A new version of Gorgon is now available for download. It contains a few bugfixes, and some enhancements (both of which are in the release notes). You can download it from the Github release page or pull it from nuget.org.
Gorgon v3.1.47.270
Tag Archives: Direct3D
Gorgon v3.1.46.255
A new version of Gorgon is now available for download. It contains a few bugfixes, and some enhancements (both of which are in the release notes). You can download it from the Github release page or pull it from nuget.org.
Gorgon v3.1.45.248
A new version of Gorgon is now available for download. It contains a few bugfixes, and some enhancements (both of which are in the release notes). You can download it from the Github release page or pull it from nuget.org.
Gorgon v3.1.29.243
A new version of Gorgon is now available for download. It contains a few bugfixes (which are in the release notes). You can download it from the Github release page.
A neat new thing is that Gorgon is now available on Nuget.org. You can download Gorgon piecemeal if you only need specific sets of functionality, or, you can retrieve the Gorgon.Editor.API package which retrieves all the other packages. All in all, this should make it easier to keep Gorgon up to date.
Please note that the copy on nuget.org does not contain the Editor. You’ll have to download the Gorgon zip file and extract the Tools directory.
v3.0 Release
So, after about 5 years. Version 3 is done. Well, as done as I’m going to make it. Gorgon is finally released at version 3.0.66.147 and you can download it from the Gorgon GitHub repository on the releases tab.
A lot of work has been done over the last few weeks to finalize this release. Bugs fixed, examples created, documentation updated, etc… One of the new things added was an effect for HDR Bloom (yeah, I know, it can be tacky). And along with this effect, a new example was created to show off a bunch of functionality (including the aforementioned bloom effect) all in one place.
Now, I’m sure there’s still a ton of bugs and I’m aware of some performance issues in particular the editor application and saving packed files. Any issues can be filed on the GitHub repository issues tab.
So what’s next? Well, I’ve spent a massive amount of time on this, especially in the last year and I really need a break. So I’ll be stepping away from this for a few weeks. Of course, if there are any bugs I’ll be sure to deal with them. I’ve been checking the issues tab on the repo for years now, I probably won’t be stopping any time soon.
So yeah, there it is. Download it, give it a spin, and let me know what you find.
Screenshots
Just a quick update to let anyone who’s listening (all 0 of you – and the Russian spambots) know that the screenshot gallery has been updated with new images from v3.
If you’re interested in seeing what Gorgon can do for you, you might want to pop in there and have a gander.
Gorgon v3 – Animation
I got the rework of the animation system for v3 done and up on the git hubs. Naturally, I took this awesome video of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpqGk8ZGoc8
It’s a music video. But not just any music video. A very bad, cheesy 80’s music video (the best kind). Of course, the music is metal \m/ (done, very poorly, by yours truly).
Anyway, that’s all.
Tape_Worm
June 13, 2018
So, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. Mostly because I’ve not been writing much code in the last while and real life has been my focus. Since I’ve been gone, I’ve become a software architect at my job, and that keeps me quite busy.
Font editor
It’s been a very long time since I’ve made an update here. I’ve been working steadily on the font editor module for the Gorgon editor and it’s finally nearing completion (the last 99% of 99% of 99% etc…).
I’m quite proud of this thing. It’s supports a pretty well rounded suite of functionality for designing a bitmap font for use with Gorgon. Besides the usual standard stuff like font outlines, font faces, styles, etc… it also supports glyph brushes, custom glyphs, glyph advancement and offset editing and custom kerning pair tables.
Here’s a few images:
Cameras
In the 2.x version of Gorgon I wanted to add cameras. It was most tedious before when you wanted to translate an entire scene by an arbitrary amount. So when I started this thing, I created an Orthographic camera object. The previous version of Gorgon used an Orthographic camera internally and this was never exposed to the user. But in this case, I exposed the camera so that the user can define their own viewing mechanism.
There’s more info and a video inside…
Clearly I’ve not been posting
But I have been doing stuff.
