Engine Update and the future...

Yesterday I did some work on the engine and added some functionality.

The first one is 'BlockingVolumes' it's now possible to add blocking volumes to the scene, this can be used to efficiently create collisions for high poly scenery where trianglemesh collision might wreck the performance.

Finally added the character controller from BEPU Physics library. Out of the box it can: Walk, turn (look), jump, step (onto stairs and other objects) much like you would expect :P Luckily a camera toggle type was already implemented, so it's now possible to toggle between play mode (= camera fixed to player view) and edit mode (camera in free roam) very easily.

I did some work with custom Sunburn Lights. First off, a candle light. So far it's a fairly basis class that will simulate a lit candle. I hope to include this in a video tomorrow.

On Tuesday, my school will kick-off a new project. We might be required to use Unity instead of XNA. This would pretty much ruin a lot of my plans (to use this engine for my school projects) While Unity is really not a bad tool, I do prefer to stay with XNA. If I do not get permission to use XNA, that does not mean the end of the engine development. However, I will have to cut down on the time I can spend developing it. I just hope they will allows use to keep using XNA (That's what they've been teaching us the last couple of months anyway) If they don't, I'll have to rethink my plans.

On a brighter note, there are some cool ideas to be announced in the near future... It involves Synapse Gaming (creators of Sunburn) and should really help XNA developers with their awesome ideas. I'm not sure how much I can say about it, as it's still only a concept. Hopefully I can give you more information, soon ;)