News
August,
28, 2009
July,
2, 2009
May,
20, 2009
April,
26, 2009
April,
06, 2008
February,
23, 2008
February,
22, 2008
- Released a proof-of-concept test for "partial hulls", a
way to optimize the SAT test between convex objects. See
the blog for more info.
February,
16, 2008
February,
13, 2008
- Starting a blog.
We'll see how long this survives.
February,
12, 2008
- After many years I finally
moved my website from the lousy Altern.org to a
professional web hosting company. If you wonder why I
haven't updated this page for so long, here's the answer:
Altern sucks.
- So anyway, the news: as
briefly outlined below, I left Switzerland some months
ago, and moved to Barcelona (Spain). I now work for
GRIN. That's right: I'm french, moving
from Switzerland to Spain, to work for a swedish company.
I guess I'm simply european.
- Nvidia acquired Ageia, woah!
A part of me would have been proud working for Nvidia. A
part of me is happy to have missed this. If the intent is
to port my convex-vs-mesh contact generation code to
CUDA, uh, have fun. I'm very curious to see how well this
would work.
- Adam
got engaged! This is so Twilight Zone.
Congratulations, man!
- Uploaded a sweep-and-prune article I wrote last year.
July,
11, 2007
- It is now official: I will be
leaving my job (and Switzerland) at the end of september.
So it has been 4 years here.
- You play Tomb Raider too much
when... you start adding dual guns to your own project :)
- I hate when people call me
the "collision guy". Hello, I wrote dozens of
software rasterizers in assembly and spent years doing
graphics before Opcode / Novodex. I'm a graphics guy,
originally. And those days I'm a gameplay guy, a special
effect guy, an AI guy, a Win32 GUI guy, anything but a
"collision guy". Get a clue!
June,
25, 2007
June,
20, 2007
- Released some code for a
"pair manager" data structure. Old stuff
but a few people asked me about it, so here it is.
- Also added some notes about pair management in an incremental
version of the sweep-and-prune algo.
- What's the difference between
the "new" "MegaTexture" from ID and
the old chunk-LOD code from Thatcher Ulrich? He already
had a 32000*32000 texture in that demo, back in 2002.
Don't believe the hype.
May,
29, 2007
May,
07, 2007
March,
22, 2007
March,
16, 2007
- Released a first version for
a CD Test Framework. So far it's just a demo or sample
for Opcode 1.3.
March,
09, 2007
- I just heard about
Tuo. There is no word for this. Rest in peace.
- I found super old pics on some backup CDs. Since they were
relevant, I added them to the corresponding pages.
- I added a new screenshot for "Konoko Payne".
- Updated the radix sort page.
New version available here.
February,
22, 2007
- Minor website checkup.
Cleaned some pages a bit, fixed a few links, etc.
November,
10, 2006
April, 06, 2006
February,
06, 2006
January, 06,
2006
July, 29, 2005
June, 06, 2005
September, 24,
2004
August, 15, 2004
- My old e-mail account on
CoderCorner is full of spam. I haven't read it in months.
Please use my new e-mail.
August, 09, 2004
- We just released the NovodeX SDK 2.1.1 ! It's now free for non-commercial
use. Make sure you also try John Ratcliff's Rocket
!
March, 29, 2004
- I'm back from the GDC! It was very
nice, I met a lot of cool people here. Thanks everyone!
- I have a small article in
GPG4,
co-written with Adam.
March, 10, 2004
- I'll be in the US from tomorrow until
the end of the month in San
Jose for the GDC. See you
there !
March, 9, 2004
- Here's a small "work in
progress" version of "Konoko Payne"
:
http://www.codercorner.com/KonokoPayne_WIP_03_2004.rar. You'd better run it on a fast PC. If you
get some troubles with the sound, try to edit the INI
file and switch to the DX9 renderer (it fixed it on my
GF2 MX).
- Please stop asking about Flexporter
and Max 6 !!! I obviously don't have Max 6, else
Flexporter would have been updated already.
February, 18,
2004
- Here! Here! We just released our
new SDK
! There are a lot of cool physics demos included !
February, 17,
2004
- No time for website updates, yet a lot
of new things....
- My small Oni remake is better than
ever. I extracted all the levels with correct geometry /
UVs / lighting / etc. I rewrote my character controller
so that it's more robust. I improved the motion graph so
that it supports more Konoko motions. I added sound and
music support. Etc, etc. It starts really looking
like Oni. I liked how Flexine was able to swallow all
that stuff. There are some design flaws in the engine but
otherwise I'm pretty happy with it. By the way, Project
Line Counter says it's now about 445.000 lines of code
(without including Flexporter and various minor tools). I
would never have expected that when I started it as a
hobby / home project.
