Also posted on the blog

I've been able to set aside time a bit each day for the XL Engine again, finally, so the tiered release is getting closer again. I'm currently working on merging in and refactoring the geometry rendering for DaggerXL. Once that is complete I should be able to get the first release out.

I've spent a fair amount of time making sure the core engine is architecture is solid and supports things like cross platform support, networking support, core scripting, plugin support and so forth so that we have a solid foundation on which to support all these games.

One of the important core architectural decisions is to support multiple low-level rendering backends. This will allow the engine to be porting to things like mobile devices eventually or other odd platforms. In order to make sure that this works well, I've implemented not only the core OpenGL backend but also the software renderer as well. While it won't be complete or as fast as it will be later, the initial release will have software rendering support. Currently it supports table based fog, directional lighting, high quality perspective correct texture mapping, clipping and culling, zbuffering, 2D blitting with arbitrary scaling and so forth.

Here are a couple of screenshots from a test room (note the Window will say XL Engine, not DagSoft in the release).

Note: in these screenshots the renderer is in 32-bit mode, 8-bit will also be supported.

Screeniees!

I'm interested if it would be possible to create come kind of controls for tablets and port this to Android?

The Emperor will be most pleased.

Sweet! Now the XL Engine can be ported to all sorts of inappropriate devices, just like Doom! Well, Doom will always run on a wider range of things, being designed to run on a 386 with 4 MB and all that.

Those screens look awesome. I think games with low-res textures often do look better in high resolutions with nice, sharp pixels instead of being filtered into a blurry soup.

With these new high resolutions, I'm worried monsters will unfairly do more damage because there are 4x more pixel to hit...

4x more pixels?! Yeah, maybe if we're talking about 640x480. At 1080p, there's over 16x as many pixels. Even more worrisome is that with all that texture filtering, your sharp, jagged pixels will get smoothed out, meaning that your weapons will glide harmlessly off enemies instead of ripping into them like a saw blade. Truly it will be a tough time to be a Daggerfall fan.

Oh the horror we have bestowed upon ourselves!

Hello Lucius,

what about bump mapping (or something approaching) ? I would be a great addition

Lucius,

It is just awesome to be seeing screen shots again!.

I'm glad you are finally having the time to work on these projects again, and hope that means real life is settling down to a more manageable pace.

So the work on the DaggerXL geometry refactor is almost finished. The software renderer is also now fully integrated and selectable.

Here is a screenshot from Privateer's Hold using the software renderer (32-bit) - no HUD (click to see full size):



Proper lighting is still missing but things like the fogging into darkness are clearly visible. There are also issues with some textures that are being ironed out. No flats/sprites are displayed. Anyway, everything else will be coming back online soon.