Sgt. Conker We are "absolutely fine"

17Aug/100

IcoModel Beta

A new interesting project popped-up on codeplex. Daniel Hoctor released the first beta version of IcoModel. The original announcement on the xna forums explains what IcoModel is all about:

What is IcoModel?
IcoModel is a free, open source terrain system that provides an easy way to create and manage dynamic terrain in the form of a globe. The IcoModelProcessor has been designed specifically to work with geodesic spheres; the mesh is broken down into sectors--the pentagons and hexagons that make up the sphere--which the IcoModel class uses to manage the terrain.

How does it work?
You simply load a non-textured, UV Mapped, geodesic sphere mesh via the IcoModelProcessor. Then you create an effect key that represents the different terrain types in your project. From that point on, you can assign any sector an effect key index, at any time. When you call IcoModel's draw function, each sector will be drawn according to its current effect key index.

You can see a video of IcoModel at work below:

P.S. Thanks to Mike (Bob Taco Ind) for the tip!

8May/104

3D XNA Gizmo v0.2.0 Released!

Tom Looman has updated his 3D XNA Gizmo, adding support for rotation and scale.

You can go get the latest version of the library here.

21Feb/100

External Happenings

Promit Roy shares a KISS way to serialize interfaces with the .NET serializers (with a bit more work it might even be possible to emit valid XML).

Nick Gravelyn scales retro sprites at build time with a KISS custom content importer.

And last but not least Stephen Styrchak found the code for his custom game template exporter and pushed it onto CodePlex.