Hi alll, if you're into Google+ (or even if you're not but like to try it) then you can perhaps join the Crystal Space community here:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105380152825085158376

You can share nice PlaneShift screenshots there for example and perhaps see what other Crystal Space based projects are doing.

See you there!

Hi all,

I'd like to announce the very first release of AresEd. Before getting too excited however I'd like to warn everyone that this is still an alpha release. It is far from a finished product and there are many known (and very likely unknown) bugs. It is also not feature complete.

Now what is it? AresEd is a 3D game creation kit based on Crystal Space and CEL (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). It is Open Source (MIT license) and 100% free software. With AresEd it will be possible to make full working 3D games without any coding. All from within the AresEd visual editor. AresEd is *not* a modeller however. Before you can use AresEd you still have to use Blender (for example) to make your 3D models. AresEd can import these models and allows the game designer to place them in the world and additionally the game designer can define game logic.

Game logic is defined using state machines (the CEL quest concept) and the CEL message system. Objects in the world can be associated to 'entities' and entities can react to messages and in return send out other messages. With associated quests (state machines) you can 'program' the entity to behave different depending on various situations. In future versions of AresEd it will also be possible to attach python scripts to entities for more advanced game logic possibilities but the intention is that as much as possible can be done using the graphical quest editor.

As I said earlier, AresEd is not complete. Here is a list of a few major features that are still lacking:

• There is as of yet no support for sound.
• The actor system is not really powerful yet. For now AresEd is mostly uses
  for single player/first person view games.
• The physics actor is not usable right now for real games as it gets stuck
  and unstable very easily. It is mainly included for demonstrations purposes
  and it needs a lot more work. Note that the simple collision detection based
  actor works much better and is suitable for small games. The latest Google
  Summer of Code brought a new Bullet based physics plugin in Crystal Space and
  this one includes a nice physics based actor. Next version of AresEd will use
  that one.
• Support for the CEL AI system and pathfinding.
• Here is the list of known issues:
  http://code.google.com/p/ares/issues/list

But other than that it is actually possible to make simple games using AresEd. Included with this release there are five examples. Of these 'mysterygame' is the most game-like example. It includes a puzzle that you have to solve before a gate can be fully opened.

In addition to AresEd this package also includes a game player called Ares. While you can play your game directly from within AresEd, if you want to distribute your game it will be easier to do that with Ares instead.

The Ares project page can be found here: http://code.google.com/p/ares/  You can also download Windows and Linux binaries from there.

The linux binary is temporary. It was built on a 64-bit kubuntu and as such might not be usable on other distributions. In the near future we will provide more compatible binaries. In the mean time it might be easier to compile Ares from Source. You can find instructions on how to Build Ares here: http://code.google.com/p/ares/wiki/AresBuilding

After installation there are two executables: AresEd and Ares. Pressing 'F1' in AresEd will bring up online help.

Please let me know if you find any issues (that are not already listed in the list of issues above). Also if you have questions on how to use AresEd then feel free to ask me.

I'd like to stress that AresEd is in heavy development. This is an early version and it is likely that a lot will change in the future still.

Additionally I'm looking for people who want to help develop on AresEd. I think it is a very interesting project and there is lots of opportunity for other people to help with development.

Greetings,

I remade my first video blog entry on Ares with better video capture software:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94HVzPm6HY

Have fun watching!

Hi all,

In the past few days I worked hard to get the Ares wiki up to speed. The main entry point is here:

http://code.google.com/p/ares/wiki/MainPage

A few interesting places to visit (beware of game spoilers!):

• High level todo: http://code.google.com/p/ares/wiki/Todo
• Summary of the game story: http://code.google.com/p/ares/wiki/AresGame

But there are many more pages. All work in progress of course.

I'm still looking for motivated people to help me with this project. On the technology side we are already pretty far. We have a good working game entity system and AresEd (the editor) is starting to work nicely too (although more work is needed there). I still need the following people:

• More programmers. Most of the programming will be in CEL and Ares. I consider CS to be mostly ready for our purposes. Experience with C++ is a must. The ability to learn and a *lot* of motivation are essential.
• Concept artist
• 3D Artist(s) for static models. This requires working in Blender. The person(s) doing this will have to make models for various kinds of objects in the game: weapons, tools, building blocks for making houses in AresEd, spaceships, human technology, ...
• 3D Artist(s) for animated meshes. I would like to have a flexible system in Ares where the game designer can easily create and kind of NPC body and face. Also for the player it should be possible to do this. My ideal system is that we have three base models: a female human, a male human, an alien. And then using face/body customization we can create hundreds of NPCs from that. We mostly have the technology for this ready. We just need an artist to cooperate with us on achieving this goal.
• Sound artist. Sound effects and music mostly.

Contact me if you are interested in joining this ambitious game project!

Hi all,

I'm the author of Crystal Space and CEL and I'm in the process of starting a new game (+editor) project. The project is called Ares (and the editor AresEd).

The first focus of this project is to make an editor. You can compare this editor to editors as used by other games like Fallout3 and Oblivion. In this video blog entry you can see a demonstration on how it currently works. Note that this editor is not finished but it is already doing some nice things: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3wlNbHheY4

The second part of this project is to work on the game logic. Most work for this has already been done. The remaining task is to put things together and work on some of the missing features. You can see a demonstration on the CEL entity system (which is going to be used by this project) here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H6UnKwuzAM

The third part of this project is to make an actual game. There are some ideas about this but everything is open. Also the idea is that this editor+game logic will be very general and generic so that you can make a lot of different games with it. The ability to mod games will also be very important.

And of course, all this is Open Source and Free Software. I'm looking for a number of people to help me with this. First I need developers. Having C++ experience is recommended as Crystal Space and CEL are written in C++. You should be willing to learn and step in a big project. Of course we will not let you sit in the cold with that. There is an active IRC channel (#CrystalSpace at FreeNode) where there are always CS developers on and you can get a lot of help there. This page lists a few of the things that have to be done but there is much more.

Of course I will also need artists. For 3D and animation artists I prefer people that can work with Blender as we have very good support for converting blender models to Crystal Space. But also 2D and sound artists are needed.

One of the most important features that I need is motivated people! I think that this is a really exciting new project and I hope that the people that will help me with this are equally motivated.

Visit http://code.google.com/p/ares/ for more information. If you are interested in helping then contact me at jorrit dot tyberghein at gmail dot com

Thanks!

Look if the lag bothers you, I have a few suggestions. Donate 1 Million dollars to the PS team and get a high end computer.

Naah! If you want extra speed you should donate that to the CS project instead! Or more in particular: to me!!! :-)

Greetings,

89 (91) dark way and I used it on Firke. Is this the same with every way?

That explains it then. Firke has 100 in Dark Way. So these two spells are practically useless against Him. This save effect is for some of the spells. Not all spells suffer from this.

Greetings,

Since the topic has started... do you have any information if the magic rebalancing will continue, jorrit?

Sen

For now I think things are fine. I have seen no reports of things that are horribly wrong or out of whack (with magic that is).

Greetings,