE but CS has always been a weird experience for me. Will CS have IK armature support? And was that video an accurate representation of the frame rate in CS?
anyways great work guys, I’m loving it!!!
One more question. I love the materials and nodes compatibility in BGE. Will CS have that too?
Thank you guys!
The game have a look very dark in the video.
Lookin’ good.
Yeah! Now this is looking awesome!!
It’s looks like the BGE has the upperhand when it comes to graphics, but I would rather have CS running the game.
Technically speaking, CS should have the upper hand at graphics.
However… as the game is oriented towards a “Cartoonish” feeling, the videos in BGE surely fit this better – CS looks way too realistic for this game’s environment. And a bit “cluttered” in some parts. Does the video follow the real frame rate?
Would it be possible for you guys to upload the video in Theora/Vorbis or some other non-restrictive format?
I tried watching the video with konqueror-plugin-gnash in Konqueror and with swfdec-mozilla in Iceweasel and neither worked.
Thanks
I downloaded a .avi file from Vimeo, I had to bugmenot it, though, so it would still be cool if you could upload Theora/Vorbis videos.
Thanks
I agree that the bge demo looked alot more appealing as far as a cartoon goes, maybe it was just that rampshader awesomeness that gave it a bright look? I mean, really, it’s apricots and peaches, where is the fuzzy look?
I personally preferred the BGE look aswell.
Hope there will be a BGE version available (aswell) when the game comes out.
oli
yeah the ramps looked really nice, but this has some nice shaders as well. the bump maps and real time reflections look real nice in the cs version.
Yall should package a demo in the next SVN release. 😀
This is supposed to be the epitome of freedom, yet you post a video in flash. Really nothing you ever post on this site is watchable.
Heh, all these freedom evangelists here make me sick. Is it just jealoucy that every normal person on earth has a 10 times more intense experience of life because they aren’t limited to using cheap clones of established software?
Very impressive stuff. Seeing the developments in Blender and Crystal Space has convinced me to develop some of my game ideas using FOSS.
One note about the camera (and I know it’s not easy to implement, but bear with me): It shouldn’t follow the character with 100% accuracy, but rather have a little “free space” while the character is moving around; it should also back up a bit when the character is moving toward the camera so that we can see where he is going somewhat. Doing it this way allows for a more natural feeling movement and makes things a bit more exciting visually.
That’s my two cents. Still, great job guys!
@Alexander Ewering: Why are you in a blog about a free game then? Don’t you have a more intense experience of life to take care of while you wait for Vista to restart from its BSOD?
Crystal Space looks much better. BGE was way to dull and bland in color. Some places in CS look just like BBB, others don’t as much, but it is all nice :).
@ Ebsen Stien
Flash videos are great. Everybody can watch, and isn’t horrible youtube quality, so deal with it.
Looking quite nice. Does CS version already have the sheep kicking action like in previous BGE demo? Do you add nice glow effect eventually?
Squirrel seems to run kinda fast too, and is too far away from camera for me to see what’s going on. can he fly and do double jump already?
awesome work dudes, I’ll get the dvd as soon as I have money… great look of level!
That looks great! I was only there on thursday and wasnt allowed into the cool expo tent till 16:00…couldnt wait for over 3 hours, but this was friday anyway, right?
Great to see the realtime shadows and solid body physics in action.
Are those slowdowns big framedrops btw?
kudos!
It seems that making a game is more difficult than making a movie 🙂
Anyway, I hope you all the best.
Impressive work, shaders look very good.
Kudos!
leo_rockway: I haven’t seen a single BSOD in neither Vista nor XP since 2003 – except due to hardware failure. I don’t know how others manage to get them 🙂
Anyway, I’m in a blog about a free game because I’ve been involved with Blender since almost its beginnings and while I regret many of the recent developments around it, it still remains an interesting topic to follow 🙂
It looks ugly. The graphics test looked a lot better.
This one:
/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/crystal000.png
Is CS beter than blender for macking games or can they work together (ex. apending obbjects from blender in to Cs)?
@legoboy1122
CS is relatively better rendering big scenes. Aside from that, almost anything that can be done in CS can be emulated with Blender’s GE. And yes, both can work together, just check out the blender2crystal plugin.
http://b2cs.delcorp.org/index.php/Main_Page
Hey, just a quick question, have any of the .blend files been released? If so, its not obvious where to look.
It looks as if you guys are stuck with white colored text… is it possible for you to change in-game font color?
RH2: No, you would need to buy a colorfilter for your monitor and put it over the screen in order to change the color. But those will be included with the Apricot DVD set.
Well, I’m sorry that I have to say this, but I’m all but convinced.
To make a statement in a nice list:
1) the movement is too unnatural/fast/responsive
2) the camera doesn’t work very well (it doesn’t follow if you move back and it isn’t always in the right position behind the player)
3) those slowdown’s aren’t happening only on my computer, are they?!
—–
To be honest Big Buck Bunny was on a whole other level compared to this if this isn’t undergoing any dramatic changes. To make a comparison: in my opinion Big Buck Bunny was the short version of a good Pixar movie (yes, this is meant to be a huge compliment) and this is a game based upon a license (most of the games based upon movies are good examples).
Though, I do hope this will progress rapidly and become a really good/entertaining game. All the luck to you guys!
Agreeing with the last person. Games based on movies are usually mediocre.
Oh, and about camera and movement. Darek just hasn’t tuned them properly. Look at the previous blog post to see those features working.
Yes. It’s one of the steps not final game.
how many milion polygons can Crystal space rendering per frame ( for example Unreal Engine 3 can render 3 milions of polygons per frame). Whery needto know, pleeeease!!!???
I know and I’ll be sure to look at the next steps in the progress and I’ll be hoping It’ll change my opinion on the whole thing.
@Alexander Ewering
cool!
Is there another way to change in game font color?
And that was a joke, right?
Rexer: that depends on your hardware. An engine can only render as many polygons per frame as the hardware allows.
great work.
the shadows from the missiles are especially cool.
I think the idea is to be able to create & test all of this in BGE then export everything to CS, ready to go.
both BGE & CS are being developed to make this as seamless as possible.
No doubt this test will be improved upon, just like the others.
keep up the good work.
btw, this type of Professional workflow should catapult Blender forward in game creation.
hmm, export to CS, tweak settings, then create your exe & off you go.
no more BGE Licensing issues.
@Alexander Ewering
A blog about a free game requires free video formats. Obviosly the people here agree otherwise the newer videos wouldn’t be in ogg/theora 🙂