I’ve been spending my time refactoring and just cleaning up the code in Gorgon. I made the mistake of getting Resharper and it put me on this crusade of cleaning up the code because apparently I’m just awful. Also, I’ve been finishing up the primary graphics API (not the 2D stuff) by adding a bunch of new things to it like geometry shaders, compute shaders, and hull/domain shaders for tesselation (this one is cool, if not a little baffling). I also made the API a little closer to Direct 3D 11 by adding views to resource object types.
More the editor
Here’s a another screenshot of the editor. This time with the Font editor plug-in in action. Note that this is very very very incomplete and may not look like this when everything is said and done.
DEATH TO D3DX!
FINALLY. I’VE FINALLY DONE IT! It took weeks of work, but I managed to exorcise D3DX from Gorgon. Behold my video playing an animated GIF using a 2D texture array:
I’ve provided extensive info after the jump thingy.
Boing!
Well, it’s been a while. I’ve been busy. You’ve been busy.
Anyway, I actually took some time to test out a piece of functionality for the new version of Gorgon. This new version of Gorgon will have a graphics API separate from the 2D renderer (the 2D renderer uses the graphics API however). This is unlike the previous version where the renderer was pretty much all you had access to. I had a user ask me a long time ago if it were possible to access the underlying renderer to render 3D along with the 2D. At first, it did not, but I did hack in a way to access SlimDX directly through a plug-in and it was awful.
So, in this version I decided to give the developer access to the full graphics API under the renderer. This allows the user to switch between 2D graphics and whatever they want. And here’s the results of my intense labour pain:
Yep, it’s a clone of the old Amiga demo “Boing”. As you can see, there are 2D elements (the text and the logo) along with the 3D elements (which were all done manually I might add, Gorgon does NOT have a 3D renderer so don’t get too excited). I’ve decided to include the code as an example program for the new Gorgon.
Rejoice.
Windows 8
So I’m trying out Windows 8 (yes, it’s not released to the public, and yes I have it legally).
Dear God, what a mess this whole Metro/desktop thing is. Someone over at Microsoft must have split personality disorder or something. How in hell did they think that was a good idea??
Anyway, the OS does have some really nice improvements and it’s very responsive (except when it’s not… I get random freezes once in a while, apparently it’s something to do with my Intel SSD). And more importantly, after installing VS2010, and the June 2010 DirectX SDK, the new (and presumably old since I haven’t tried it yet) Gorgon works fine. What I knew, and was hoping I was wrong, is that they took out the D3DX library for the new DirectX, and as such things broke horribly under Gorgon because SharpDX uses the D3DX libraries to load/save textures. After installing the June 2010 DXSDK, everything worked again, so there’s that.
I really really really don’t like this metro thing. It’s just horrible with a mouse/keyboard and while I was ambivalent towards the Start Menu in previous versions, I really miss that I can’t group my applications (and I have a lot) under folders. This made everything really horrible to organize, especially with how obsessive I am about organization on my machine.
That said, the desktop is real nice. Love the new task manager, love the new copy/delete dialogs. I even like the new look they put in (they got rid of Aero, or probably more likely, the glass effect).
Sadly, I now have to figure out how in hell I’m going to make Gorgon work without relying on D3DX (yes, I know, I could keep with developing for the June 2010 SDK, but at some point you know they’re going to drop that). Apparently I can use WIC (Windows Imaging Component), but it looks pretty convoluted and I need something that’ll give me AnyCPU support.
All in all, the awfulness of Windows 8 outweighs its benefits in my opinion. Someone really needs to kick Ballmer (I blame him wholeheartedly for this mess) out of that company and install someone with a fucking clue (i.e. we don’t all use/want a tablet, nor do we all want to develop for them).
Anyway, I am not dropping support for Windows 7/Vista from Gorgon. So don’t ask about it.
That’s all for now. Gorgon is still being worked on, a little, here and there. It’ll be ready by 2213.