I spent the day with more than 100 game developers and designers yesterday at Dublin GameCraft. It was a lot of fun and although Donall and I didn't really submit our entry for any prizes, we recorded a short video of what we got up to, and here it is:
The topic of the day was: Dinosaur Angst, and as you can see, our dino was pretty angry! Our half baked game was based on OpenSimulator, using stuff we found in the web and LSL. Certainly not the best platform for good gameplay for a shooter, but it was fun to make, the atmosphere in the place was awesome, and have met some really nice people so that's what I call a great day!
Showing posts with label 3D. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 3D. Show all posts
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Open Wonderland - Best View proposed changes
Best View is about the most useful capability ever! It works great with objects with an aspect ratio very similar to your screen, but it's not as good with wider objects such as a cardwall.
You can see what I mean in the following video:
So scratching an itch, I've been working on a patch to add functionality to the capability so that you can focus on certain parts of the object. The key modifiers I'm proposing are:
Mouse wheel = zoom in and out
alt + Mouse wheel = move left and right
alt + crtl + Mouse wheel = move up and down
UPDATE
The keys to be used now are:
Mouse wheel = zoom in and out
ctrl + Mouse wheel = move left and right
ctrl + shift + Mouse wheel = move up and down
The mouse wheel effect also works with trackpads and Mac mouse devices by just sliding a finger as if you had a real wheel.
The patch has not been reviewed yet but if you want to give it a go, I have sent it to the mailing list, and I would appreciate any testing and feedback. Just take into account that it might be rejected.
You can see what I mean in the following video:
So scratching an itch, I've been working on a patch to add functionality to the capability so that you can focus on certain parts of the object. The key modifiers I'm proposing are:
Mouse wheel = zoom in and out
alt + Mouse wheel = move left and right
alt + crtl + Mouse wheel = move up and down
UPDATE
The keys to be used now are:
Mouse wheel = zoom in and out
ctrl + Mouse wheel = move left and right
ctrl + shift + Mouse wheel = move up and down
The mouse wheel effect also works with trackpads and Mac mouse devices by just sliding a finger as if you had a real wheel.
The patch has not been reviewed yet but if you want to give it a go, I have sent it to the mailing list, and I would appreciate any testing and feedback. Just take into account that it might be rejected.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
New Year, New Wonderland Project
Another year begins and so does another Wonderland Wednesday Project. This time we have decided to improve the telepointer module that is already part of the wonderland-modules project.
The current telepointer has a bit of a weird shape and it's a 3D object. I personally cannot think of the benefits of a 3D pointer as compared to a 2D one… sounds the same to me!
The user name renders on top of the pointer in billboard mode, and that makes parts of the word disappear depending on the surface that the pointer is held against. So the first 2 tasks we will go for first are to change the appearance to a more regular 2D shape, and more importantly, to make it work when you take control of a 2D app.
This module is a good example of a Wonderland Component or Capability. In this case, instead of being available to attach to any object in world, it is programmatically attached to all avatars through a server plugin. A nice example if you want to see how to do such a thing.
We will be working on this again on Wednesday the 18th of January so feel free to pop along to the community server at 1p.m. EST or 6p.m. here in Dublin.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Open Wonderland and Google Docs Proof of Concept
I have been very quiet for the last while but as my work load eases out I've had some time to mess about with Open Wonderland again.
This time I've spent a couple of hours putting together a proof of concept (POC) to send information to Google Docs from inworld. In the following video you can see how a word processor document is created from an in world HUD.
The module is very rough and has only been thought of as a proof but if you want to check it out feel free to do so. As usual my code is in github: Proof of Concept for Google Docs and Open Wonderland Integration.
I have to say that the Google Data API has its quirks, although I have only spent a couple of hours using it, but it seems to be solid enough to create powerful client applications.
Any feedback is very welcome as usual!
This time I've spent a couple of hours putting together a proof of concept (POC) to send information to Google Docs from inworld. In the following video you can see how a word processor document is created from an in world HUD.
The module is very rough and has only been thought of as a proof but if you want to check it out feel free to do so. As usual my code is in github: Proof of Concept for Google Docs and Open Wonderland Integration.
