BlitzTerrain SDK Around the Corner!

BTSDK lead programmer Karl Hobley has been working hard away at the completion of the BlitzTerrain SDK for DarkBASIC Professional and Dark GDK. The LOD technology is now 100% complete and all that remains to be finalized are the Real-Time Modification System (RTMS) commands and a few more RAM/CPU optimizations.

You can download the latest beta version (1.05) from the DevStorm forums – note: DBPro only.

Here is the changelog as of June 2009.
[UNDATED] Fixed bug causing crash when environment maps are used. Fixed bug causing crash when 'UT SetTerrainLOD' is not used Added support for colour heightmaps Fixed bug when using UT SetTerrainSplit wrong causes crash - now silently moves the value into the split range Upgraded Compiler to Visual Studio 2008 Professional

[07 June 2009] Started commenting code (not one comment before) Removed lots of temporary code in UT Update that would certainly slow the system down Setting point heights, now sets the point height of the nearest point, instead of the bottom left of the tile. Brush commands massively improved in FPS. Reduced point checks from 500 000 to about 250. (on the heightmap in demo4 using radius of 200)

[08 June 2009] Added terrain exist checks for the following commands - UT SetTerrainScale - UT SetTerrainYScale - UT SetAdvancedPhysics - UT SetTerrainDetailTile - UT SetTerrainSplit - UT SetTerrainLODDistances Fixed security bug


[09 June 2009]

Terrain Engine is now much better on Video Memory

1 byte per point saved in RAM usage (up to 16MB saved)
[11 June 2009]

Completely removed Infinite detail mapping feature. It eats ram, slows simulation and a waste of time to develop. This will be replaced with shaders.

Rewritten Anti seam system and now fixes 4:1 seams

Added the following commands

- UT TerrainExist

- UT GetTerrainPositionX

- UT GetTerrainPositionY

- UT GetTerrainPositionZ
[19 June 2009]

Limited max terrain count to 1 to make deleting without memory leak possible. This will be removed in a later release.

Added UT DeleteTerrain to the command list

Added UT CheckForError and UT GetErrorMessage to the command list

Optimised UT SetTerrainWireframe command

LOD Seam fixing is now much faster. Removed Normals calculation everytime the LOD seam fixes. - Doubled FPS while moving.
[21 June 2009]

Fixed normals seams bug

Added Texturemode 1. This is designed to texture like Advanced Terrain so it allows better shader compatibility. It also keeps the texture detail on low detail sectors, improving the visual quality.

Duplicated all functions and gave new functions a prefix of BT