I finally got around to pack a new N3 SDK together. I'll upload it on Monday when I'm back in the office, in the meantime here's a rough What's New list. A lot of under-the-hood-stuff has changed, and I had to remove a few of the fancy front-end-features for now (for instance, the N2 character rendering had to be removed when I implemented the multi-threaded renderer, and the shader lighting code is broken at the moment). I'll care about this front-end stuff in the next release.
General Stuff
- changes to enable mixing Nebula2 and Nebula3 code, mainly macro names are affected (DeclareClass -> __DeclareClass, ImplementSingleton -> __ImplementSingleton etc...)
- started to remove #ifndef/#define/#endif include guards since pretty much all relevant compilers (VStudio, GCC, Codewarrior) support #pragma once
- moved identical Win32 and Xbox360 source code into a common Win360 namespace to eliminate code redundancies
- added a new Toolkit Layer which contains helper classes and tools for asset export
- added and fixed some Doxygen pages
Build System
- re-organized VStudio solution structure, keeps all dependent projects in the same solution, so it's no longer necessary to have several VStudios open at the same time
- it's possible now to import VStudio projects through the .epk build scripts (useful for actual Nebula3 projects which do not live under the Nebula3 SDK directory)
- new "projectinfo.xml" file which defines project- and platform-specific attributes for the asset batch-export tools
- split the export.zip archive into one platform-neutral and several platform-specific archives (export.zip contains all platform-independent files, export_win32.zip, export_xbox360.zip, export_wii.zip contain the platform-specific stuff)
- added general multiplatform-support to the asset-pipeline (e.g. "msbuild /p:Platform=xbox360" to build Xbox360-assets)
- new command-line build tools (with source):
- audiobatcher3.exe (wraps audio export)
- texturebatcher3.exe (wraps texture export)
- shaderbatcher3.exe (wraps shader compilation)
- buildresdict.exe (generates resource dictionary files)
- these tools mostly just call other build tools (like xactbld3.exe, nvdxt.exe, or build tools for game-console SDKs)
- note that the public N3-SDK only contains Win32 support for obvious legal reasons
Foundation Layer
- fixed thread-safety bugs in Core::RefCounted and Util::Proxy refcounting code
- added WeakPtr<> class for better handling of cyclic references
- added type-cast methods to Ptr<>
- simplified the System::ByteOrder class interface
- added platform-specific task-oriented "virtual CPU core id's" (e.g. MainThreadCode, RenderThreadCore, etc...)
- added a System::SystemInfo class
- added Threading::ThreadId type and static Threading::Thread::GetMyThreadId() method
- proper thread names are now visible in the VStudio debugger and other debugging tools
- SetThreadIdealProcessor() is now used to assign threads to avaible CPU cores on the Win32 platform
- new HTTP debug page for the Threading subsystem (currently only lists the active Nebula3 threads)
- MiniDump support: crashes, n_assert() and n_error() now write MiniDump files on the Win32 platform
- new Debug subsystem for code profiling:
- offers DebugTimer and DebugCounter objects
- HTTP debug page allows to inspect DebugTimers and DebugCounters at runtime
- new Memory::MemoryPool class for allocation of same-size memory blocks (speeds up allocation and reduces heap fragmentation)
- some new and renamed methods in Math::matrix44
- Http subsystem now runs in its own thread
- added SVG support to Http subsystem (Http::SvgPageWriter and Http::SvgLineChartWriter)
- added IO::ExcelXMLReader stream reader class, allows to read XML-formatted MS Excel spreadsheet files
- added Behaviour mode to Messaging::AsyncPort, defining how the handler thread should wait for new messages:
- WaitForMessage: block until message arrives
- WaitForMessageOrTimeOut: block until message arrives or time-out is reached
- DoNotWait: do not wait for messages
- added Remote subsystem, allows remote-controlling N3 applications through a TCP/IP connection
Render Layer
- moved rendering into its own thread (InternalGraphics subsystem on the render-thread side, and Graphics front-end subsystem on the main-thread side)
- added CoreAnimation and Animation subsystems (under construction)
- added UI subsystem for simple user interfaces (under construction)
- added CoreAudio and Audio subsystems (under construction):
- CoreAudio is the back-end and runs in its own thread
- Audio is the "client-side" front-end in the main-thread (or any other thread)
- designed around XACT concepts
- comes with XACT wrapper implementation
- added CoreGraphics::TextRenderer and CoreGraphics::ShapeRenderer classes, both intended for rendering debug visualizations
- added debug rendering subsystem (currently under the Debug namespace)
- Frame subsystem: FramePostEffects may now contain FrameBatches
- Input subsystem: disconnected XInput game-pad slots now only check every 0.5 seconds for connected game-pads
- Resources subsystem: added ResourceAllocator/ResourceLump system to prepare for true resource streaming on console-platforms
Application Layer and Addons:
- removed CoreFeature (this stuff had to go into the GameApplication class to prevent some chicken-egg problems)
- added NetworkFeature (under construction)
- added UIFeature (under construction)
- new CoreNetwork and Multiplayer addon wrapper subsystems for RakNet
Please note the special RakNet licensing conditions. Basically, RakNet is not free if used for a commercial project (http://www.jenkinssoftware.com/). Licensing details for 3rd party libs can be found on the Nebula3 documentation main page.
Stuff I want to do soon
- fix the shader lighting code
- add more shaders to bring the shader-lib up-to-par with N2
- finish the CoreAnimation and Animation subsystems
- design and implement proper skinned character rendering subsystem
- add missing functionality to Audio subsystems (for instance sound categories)
- make shaders SAS compatible so they work with tools like FXComposer
- implement a proper resource-streaming system on the 360 (as proof on concept)
- optimize messaging (use delegate-mechanism for dispatching, optimize message object creation, add double buffering behaviour to AsyncPort for less thread-synchronization overhead)