I have to say that the Google Data API has its quirks, although I have only spent a couple of hours using it, but it seems to be solid enough to create powerful client applications.
Any feedback is very welcome as usual!
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Open Wonderland OurBricks module Preview 2
Another update on the OurBricks module to use within Open Wonderland. This time you can see the process end to end.
There are still a few glitches in the UI, not being very responsive, and the OurBricks API is likely to change in the near future as it is in active development, but the prototype is working now, as you can see in the video.
If you want to play with the sources you can find them in my github account.
There are still a few glitches in the UI, not being very responsive, and the OurBricks API is likely to change in the near future as it is in active development, but the prototype is working now, as you can see in the video.
If you want to play with the sources you can find them in my github account.
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Open Wonderland OurBricks module Preview
I've been working for the last couple of weeks in a new module that will eventually allow the loading of 3D models from the OurBricks collection directly from within Open Wonderland.
The module is in a very early stage and we are collaborating with the guys at OurBricks to get it finalised as soon as possible, but for now you can see the progress (search functionality) in the following video:
As usual, you can find the source code in my github account. Feel free to clone and change. Pull requests always welcome!
Update: Just got a couple of models imported; a bike and an aircraft, as can be seen in the following screenshot:
The module is in a very early stage and we are collaborating with the guys at OurBricks to get it finalised as soon as possible, but for now you can see the progress (search functionality) in the following video:
As usual, you can find the source code in my github account. Feel free to clone and change. Pull requests always welcome!
Update: Just got a couple of models imported; a bike and an aircraft, as can be seen in the following screenshot:
 |
| Models from OurBricks.com |
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
Code Review Session for Open Wonderland 0.5 Preview 5
Preview 5 is coming... finally!
The Open Wonderland community is closing off the last bunch of issues, being the major one the Video Module that will finally work out of the box, without having to fiddle with the sources. As usual, Jon is in charge of the really hard stuff (Thanks Jon!).
As always, this is a community effort and we are all trying to contribute as much as we can. If you would like to help us move forward please do not hesitate to contact us!
At the meeting, the usual suspects were around, and we all took on some of the problems to fix. On my side of things, I've been poking about with the Placemarks menu, trying to make it a bit more user friendly by alphabetising the marks, separating them in more logical chunks, and so on.
 |
| Discussing and Assigning Bugs in-world |
Last wonderland Wednesday session was devoted to discuss what was going to be fixed and added in the preview, and this Wednesday (July the 13th), we have organised a Code Review session after the normal Wednesday session.
I think a code review is a great way to learn, and it will definitely be very helpful for me, as I am not very familiar with the codebase. Please feel free to join us if you are interested in Wonderland development.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Wonderland Wednesday -- Subsnapshot importer
We've been working on a new Open Wonderland module for exporting and importing parts of a world for the last couple of months. The idea is that when you have a world laid out, you might want to export bits and pieces, or even the whole space, to rebuild it at a later stage or in a different server, or simply as a backup of all your hard work.
Exporting is done by just right clicking in a model or container and choosing Export.
Importing is done by just dragging and dropping the exported file onto the Wonderland client. Easy peasy!
A couple of shots from today's session, in wich we are exporting and importing a bunch of the big fellas.
The module is taking this long to be developed because we are writing all the code as a group, and we only meet about 1 hour a week, so things are moving slowly.
As a result, we are all learning a big deal from each other, especially from Jon, but all of us have worked on parts of the module, which is really cool.
We are even using JUnit to test bits and pieces of the code. The codebase was not written with automated testing in mind, but we are doing all we can to move towards that direction, even if it's just in small doses, and the results are great so far, cause although we are quite far from being able to TDD or test-first even, testing after writing is saving us a lot of time in deploys and server restarts.
Better quality pictures can be found on facebook.
These sessions happen most Wednesdays at 1p.m EST, 6p.m GMT, and everybody is welcome, so hope to see some of you quite soon!
Exporting is done by just right clicking in a model or container and choosing Export.
Importing is done by just dragging and dropping the exported file onto the Wonderland client. Easy peasy!
