Tag Archives: DirectX

Issues with installing SlimDX Mar 2009 (2.0.7.41)

Apparently there’s an issue with Gorgon installing SlimDX.  When the installer runs, it is supposed to detect whether the March 2009 SP1 (v2.0.7.41) SlimDX assemblies are installed.  If they are not, then it will install SlimDX for you.  However, it has come to my attention that the Gorgon install has not been installing SlimDX.

The issue is with the March 2009 SP1 SlimDX end user runtime installer (Gorgon runs this when it installs).  Apparently it’s not working, and even though I’ve tried to download it from the SlimDX site it still refuses to run (for me) and claims that the installer is invalid.

If you’re having issues running Gorgon applications because it can’t find the v2.0.7.41 SlimDX assemblies:
“Could not load file or assembly ‘SlimDX, Version=2.0.7.41, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b1b0c32fd1ffe4f9’ or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.”

Then install the SlimDX March 2009 SP1 Developer SDK from here and all should be well again.

So, here’s some more proof that I’ve been working on the next version of Gorgon:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFO6ZMdV2-A

As per the description on the youtubes:

An example showing the new version of Gorgon.

Currently this is just a simple sprite test using 1024 multi-textured sprites via shaders on Direct3D 11 hardware. It also shows a new feature that’s being planned (but not promising anything) to use the 3D stuff to allow perspective corrected sprites.

This video also shows depth for the sprites by walking a camera into the sprite cloud.

Currently getting about 1200 FPS with this (the selective multi-texturing really slows shit down).

New version of Gorgon – 1.1.4119.34319

Yep, finally.  I’ve rolled up all the updates/fixes that were in the subversion repository and put up a new version of Gorgon.  Version 1.1.4119.34319 is the latest version and you can get it from here.  You can view the change log in this forum post.

Enjoy.

Sun

So, I bet you’ve been wondering what I’ve been up to lately…  You haven’t?   You selfish bastard.

 

Anyhow, I’ve gotten around to playing with this library I wrote for a bit.  I do so little programming on my own time these days and honestly, I never much cared for Gorgon (I felt it could have been better), that I haven’t bothered to try and write anything with it. That my users actually say it’s useful and well written comes as a complete shock to me. Anyway, this last week I mustered up some spare time and I created this abomination:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqPGa6P52LM

It’s not much, but it’s just a little thing I threw together to see if I could get a “bloom” type effect with a star.  I did.  And there it is.  Note how the surface of the star moves around and all that.  Neat hey?  No?  Shut up.

 

I’ve limited it to 60 FPS on purpose, but it is fairly swift.  I think at one point I was getting > 1000 FPS.  However, my vidja card is quite beefy, so take that with a grain of salt.  So… yeah…. that’s all I have to say.

Enjoy.

New version tiem! Gorgon v1.1.3436.39405

sitelogoYes, I know I spelled “time” wrong.  Yes, it’s on purpose.

I’ve uploaded  a new version of Gorgon today.  That puts the current release at version 1.1.3436.39405.  You can read what’s changed by heading on over to the forum and reading this announcment.  After you’ve become completely brainwashed by reading that you can download it.

Clearly I’m still working on Gorgon.  I probably will be until the day I expire, which given my healthy intake of McDonald’s, should be any day now.  If someone wants to lend a hand, contact me via the forums.

Edit – May 29/2009

Because I’m very dumb, I released Gorgon with a nasty bug in the Batch sprite object.  When you use the batch sprite it will complain that it can’t find the vertex declaration for PositionNormalDiffuseTexture1 or some such nonsense.  This of course just totally breaks the Batch sprite.  It’s been fixed and the new version (v1.1.3436.39405) is uploaded.

Sorry about that folks, sometimes Tape_Worm is stupid like ox.

MOAR!!! NAO!!!

sitelogoAhoy hoy.

I’ve actually been working on Gorgon off and on (mostly off) throughout the last 2 weeks and I’ve sent a few new changes to the svn repository:

  • Modified the bump in the night sample (-again-) to allow better results when rendering specular maps and also to update a stupid mistake that I made.  That is, I added unicode symbols directly into the source code instead of using their respective codes.  While this hasn’t given me trouble yet, there’s always that possibility.
  • Modified the TextSprite object to fix an issue where the MeasureText function was not calculating the correct height for a block of text.  Also fixed an issue where the alignment settings would sometimes place the text in between pixels and cause the text to look jagged and unreadable.
  • Removed Mount()/Unmount() from the public interface of the FileSystem object.  These functions didn’t really serve any purpose and just made more work for the user.  Internally Mount() is still available as a protected method for plug-ins so that the file system index can be built after a root is assigned.  Sorry if this breaks anything.
  • Added support for MRT (multiple render targets)!  Finally!  This allows a pixel shader to output to multiple targets at the same time and should help out in performance situations where multiple passes are being used to achieve the same thing.  To manipulate the additional render targets you can call Gorgon.SetAdditionalRenderTarget to add/update/remove a render target or Gorgon.GetAdditonalRenderTarget to return one.  The previous property: CurrentRenderTarget is still in place and uses the SetAdditionalRenderTarget internally and is available for use if you’re only looking to switch the primary target.
  • Font objects can now load external TTF files.   While you could always do this by hand by using PrivateFontCollection and then creating a Gorgon Font object from the resulting GDI+ font, it was a pain the ass.  This new functionality will allow the reading of TTF fonts from various sources such as:  A TTF file on the disk, an embedded resource, from a stream, or from a Gorgon file system.  To load a font you just call: Font.From* (were * = Resource, File, FileSystem, or Stream) and it’ll import the font.  For luddites:  You can still create fonts directly from GDI+ font objects if you wish.
  • And finally, the one that caused the most cursing:  GorgonZipFileSystem.dll.  What’s that?  It’s a file system that allows you to manipulate zip files (you know, the files that Winzip generates).  Now using this plug-in the file system editor can open/create/update your zip files.  Or you can forego the file system editor completely and just use winzip.  There are some caveats however:  You cannot use a password, you cannot use encryption and the file format must be the legacy zip file format (Zip 2.0).  But yeah, awesome.

So there you have it.  Hopefully the zip file support will be a plus.  I have no idea when a packaged release will be available, but when it is I’ll make sure to announce it.

Oh boy!

sitelogoI’ve had a couple new people join the forums lately, I’m so pleased.  For a while I started to think that all life in the world outside had died off and was replaced with spam bots.

One of our new members is Gourky and he’s writing a  CNC (Computer Numerical Control) CAD program called GGCad that uses Gorgon.  This is awesome because when I designed Gorgon one of my goals was to make it useful outside of the gaming field and now it’s actually being used for such a purpose.  Yay.  Gourky was also kind enough to give out the source code to a control he’s built to scroll a Gorgon render window.  How awesome is that?

I’ve added a screenshot of ggcad to the user screenshots section.

In other news, I’m still terribly busy with real life shit.  But I’ve also started work on another project (although with the limited time I have it’s going to be a very very very very very long time before it even sees the light of day, hell DirectX 15 might be out before I release it) which uses DirectX 10.