For those of you using the firefox plugin to search the forums, there is a new version available which now searches the new forums.

It should update automatically but if this fails you could do the following:
Select “Manage Search Engines” from the search engine dropdown list, now delete the old “Quest3D|Forums” plugin. Now click here to download the latest version.

Today (ahem), some references to shaders, which can really bring life to your Quest3D application.

First off, some examples:

The infamous NVIDIA shader library
Some shaders that could be converted to Quest3D
Some shaders from the so-called vvvv toolkit

Most of these can be converted to Quest3D quite easily, if you know the semantics.

Some tutorials to help you get started:

Facewound : Basics on post-processing, I do have the feeling I posted this before somewhere…. don’t hit me if I did.
Direct3D basics : Basics on shaders, very, very basic.

Inspirational:
Punkuser : some guy got variance shadow maps working on omni-lights… which is awesome.

I can also highly recommend ShaderFX, it natively supports Quest3D for crying out loud. Although you are limited to creating materials (no post-processing stuff) and the nodes they provide. Unless you create your own custom nodes of course.

Dylan Fitterer provided the community once again with a very handy channel, or actually two very handy channels. These channels can provide the Quest programmer with the following info/events:

onWindowMove
onWindowResize
onWindowMinimize
onWindowMaximize
onWindowLoseFocus
onWindowGainFocus

Your app can use these events to do things like pause gameplay when focus is lost or go fullscreen on maximize. Each child is a ChannelCaller and it would be best to check for NotInEditor before doing anything on these events.

Read the quest-forum post here: quest3d.nl/community

Just of the presses, the ink is still wet, head over here to check out this months newsletter and read up on what the guys at Act-3d are concocting for Quest3D version 4.0! If you are in a hurry, scoll down and I’ll show you the highlights!

Some highlights of this months newsletter:

Quest3D is hiring!

Indeed Quest3D is looking to fill the following job positions, Modeler/Animator (full time), Quest3D Developer (full time), C++ Programmer (full time)

2007 Competition!

Yep there’s another competition coming up! Heads up for more info to follow!

Quest3D 4.0

Quest3D will be better then ever, some new features include: refurbished and more user friendly interface, specialized way for landscape rendering, weather and atmosphere system, GUI system, and maybe the most interesting part Quest3D 4.0 will let you develop in a fully object oriented way.

New forum

Well as many of you already have seen there’s a new and improved forum! It features all available updates and downloads, improved search, image gallery, polls, Spell check

And some nice asides

• Available Jobs
• FAQ Highlights
• WIKI Highlights
• Selected gallery image
• Hot forum topics

First of all, sorry for the lack of updates. We’ve been terribly busy. And now, without further ado, this weeks words for the weekend.

LostGarden - Content is bad : Nice article about the pro’s and cons of developing a procedural environment for your projects (or games). I must, I also quite like the blog.

RoadKill 1.1 : Nobody could have ever made up a better name for an unwrapper-tool. EVER. Anyway, it’s a LSCM unwrapping, which is all the hype nowadays. This is also supported by 3dsmax (pelt-wrapping), C4D (LSCM), Blender (LSCM) etc. Readup about the technique here.

Will Wright interview : Speaking of procedural content, this man would have invented it, if it didn’t exist before. Designer of The Sims and Spore had an interview with Popular Science. Good read. Bit low on facts though…

BlamBot : A site dedicated to comic fonts. No worries, no comic sans to be found here.

Vincenty : If you truly want to know where exactly you are on this globe, this is the script for you. It has an accuracy of 1mm (yes, a millimeter!). Which is ridiculous. Cool nonetheless.

And if you haven’t been following the development of the CGR-exporter for 3dsmax, no worries, it hasn’t seen any major changes in a while. Some minor bug fixes can be found in the latest 0.2.15 version here.

Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures, for your everyday traveling salesman problems have a look here.

In depth notes about Newton buoyancy and buoyancy in general, maybe you can use this to create some floating items.

Free professional quality audio samples. Zero advertising. Check out sampleswap.org.

Some new icon candy from famfamfam, a whole bunch of flags (The flag icon filenames follow the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes.)

Another fine production from the hands of Dylan Fitterer, the Custom Geometry Channel, a welcome addition to Quest3D. Now you can create any mesh in realtime! This channel works with Quest 3.6.3

“You can use it to make anything. And THAT, of course, means it’s a little complicated to use”, Dylan Fitterer

In case you’ve missed the big news, Quest3D 3.6 is out now. Including the SDK and the latest exporter for 3DMax.

See the forum announcement here or download 3.6 here.

Congrats Act! We’re pretty confident that this will be the most solid version yet!

A new version of Quest3D is released today, with the following improvements:

This is a list of changes in “developer language”:

• Media texture would always start playing fixed it
• Lua now has a SetWString and GetWString note that lua is NOT compatible with Unicode strings so you can only set it in another wstring but you can’t analyze string in lua other then == etc
• The command channel interface has a bug fix with renaming the channel
• Opening a text channel interface will not set the focus also if there is no text
• Multiple additions to nature painting
• Some bug fixes to advanced motion set
• Added some workflow improvements to the parameter creation
• Fixed a bug where new windows would not be initialized
• The selector channel now has an option to revert back to -1 when nothing is true

Nice list! And I bet not everybody has read the full ‘fixlist’, which you can actually find in your very own installation folder: C:\path_to_quest\Quest3D 3.x.x\readme3.rtf

The final release is getting close now, congratulations Act-3D!!

Download RC1: Quest3D_3_5_5_rc1.exe

Download the SDK: Q3DSDK355RC1.exe

This weeks readup comes with small assignment for you. Please fill out the poll below so we’ll get to know you a bit better!

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Further, if you have any opinions on the way we keep you informed or about the links presented below? Please have your say in the comments. Do you have any tips on file naming in general or with Quest3D? Do you like/dislike in-game advertising? Let us and the world know!

Ok, and now for this weeks links!

You might’ve already seen this 2004 BBC documentary about Tetris a while ago, if not go have a look it’s on youtube now!

My_project_final_final_v3.cgr …sounds familiar? Head over to the 43folders site for a quick rundown on best practices for file naming.

Devbump? It’s just like digg but then for game developers, subscribe to their RSS feed or register to write you own stories.

Another fine gamasutra article, this time it’s a series about Multiplayer Level Design, this is part 1 of 3.

If you ever see a line like this “Added Massive Streaming Ad Support” in a patch readme file be warned. These guys started a packet dumper while playing SWAT4, behold the XML soup that went back and forth to the ad-servers.

Article about some of the “Not-So-Bright Ideas from the World of Gaming.”

Hey hang on isn’t that made with Quest3D? It’s a capture from Tale of Tales‘ “The Endless Forest”.

Happy reading,

the Quest3D|Log team

Another update to the CGR exporter.
Get the new version right here!

Bit from the forum:

In new version:
- Better mesh optimization
- Support check box in maps slots

Thanks Artur, keep it up.