I've been reading your journal for a few days now and I have read all of your articles on DevMaster. I find your work very interesting. I've been learning Opengl for a few months now and starting to learn quite a bit just have yet to really implement a game or working demo of any sort, too busy with my current job and commuting from and to work. I can't wait to hear more about your current project. So far I've got a working camera class and heightmap but nothing too interesting. I'm actually looking into buying some books in order to refresh my memory on some of the math I need help with. Well anyhow good luck, and maybe if you ever need a helping hand I'd gladly join your team once I learn some more of the things I'm currently lacking in. My job consists of writing Delphi 2005 (which I learned for the job) and using MS SQL API. I know many other languages but thats what I'm currently using other then C++ for my side project at home when I have the time.

Thanks :)
You might want to gate an OpenGL related book, but until then you can just google for the OpenGL Red Book, it has a lot of useful things, and it is free for download (an older version, but good nevertheless).
There is also a book called something like Game programming with OpenGL, written by one of the gamedev.net owners. I didn't read the book, but I heard is good.

And when you'll learn more about it, and have more time, let me know if you want to contribute at this project.

Thanks :)
You might want to gate an OpenGL related book, but until then you can just google for the OpenGL Red Book, it has a lot of useful things, and it is free for download (an older version, but good nevertheless).
There is also a book called something like Game programming with OpenGL, written by one of the gamedev.net owners. I didn't read the book, but I heard is good.

And when you'll learn more about it, and have more time, let me know if you want to contribute at this project.

I actually already own the RedBook I read most of it online and now have been reading the book. Thanks for the reply and I will also check out the other book I think I've seen it. The other book I was looking into buying was a Essential Mathematics for Games and Interactive Applications, First Edition : A Programmer's Guide (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive 3D Technology). I was at work earlier not really the job I want but it helps pay the bills heh and I can't say I like Delphi too much would rather work with C++ or C. Oh and I have also worked on the open source project called PvPGN (Player vs Player Gaming Network) written from the old BNETD server. I wrote a few simple functions to enhance features nothing too major, mainly formatted hex dumps for debugging and some user functions to show new mail when logging in and a way to search for games by gametype and difficulty (diablo 1,2, and Lord of Destruction Expansion Pack).

But anyways nice to hear from you.

By the way I just thought this was interesting I am half Romanian and I also think I read something about you living in Pennsylvania. Not sure if it was you or someone else, but I moved to Chicago from Pennsylvania about 6 months ago after growing up in a small town a city is a lot different. :)

Yes, I live in PA now. For me it was just the opposite: Moving from the biggest city in Romania to a relatively small town.
Right now I live in the country, sort of (a few KM away from Scranton). But I like the country side, much more quiet, nice nature, the air is slightly more cleaner..

Hi Raduprv, great journal, been reading it for a while now, an operational indie MMOG makes for some pretty interesting reading.

Re your other project, you're probably already aware of this, if not, you might find it interesting. "Project Xenocide" - basically appears to be an open-source game project based on the X-COM games (the first one, I think). I don't know that much about the project or the folks behind it, just stumbled across the site a while back, been throwing the odd glance over it since. Seems to be fairly organised, number of folks involved in it, I think they use Ogre for rendering, that's about all I know. Just thought you might be interested - might be some folks to compare notes with if nothing else. Site is here; http://www.projectxenocide.com/index.html

Thanks :)

Yes, I heard about that project and took a look at it.
It is interesting, but it's pretty much a recreation of UFO with just different name to avoid conflicts with trademarks and stuff.
What I want to do is more than just a recreation, I want to make a pretty different game (more complex base management), but heavely inspired by the XCom games.

I'm curious how did you make the map for the current project? Was it simply just a rolled out globe image or was it first rendered with a directional light around a sphere and then rolled out in order to make a simulation of a moving/rotating earth around the sun? With accurate month/day/year,time lighting?

Or is that what you plan to do? I think that would add to the effect, but maybe thats just me heh. Also can't wait to hear more in your new post.

The earth map is taking from Nasa, and the night map is generated dynamically. I found the code on the net, I couldn't have done it by myself.
If you are interested in that code and it's source, you can get it from here: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cgi-bin/uncgi/Earth/action?opt=-p (I mean from that site, it is somewhere in the FAQ section).
Of course, I had to modify it to fit my needs, but it only took a few hours.

Ok so it is dynamic thats what I was wondering, I was getting a little elaborate but same idea. Too realistic and you are spending too much time coding one part :). Just downloaded the source to check it out.

The only problem I had is that the boundry between day and night is sharp (day or night). I did some tricky stuff and now I have a nice transition, but when the sun is in the southern hemisphere, sometimes there are some stupid looking empty lines. I sort of know what causes them, but I found it very hard to remove them. I could just interpolate the image and get rid of them, if I find no other solution.

Are you talking about towards antarctica? Because I noticed in the one screenshot the shading cuts off from the smooth transition to just a day/night line then back to smooth transitions again...it also has a dark line there as well that I noticed. But interpolation sounds like an easy fix, probably not the best. And I actually think yours looks better then the one on that site you showed me. But the empty lines are in the shadow is what your saying? Maybe it could be just some algorithm tweeking. Where it might not be shading correctly due to incorrect calculations near the bottom edge of the earth. It does this in the northern hemisphere as well or just the southern?

The north/south pole blending cut off thing is due to the fact that my algorithm has trouble smoothing those areas.
The way it works is like this: It looks for the edge between day and night (say, day is 255, night is 0) then draws a 64 pixels line of intermediary values between night and day.
That code, however, is VERY ugly and hacky.
If you are interested in either fixing that code or providing a better one, please let me know.

Fancy that.