A couple of shots from today's session, in wich we are exporting and importing a bunch of the big fellas.
 |
| Anyone needs an army? |
 |
| Well behaved big fellas |
 |
| bit to the left... bit to the right... perfect! |
The module is taking this long to be developed because we are writing all the code as a group, and we only meet about 1 hour a week, so things are moving slowly.
As a result, we are all learning a big deal from each other, especially from Jon, but all of us have worked on parts of the module, which is really cool.
We are even using JUnit to test bits and pieces of the code. The codebase was not written with automated testing in mind, but we are doing all we can to move towards that direction, even if it's just in small doses, and the results are great so far, cause although we are quite far from being able to TDD or test-first even, testing after writing is saving us a lot of time in deploys and server restarts.
Also we are not really pairing but 'grouping', and although communication can be harder than in the former, we are having a lot of fun, and that is what really counts!
These are a couple of shots of us working against netbeans and also the space we use, with the wallcard on the far end wall with all the stickies.
 |
| Close up of Netbeans in-world |
 |
| The group writing code, live |
 |
| The WallCard with all the stickies: we are almost there! ...almost! |
These sessions happen most Wednesdays at 1p.m EST, 6p.m GMT, and everybody is welcome, so hope to see some of you quite soon!
Friday, January 14, 2011
Open Wonderland Development Course at P2PU
I am organising an 'Open Wonderland Development course' at P2PU. This is a course that follows a peer to peer approach, it is all community based, and totally free.
About P2PU
The Peer to Peer University is a bit different. All work is done through p2p collaboration. Courses generally run for 6 weeks (next batch starting on the 26th of January 2011). You do not need to be an expert to organise a course, mainly because of the fact that you will be a facilitator, as opposed to a teacher/lecturer. All you need is a collection of open accessible resources to run a course (you can also create your own).
I think this model fits perfectly the software profession, if you compare it with the individualised approaches of any 'normal' university. You will not get a degree after finishing a course, but you might get much more out of it...
About Open Wonderland
Open Wonderland is a toolkit to create virtual worlds. It is 100% Java, it has a relatively small core, but its extensibility through 'wonderland modules' makes of it a platform to do pretty much whatever you want within the 3D environment. Out of the box you can share X11 apps within the world (Open office, Chrome, Eclipse, or freemind work pretty well), communicate through text, voice, or even the telephone, and drag and drop all kinds of digital materials such as pdf files, images, etc.
You can also write your own modules. One of the available modules is an scripting engine based on "JSR 223: Scripting for the Java platform". Using this module you can script objects inside the virtual world using any language supported by the specification (Javascript, PHP, Ruby, and so on).
The project was initially born at Sun Microsystems in 2007, but support from Sun/Oracle stopped earlier last year(2010). It was an open source project from inception and although most people envisioned its death after Oracle laid off the team, it has been quite a different story since then. The community has taken control of the project through the creation of the Open Wonderland Foundation (non-profit), and all kinds of meetings inworld have been happening ever since. All Wednesdays at 1pm (EST) there are development meetings in which the community share an instance of Netbeans and hack on code as a group (every avatar can take control of the instance and start driving).
I do have to say that things are going a lot slower, no doubt of that, but there are more users now than ever before, and development continues at a steady pace.
Motivation
So, why am I doing this, what's in it for me? The experience really. I was not part of the initial wonderland team and my association has not been other than as a volunteer in the community for the last few months. I thought this would be a good way to give back to the community.
I am also a researcher in IT in Education, and this is just a way for me to experiment with ideas, mostly taken from Software Craftsmanship.
I see a few different ways that learning can be organised around the wonderland system (apart from development work which will also be covered).
Although it is a fairly big system (with a small core), test automation is almost inexistent. One of my goals would be to start inspecting the system by testing it from within, and see where that leads us. There is a test harness in place, but it hasn't been used much and it would be great to inspect that too.
Another course for experimenting is the building system. Ant scripts exist for the system but dependency management is not explicit. The build is also way too dependent on netbeans.
These are two scenarios that people are quite likely to find in their everyday job. So, what's in it for you? Well, the experience really! :)
Some people might find attractive the fact that some out of the office learning can being organised (to a point) by someone else. I say 'to a point' because, as mentioned earlier, this is a peer to peer experience, I am not an expert, and learning is ultimately the responsibility of the participants themselves.