- I started my own small physics editor,
codenamed "Eve" because of an obvious lack of
imagination on New Year's Eve. So far I mainly
implemented a small GUI library with all the standard
elements. I also have those cute rollup windows like in
3DS Max, but it's not fully finished. I've been
suspecting this for a long time, but now I can confirm it
: GUI programming is pretty boring.
- We're about to release the new NovodeX
SDK. I've been working on it since I'm here (about 6
months), and we made huge improvements everywhere. I
spent a while optimizing the whole thing, and it's now a
bloody fast linear solver. Stacks of hundreds of boxes
are a piece of cake to handle now ! Some people have
reported it was faster than Havok 2, but don't quote me
on that. As far as I'm concerned I think we only removed
the fat. We didn't start really optimizing it :) I
also have a lot of ideas to make it a whole lot better.
Stay tuned ! We already started a PS2 port, by the way.
- That skiing week in Le Corbier
(France) was nice, yes, thanks.
- I attended a nice presentation by
Marie-Paule Cani at the ETHZ, for their "Graphics
Lunch". I couldn't agree more with the methodology
she exposed, since as far as I can see it's nothing more
than what demomakers have been doing for ages, and what I
usually call "artistic coding". If the theory
doesn't work, just bypass it in practice and invent
something clever that works. - a.k.a. "japanese way
of life" (from our first Atari demo in 1992), a.k.a
"imagination is more important than knowledge"
(from that famous guy you probably know about). This is
old news really, Nick / TCB showed us the way eons ago,
and there's no way I can forget this...
January, 22,
2004
September, 7,
2003
- Not much time these days...........
- I didn't find anything in Norway or
Iceland, so I moved to Switzerland instead ! One day I'd
like to try Bergen (Norway) or Reykjavik. I'm currently
working for NovodeX, in Zürich. Any French people out there ? See you at
the Nelson !
- Don't tell me you missed Skin live at
the Rohstofflager
?! ... (Hi Dina !) It was just amazing.
June, 10, 2003
- Sometimes I feel like moving to Norway
or Iceland. Any interesting and interested company out
there ?
June, 3, 2003
- OPCODE 1.3 has
been fixed and re-uploaded.
- A small bug has been fixed in Flexporter 1.17
as well (current version is 1.17b)
- In case you're wondering why I still
haven't answered your particular mail...... In an old
Outlook directory of an old machine, I still have about
1000 (yes, one thousand) late, unanswered mails.
And that's the "TODO" directory, where
"important" mails are stored. So, no, I can't
teach you how to create a MAX exporter from scratch, I
can't add all those features to Flexporter, I
can't teach you how to do a 3D engine either, I can't
teach you the basics of rigid body simulation, I can't
give away for free the whole Flexine source code,
I can't import ONI character motions in 3DS MAX so that
you can edit them with Character Studio, and please, use
Google.
June, 2, 2003
- Hmmm, I found a big bug in OPCODE
1.3.... Sigh. I'll upload the file again as soon as it's
fixed. Sorry.
June, 1, 2003
May, 30, 2003
- Flexporter 1.17
has been released. The Cube tutorial has been included in
the default zip, and removed from the site.
May, 18, 2003
April, 13, 2003
- Uploaded a little Flexporter tutorial. It speaks about various things from
smoothing groups to consolidation, using a simple cube as
an example.
March, 31, 2003
- Uploaded a little test for
cube-vs-mesh contacts.
March, 19, 2003
- Added a new page for terrain stuff.
After some years I'm finally back to terrains, it seems.
Latest implementation uses DX9, vertex / pixel shaders,
and light scattering. Looks cute.
March, 9, 2003
- Added some Flexine
snapshots, showing some portals and chunk-LOD terrains
I've been recently integrating in the engine. It will be
interesting to make the physics engine work with
chunk-LODed terrains.
February, 9,
2003
January, 31,
2003
January, 10,
2003
January, 8, 2003
January, 1, 2003
- Updated the rigid body page
with a little demo for you
to test mesh-mesh rigid body simulation.
- Happy new year !
December, 30,
2002
December, 17,
2002
- Updated the rigid body page
with new snapshots ! I now directly support arbitrary
meshes in my rigid body simulatior !
December, 5,
2002
December, 2,
2002
- Uploaded the Opcode page with a new
link to the Linux version. An Opcode demo has also been
included in The Demo Effects Collection, by W.P. van
Paassen.
November, 7,
2002
- Uploaded a little demo featuring
Konoko, some
boxes, and some other little things.
October, 19,
2002
October, 15,
2002
October, 11,
2002
October, 10,
2002
- Flexporter 1.15
has been released ! It contains an experimental MAX5
version, the updated ZCB importer (which is now part of
the Flexporter SDK), a new format plug-in for NovodeX,
and a lot of new features.
- Uploaded the MAX scenes for the NovodeX joint
tutorial.
