Web Server active

Today I got a few hours to work on a couple of fun things. First up, I continued to get SmartFox server set up and had some success in making my desktop machine run as a web server. The purpose of this was to eliminate an unknown and to allow beta testers to run the tile engine application client from my web server. This was a nice move forwards since I've never set something up like this before (I had to jump through hoops with router settings dyndns setting etc), but it's all working well and I got to use my amazing 'enter room' application to verify it working over the Internet and some friends came and entered the room lol. As you can imagine this wasn't very interactive but It didn't matter, it proved that SmartFox Server was handling the connections as it should.

Next up, relating more to the tile engine, I checked out the latest version of PaperVision. I'm guessing that anyone reading this now may be wondering why I'm looking at PaperVision but I'm still exploring the possibilities of various technologies in which to base the final tile engine. I have dabbled in PaperVision before but only a simple tutorial but I have written a simple 3D engine before. Although it was limited it did apply a transformation matrix to handle the vector data and camera views, it had simple back face culling and a very simple demo can be found here.

I will probably spend tomorrow evening attempting to export some simple COLLADA data from Blender. Ideally, I hope to get some sort of simple grid array of planes rendered and if I can add a simple texture then I'll be more than happy and if I can add some movement then that would be even better. I'll keep you posted.

Gary Paluk