This is a 'distance learning experience', and I do not expect people meeting face to face, but I do expect meetings avatar to avatar. It is definitely not the same (nowhere near!) but in my opinion is the closest experience to the real thing that I've had so far.
In a nutshell
So, as a summary, if you are interested in learning through technology, be it software development, testing automation, scm, and so on, and you want to do it within an existing system, and more importantly, in a collaboratively, community-based way, please have a look at the course.
Link to the course: http://www.p2pu.org/general/open-wonderland-development-java
Dates: starting on January the 26th (2011)
Pre-requisites: Please read through the sign-up task (main page of the course) before applying.
About P2PU
The Peer to Peer University is a bit different. All work is done through p2p collaboration. Courses generally run for 6 weeks (next batch starting on the 26th of January 2011). You do not need to be an expert to organise a course, mainly because of the fact that you will be a facilitator, as opposed to a teacher/lecturer. All you need is a collection of open accessible resources to run a course (you can also create your own).
I think this model fits perfectly the software profession, if you compare it with the individualised approaches of any 'normal' university. You will not get a degree after finishing a course, but you might get much more out of it...
About Open Wonderland
Open Wonderland is a toolkit to create virtual worlds. It is 100% Java, it has a relatively small core, but its extensibility through 'wonderland modules' makes of it a platform to do pretty much whatever you want within the 3D environment. Out of the box you can share X11 apps within the world (Open office, Chrome, Eclipse, or freemind work pretty well), communicate through text, voice, or even the telephone, and drag and drop all kinds of digital materials such as pdf files, images, etc.
You can also write your own modules. One of the available modules is an scripting engine based on "JSR 223: Scripting for the Java platform". Using this module you can script objects inside the virtual world using any language supported by the specification (Javascript, PHP, Ruby, and so on).
The project was initially born at Sun Microsystems in 2007, but support from Sun/Oracle stopped earlier last year(2010). It was an open source project from inception and although most people envisioned its death after Oracle laid off the team, it has been quite a different story since then. The community has taken control of the project through the creation of the Open Wonderland Foundation (non-profit), and all kinds of meetings inworld have been happening ever since. All Wednesdays at 1pm (EST) there are development meetings in which the community share an instance of Netbeans and hack on code as a group (every avatar can take control of the instance and start driving).
I do have to say that things are going a lot slower, no doubt of that, but there are more users now than ever before, and development continues at a steady pace.
Motivation
So, why am I doing this, what's in it for me? The experience really. I was not part of the initial wonderland team and my association has not been other than as a volunteer in the community for the last few months. I thought this would be a good way to give back to the community.
I am also a researcher in IT in Education, and this is just a way for me to experiment with ideas, mostly taken from Software Craftsmanship.
I see a few different ways that learning can be organised around the wonderland system (apart from development work which will also be covered).
Although it is a fairly big system (with a small core), test automation is almost inexistent. One of my goals would be to start inspecting the system by testing it from within, and see where that leads us. There is a test harness in place, but it hasn't been used much and it would be great to inspect that too.
Another course for experimenting is the building system. Ant scripts exist for the system but dependency management is not explicit. The build is also way too dependent on netbeans.
These are two scenarios that people are quite likely to find in their everyday job. So, what's in it for you? Well, the experience really! :)
Some people might find attractive the fact that some out of the office learning can being organised (to a point) by someone else. I say 'to a point' because, as mentioned earlier, this is a peer to peer experience, I am not an expert, and learning is ultimately the responsibility of the participants themselves.
This is a 'distance learning experience', and I do not expect people meeting face to face, but I do expect meetings avatar to avatar. It is definitely not the same (nowhere near!) but in my opinion is the closest experience to the real thing that I've had so far.
In a nutshell
So, as a summary, if you are interested in learning through technology, be it software development, testing automation, scm, and so on, and you want to do it within an existing system, and more importantly, in a collaboratively, community-based way, please have a look at the course.
Link to the course: http://www.p2pu.org/general/open-wonderland-development-java
Dates: starting on January the 26th (2011)
Pre-requisites: Please read through the sign-up task (main page of the course) before applying.
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