Blog! Team! Forum! About Apricot! Press! Gallery! Development! Yo Frankie! Apricot Open Game Project mee!
Jun 23

NLGD expo and Crystal Space movie

icon1 darek | icon2 Apricot Press | icon4 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.

img_1422.jpgimg_1423.jpgimg_1404.jpgimg_1407.jpgdscn2226lo.JPGimg_1411.jpg


Apricot: Crystal Space Preview #1 from Pablo Vazquez on Vimeo.

43 Responses

  1. Kirado on

    very cool.. where do we found out how many Apricot DVD’s have been pre-orderd?



  2. Francisco Ortiz on

    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. 😛



  3. Vexelius on

    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.



  4. Bmud on

    That looked very juicy, and admittedly better than the BGE demo. Apricot, you’re rocking my world!



  5. Blender Loving Squirrel on

    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!!!



  6. Blender Loving Squirrel on

    One more question. I love the materials and nodes compatibility in BGE. Will CS have that too?

    Thank you guys!



  7. madman on

    The game have a look very dark in the video.



  8. FuzzMaster on

    Lookin’ good.



  9. dusty on

    Yeah! Now this is looking awesome!!



  10. Anonymous on

    It’s looks like the BGE has the upperhand when it comes to graphics, but I would rather have CS running the game.



  11. Vexelius on

    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?



  12. leo_rockway on

    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



  13. leo_rockway on

    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



  14. Tyrone_man on

    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?



  15. Oli on

    I personally preferred the BGE look aswell.
    Hope there will be a BGE version available (aswell) when the game comes out.
    oli



  16. DLH on

    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.



  17. Anthoni_C on

    Yall should package a demo in the next SVN release. 😀



  18. Esben Stien on

    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.



  19. Alexander Ewering on

    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?



  20. Moustafa Chamli on

    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!



  21. leo_rockway on

    @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?



  22. J on

    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.



  23. lloyd on

    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!



  24. Tesla on

    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!



  25. Verb on

    It seems that making a game is more difficult than making a movie 🙂
    Anyway, I hope you all the best.



  26. Ahuri on

    Impressive work, shaders look very good.

    Kudos!



  27. Alexander Ewering on

    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 🙂



  28. Christiaan Bakker(AniCator) on

    It looks ugly. The graphics test looked a lot better.
    This one:
    /wp-content/uploads/2008/04/crystal000.png



  29. legoboy1122 on

    Is CS beter than blender for macking games or can they work together (ex. apending obbjects from blender in to Cs)?



  30. Vexelius on

    @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



  31. Tyrone_man on

    Hey, just a quick question, have any of the .blend files been released? If so, its not obvious where to look.



  32. RH2 on

    It looks as if you guys are stuck with white colored text… is it possible for you to change in-game font color?



  33. Alexander Ewering on

    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.



  34. Devilly on

    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!



  35. Amir Taaki on

    Agreeing with the last person. Games based on movies are usually mediocre.



  36. Amir Taaki on

    Oh, and about camera and movement. Darek just hasn’t tuned them properly. Look at the previous blog post to see those features working.



  37. darek on

    Yes. It’s one of the steps not final game.



  38. Rexer on

    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!!!???



  39. Devilly on

    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.



  40. RH2 on

    @Alexander Ewering

    cool!

    Is there another way to change in game font color?

    And that was a joke, right?



  41. jorrit on

    Rexer: that depends on your hardware. An engine can only render as many polygons per frame as the hardware allows.



  42. meta-androcto on

    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.



  43. leo_rockway on

    @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 🙂