October, 8, 2002
- Added some entries with various things
I've been doing recently. (check them here)
October, 4, 2002
September, 5,
2002
- Even more physics ! Wall00, Wall01, Wall02. This
version runs smoothly.
- Bigger and better : Wall03, Wall04. This
version is, of course, slower ! But looks very cool.
September, 2,
2002
- More physics ! I'm currently using
some scenes from Havok Xtra
to test my own physics code. I can tell you, it's highly
motivating when it looks so sharp. Totally
mesmerizing in motion.... Maybe I'll put a demo online
soon, but while I'm at it I'd love to include Konoko, and
let her savagely kick those crates. I want the same as in
the Havok
warehouse
animation.
September, 1,
2002
August, 18, 2002
- I finally wrote a little user manual
for OPCODE. Get it
there !
August, 8, 2002
August, 1, 2002
- Finally released OPCODE 1.2
almost one year after version 1.1. You can thank Erwin de
Vries. And guess what ? Version 1.3 has already started,
sigh....
- But I need to release Flexporter 1.15
before that. (yep, 1.14 was an internal release for a
bunch of NVIDIA guys)
- I love to see people using OPCODE for robotics and motion planning courses. That motivates me.
- Updated the ray-AABB code
with the SAT-based versions used in OPCODE 1.2
- Updated the RAPID Hack
article.
July, 31, 2002
- Posted a little physics demo.
This is the test I built before implementing some physics
code for Elsewhere Entertainment. You'd better have a
fast machine to see that one (not really optimized).
Highly influenced by Baraff's SIGGRAPH Course Notes...
- I also implemented two MAX plugs for
Elsewhere : a prelighter and a normal map generator.
July, 30, 2002
- Posted some new snapshots on
the Flexine page (actually old snapshots but I like
them). This engine starts beeing somewhat pleasant to
work with. At last...
July, 13, 2002
Sometimes a Google search
is fruitful ! Notable hits :
June, 14, 2002
- Flexporter has
been used to produce the NVB format in
NVIDIA's Cg ! Cool or what ?
- Sorry for the lack of updates and the
mails that didn't get any answers.... too many of them...
March, 29, 2002
- (Updating that page from a friend's
place) I'm having some problems with my Internet
access, and I've been unable to read my mails for more
than a week. Sorry....
February, 10,
2002
- Uploaded some old box-pruning code. I need to make it available to feed a
thread on comp.graphics.algorithms !
- In case you missed it, that
purple-mauve background image you've been lookin'at for
years is a tribute to
Q-Collide
indeed.... Disappointed ?
January, 26,
2002
- Almost one year later I finally
uploaded the little doc I once
wrote for Opcode... I
never finished it, since the efficient implementation
presented in Game Programming Gems 2 made it quite
pointless. Anyway here it is in its current (and probably
final) form, at least it can be interesting to understand
the story behind Opcode.
- Flexporter 1.13b now contains a special version to support
Character Studio 3.2.
January, 21,
2002
January, 20,
2002
- New Flexporter
release (version 1.13)
- I don't quite believe it but there was
a bug in my radix sort. In
very particular cases the last sorting pass was skipped
for floating-point values, and of course it's bad since
for floats you still have to reverse the current list
order when all values are negative (contrary to what
happens with ints, where there's nothing to do). Anyway
it's fixed now, but I feel cheap. Gloomy sunday, she
said.
January, 13,
2002
January, 6, 2002
December, 28,
2001
December, 25,
2001
- Here's a very
nice radix sort by Michael Herf. The 11 bits trick is
great !
December, 24,
2001 (almost)
- Updated the ONI breaker
page with new snapshots. Downloaded many game demos to
keep in touch with the industry, and guess what ? Most of
them sucked big time. Konoko, you rule.
December, 23,
2001 (later)
- Bloody hell ! Actually the last
version of SAINT (0.99)
replays our demos even better than STEEM. Some Japtro
fullscreens weren't working correctly in STEEM, but it
seems to be a piece of cake for SAINT. It Just Works.
Even Blood runs
from top to bottom without any problems (In Pacifist only
the first part was working, and STEEM simply never ran
it). The only problem I have so far with SAINT is quite
dumb : I don't know how to take snapshots with it (and
they disabled Alt-Impr, it seems). Oh, well. Download the
demos here and see
for yourself.
- Released the Eden source code so that you can laugh at me with me :) That
was fun.
December, 23,
2001
- I played a bit with STEEM and I'm
impressed.... That baby is great ! It gracefully handles
most Atari games, including Goldrunner (other
emulators usually trash the fabulous Rob Hubbard music,
which kind of ruins the experience). It also replays most
demos, including ours.......
and THAT is impressive because they were quite trashy on
the fullscreen side. I'm baffled : it even manages to
replay our Japtro, whereas many real STs just couldn't :)
At least here's your chance to see those somewhat epic
Cat's Eye pictures : done one pixel at a time with Degas
Elite, bigger than a fullscreen, using multiple palettes.
