[DEVELOPMENT: Archetype Engine]
Did quite a bit of work to give Archetype some camera action. It's a relatively simple camera, using an eye/center scheme ( thank you gluLookAt ). This allows me to move my eye (the camera itself) and it's point of focus (center) independently. There are also a couple of nice methods. One called "pan" which rotates the center coordinates around the eye, and the other is called "orbit" which rotates the eye around the center. Rotations are all handled by quaternion calculations, so there shouldn't be any abnormal rotation artifacts occurring.
Of course, the camera's all well and good, but without anything to see, there's no point to it. I'm close to solving that issue. Firstly, I created a class called iRenderable which, serves as an interface class for all world objects. All it does is store children (for complex constructs... like models), return bounding boxes, and has a couple of empty methods called render and postRender, which are intended to be overridden. There is also a method called renderChildren which calls the render->renderChildren->postRender pipe on all children within an iRenderable object. I dear suggest that, in effect, I've created a scenegraph node structure... and that's where I plan on continuing next... building a scenegraph-esk structure. Ok, maybe not "esk"; maybe an actual scenegraph structure. Once complete, I should be able to write the first demo for the "engine"... exciting!
Of course, if anyone is at all interested in taking a look at the progress, feel free to grab a copy of the repository here at gitorious! NOTE: All the latest updates are in the development branch.
[PERSONAL DREK]
I just got my hands on Game Programming Gems 3 the other day!!! Up until about a year ago, I hadn't even realized they continued the series past the second book, let alone expanded into other gem series, such as GPU Programming and AI Programming. I felt like such a dumb-ass when I learned I fell behind with the series by SIX books! I had a little extra cash the other week (and, technically, that's not true, I just couldn't help myself), so I bought GPG3. I suppose the smart thing would have been to purchase GPG8, but I have a thing about purchasing sequential items in order. I know it's probably silly, but still, I have trouble bringing myself to buy things out of order.
That said, however, I should, hopefully, be starting a new full-time job soon! With the money I'm making there, after I get some personal things settled (broken washer/dryer, fix up car, buy a Droid ... mmmmm... drooooiid... *cough*, and so on) I will be able to continue collecting the gem books and hopefully gain some wisdom that will help me take my engine and games just that once step further
