[ANN] Ca3D-Engine with Lua-based map scripting support

[Carsten Fuchs <CarstenFuchs@...>]

Dear folks,

with this mail comes a one-time announcement about the latest release of the Ca3D-Engine, which 
employs Lua for all it's scripting purposes, especially 2D and 3D GUI definitions and map scripting.
Thought you might be interested.  :-)

Thousand thanks to the Lua developers and all the great people using and supporting it!

Best regards,
Carsten



========================================================================
Ca3D-Engine: New release available!            http://www.Ca3D-Engine.de
March 2008                                      CarstenFuchs@T-Online.de
========================================================================

  Dear Sirs,

  a new version of the Ca3D-Engine has just been released at the project
  website at http://www.Ca3D-Engine.de. The Ca3D-Engine is a modern game
  engine and game development kit with 3D real-time graphics and multi-
  player network support for Windows and Linux.

  The latest enhancements include support for map scripting (based on
  the Lua programming language), new clipping and collision detection
  code, many enhancements to the Ca3DE World Editor "CaWE", much
  improved in-game console handling and configuration, and many other
  enhancements.

  Full details about the new release are available at
  http://www.ca3d-engine.de/news.php


  Contents of this letter:

  1. What is the Ca3D-Engine?  (A brief introduction.)
  2. New features in this release
  3. Further information and contact



========================================================================
1. What is the Ca3D-Engine?
========================================================================

  Ca3DE is an all-purpose, modern 3D graphics engine and game
  development kit.

  It can be used to create a variety of 3D applications, including
  games, simulations, and training and architectural software. The
  development kit is freely available, and the DeathMatch MOD code is
  open-source.

  Its main features include

    + high-quality, real-time 3D graphics,
    + a very powerful and flexible material system,
    + cross-platform and cross-compiler portability,
    + multi-player network support,
    + physically correct lighting (radiosity based),
    + dynamic per-pixel lighting and shadows,
    + 3D sound effects, skeleton based model rendering,
    + very large terrain rendering,
    + scripting-language support,
    + freely available developer kit and MOD source code,
    + and easy extensibility by code and scripts.

  For a more detailed feature list please refer to
  http://www.ca3d-engine.de/c_Features.php



========================================================================
2. New features in this release
========================================================================

  Introduction of map scripting: Ca3DE used the Lua programming language
  for its scripting support before (e.g. as definition language of its
  2D and 3D (world/entity) GUIs, in the console interpreter, etc.), now
  Lua is also employed for defining the entity classes of a game and
  especially for scripting the entities that exist in the game maps. The
  connection to the C++ code is well defined and easy to extend, so that
  game developers and mappers have easy-to-use and powerful options
  available to customize their maps.

  Revision of the clipping and collision detection code: While in
  earlier versions of Ca3DE the collision detection computations were
  burdened on the same code that actually manages the graphics and
  rendering of a world, the two concepts have now been cleanly
  separated: Clipping and collision detection have their own world
  representation that can respond to its task in a lot more suitable
  manner than the graphics code. This also facilitates the
  implementation of trigger entities, doors, lifts, and similar objects,
  and thus works hand-in-hand with the new map scripting support.

  The Ca3DE World Editor "CaWE" has undergone many enhancements, and is
  now easier to use than ever before: it works out-of-the-box now (no
  complicated manual setup required any more), the surface editing code
  has been entirely rewritten, the documentation has much been enhanced
  (including new flash tutorials for beginners!), Bezier patches can be
  edited more easily, any many other improvements.

  Other improvements include the in-game command console, support for
  the new MS Visual C++ 9 (2008) compiler, C++ code design enhancements
  and smoother animation of NPC game entities.



========================================================================
3. Further information and contact
========================================================================

  For further and more detailed information about the Ca3D-Engine,
  please visit the official website at

    http://www.ca3d-engine.de

  The website has a detailed feature list, many high-res screen-shots
  and of course a download page where the latest demo and game
  development kit are available.

  If you have questions, problems or comments, you're heartily invited
  to join the Ca3DE discussion forums or the IRC channel, see
  http://www.ca3d-engine.de/forum/ for the details.

  You can also contact the author of Ca3DE directly by sending email to
  Carsten Fuchs at

  CarstenFuchs@T-Online.de