Hell on Earth. And don't be surprised by the Björk scan
: yes I was a fan right from the start !! Code-gourmets
will hopefully also appreciate the fullscreen snapshots
Pacifist was formerly totally unable to deliver. After
years and years of PC coding, I still have to find
something as unbelievably hardcore as
fullscreen-programming on Atari. This is just way, way
sicker than everything I've been confronted with on PC.
Yeah, I'm rambling on, so what ? That's my private corner
on the web, if you don't like it, scram !
- Merry X-Mas !
December, 18,
2001
- Updated the Flexine page
with some screenshots.
December, 5,
2001
November, 18,
2001
- I was asked about the hierarchical
profiler used in some of my demos. It's not worth writing
about it, you'd better directly check the code
!
November, 16,
2001
- Pierre in the Blue Lagoon !
Thanks for the photograph, Clarisse.
November, 14,
2001
- Worked a bit on Konoko Payne ! I don't
have much time for this, but it made me implement a nice
motion blur effect in Flexine. Check some snapshots on
the ONI breaker
page!
November, 3,
2001
- Updated the Flexporter
page with a snapshot of standard zcb Options I'm using.
You'll need them to make sure exported files can be read
gracefully with either Ice or Flexine.
November, 2,
2001
- Updated the Konoko test.
Should now run on Radeon cards. Ahem. You probably should
use this as well instead of the old zcb reader...
- Updated the Airwaves text with some
links... Also corrected some older texts.
- I still have plenty of unanswered mails, sorry
about this...
October, 29,
2001
- New text (in
french) about my icelandic trip and the Airwaves festival
...
- Updated the card detection code thanks to two DXML posts by Tom Forsyth
& Richard Crowder.
October, 15,
2001
October, 13,
2001
October, 11,
2001
October, 10,
2001
- Updated the ONI breaker
page. Still not much out there.
October, 9, 2001
- Flexporter
version 1.12b is the same as 1.12, updated with a missing
file (thanks to Hervé Denis again!)
- Added a page for the ONI breaker.
Just a screenshot for now.
- Various old screenshots have been
(re)moved.
- Updated the ray-AABB code
- OPCODE 1.1 has
been released
- Added a page for Flexine.
- Added a page for the Route du Rock 97. Almost nothing so far.........
- Added an old text in the verbose
section. That used to be in Heliovisions' trombinoscope.
October, 5, 2001
September, 21,
2001
- Added a page for the mesh unwrapper
and two project entries for Flexine & the ONI
breaker. More info later, no time...
August, 14, 2001
- Updated the strips code!
Many thanks to Eric Malafeew for the bug report ! The new
version is more efficient and produces better strips.....
July, 7, 2001
June, 21, 2001
June, 10, 2001
May, 27, 2001
May, 23, 2001
May, 11, 2001
May, 09, 2001
May, 03, 2001
- The ZCB Reader
and OPCODE's demo
have been updated. They should now run without problems
on INTEL i740 and similar boards.
April, 21, 2001
- The ZCB Reader
and OPCODE's demo
have been updated. They should now run without problems
on ATI RAGE 128 and similar boards.
April, 1, 2001
March, 29, 2001
- OPCODE's demo
has been updated.
March, 28, 2001
- Fixed the "pencils" scene
for OPCODE ! The
lib now handles that case as well as RAPID, and as a
bonus several other scenes/configurations also run
faster. The idea was to use a full box-box test at the
first level of the hierarchy only (keeping SAT-lite tests
otherwise). Simple, efficient, neat ! I believe van den
Bergen's SOLID would benefit from this as well.
March, 25, 2001
- OPCODE's demo doesn't run? Here's a summary with
full screenshots.
March, 24, 2001
- Uploaded a demo of OPCODE. Mainly
for collision-detection fans like me.
March, 21, 2001
- Following my "Dumb OBB
optimization" on the GD-Algorithms list, and with
the initial help of Tomas Möller,
I just completed a brand new collision detection library
called OPCODE. I'm
very pleased with the results, which are far better than
what I had expected !
March, 10, 2001
- I finally uploaded some links.....
This is mainly for my own convenience...
March, 9, 2001
March, 8, 2001
February, 22,
2001
- I dont believe this ! (Thanks
Piotr)
February, 21,
2001
February, 17,
2001
February, 4,
2001
- New Flexporter
release (version 1.08 - supports MAX4 and Character
Studio 3)
February, 1,
2001
- Flexporter
bugfix - the consolidation was broken. Thanks for the
report Stephen!
January, 31,
2001
- New Flexporter
release (version 1.07)
- Flexporter mailing list opened
- This page to announce news!
