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Plan for Chris Cole

Name:	Chris Cole
Date Posted:	Jul 25, 2003
Rating:	4.0 out of 5
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Monster Studios released the Reaction Engine SDK V 1.2

Hi All,

Well I'm finally updating my .plan. I've been swamped with work and life and summer seems to take alot of time to live!

Reaction Engine V 1.2 Released
We've just released a major upgrade to the Reaction Engine SDK. This is a significant upgrade and should be considered an intermediate step toward the cross platform ports. Here's some of what's new:

Full Image File Format Support - Special kudos to Ken Paulson for his great work integrating the Corona image file format support libraries into the RE SDK. The RE SDK now supports most image file formats including: .bmp, .tga, .png, .jpg, .gif, etc.

Milkshape 3D Exporter Support - Thanks to Tom Bampton for his Herculean efforts with supporting the much more affordable Milkshape 3D modeling program. This exporter is currently in an alpha state but should fully support static 3D shapes. Expect a full featured Milkshape exporter soon.

Reorganized Development Environment - Appended the RE_ prefix to all engine source and header files, separated the VC6.0 workspace into an example space and a tools space, renamed the Device_Mouse to Device_Input or clarity, etc.

Complete Access to the Render Function - Supplied an over writable function pointer for advanced rendering. This exposes complete access to the render pipeline. This makes modifying the render process a snap!

Simplified the CreateWindow - It is now even easier to create the window with a default initialized window description object. So the window can be created in a single call!

Cleaned up the Graphic POM - Isolated the D3D and DDraw layer and stubbed in an OpenGL layer. This is a preparatory step toward the Linux & Mac ports.

Fixed a whole lot of grammar errors in the documentation! There are also a bunch of other smaller fixes and improvements that were made to the engine itself.

If you've already purchased the Reaction Engine SDK, get your free upgrade from your My Garage page. If you've been waiting to buy, the new Milkshape 3D exporter support should significantly reduce the barrier to entry for the hobbyist game programmer.

What's Next!
I'll be spending the next few days working on updating the Monster Studios website. I hope to create a site that I can quickly update with news, patches, Chain Reaction levels, IRC Chat logs, etc.

We're also ramping up the Attack of the '80s Clones project, and I need to work on managing the different community teams. This is a fun project that has really galvanized the Reaction Engine SDK community.

Monster Studios has its work cut out for me for the next few months and the wind's been cranking at the coast, so if I'm not always available on the Reaction Engine IRC channel or Yahoo IM, it's nothing personal.

Talk to you later!

Chris Cole
Master Monster
Monster Studios, LLC

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Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr (Jul 26, 2003 at 05:07 GMT)

Hey Chris - are there enough projects to fill the Attack of the 80's Clones project requirements now? I'm now eyeballin' buying the Reaction Engine since you're now working your way towards cross platform - a nice 80's clone would be a great 'filler' project for me between testing rounds of TZ.

Chris Cole (Jul 26, 2003 at 18:51 GMT)

Attack is pretty well underway. However, there has been some talk about starting another similar community project for card games or board games. Any thing interesting you?

Davis Ray Sickmon, Jr (Aug 04, 2003 at 04:52 GMT)

Question for ya, Chris - I'm 'retiring' my old 2D puzzle game engine, and lookin' to see where I'm headed next for an engine for my small games. Torque is overkill. I'm lookin' at possibly using the Reaction Engine - however, one of my requirements down the road is that I need cross-platform compatibility. You mention that this is an intermediate step... how long do ya' expect before you get Mac support Linux support? TIA

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