Well, for some strange reason I had the feeling to switch to blender in order to create 3d-Models. Well, ok! Blender is for sure very very good but maybe even too powerful what makes the inital steps quite hard. Nevertheless I started (again) with going deeper into blender although I was ill (what makes the project even harder).

As I am still working on my RPG-Engine and a first techdemo I just wanted to build a 3D-Model, put a texture on it, give it an amature and animate it. And the most important step export it in a way JMonkeyEngine is able to read it. That seems to be the hardest part of all. Currently there a two formats that seems to be best for importing animated textured models into jme2. MD5 (Quake3-Models) or OgreMeshes (Ogre3D-Engine).

For me it seems that the ogre-importer of the radakan-project seems a good way to export for jme.

Here you can find the exporter-script for blender.

For the importer there is a ogreloader-project inside the radakans svn:

https://radakan.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/radakan

or you can download an archive. (don’t know if it is the current version)

There you can find jme2-typical  tests how to integrate an orge.mesh to jme2.

Well that’s it for the moment. Once I am really sure what to do in blender in order to do everything the right way with texturing, rigging and skinning I will try to write down something like a basic tutorial cause since I started with jme it was always a big issue how to import models that fulfill all my needs.

Keep on rocking….

Well, actually the progress of my RPG-Engine is going on very slowly but it is still alive! I just added tha ability to add actions to any entity that is included in the world. Also a very generic dialogue-system was integrated that is a bit complicated to handle. For that I have to write an abstraction maybe in XML to load the dialogues by file.

Here you see Mr Minimal in front of his new house!

Well,…due to some problems I had to cancel even the tech-demo for the 48h-RPG-Compo but started reactivated the RPG-Engine yesterday.

Features that are implemented up to now:

• free movement on terrain and additional walkable objects (e.g. bridges)
• free choice of view. (that was actually implemented by the strategichandler of jme-commons)
• object interaction. certain objects can interact with each other. e.g. if a given object is closer than a certain distance a trigger can be called.
• different states for objects that are part of the world. States can have transition animations
• If falling from a bridge the object is really falling. Not just takinjg the surface’s y-coord.
• It is not possible to take any height anymore. A ray in front and backwards is testing about the elevation. (only up)

Still to do:

• communication system
• fighting system
• scripting for logic (lowest priority)
• NPC-logic (walking)
• daylight / night
• Plot-Engine
• …..

Hehe,…now it is more or less sure that I won’t be able to have something like a game or even a working prototype for the RPG-Compo! Nevertheless I am not sad! I made good progress with the 3D-Engine! Let’s see what how far I can come with my game-engine….Maybe I will be able to do a short demo!

Well,…I couldn’t resist! I had to join the compo. Roleplaying-Games “the queen of games” and I think a bit too early for me, but I will give it a try or better said I am giving it a try. Obviously it is the same problem as always! Thinking too big that makes too much problems. Building everything from scratch might be not a good idea, too….24h are over now and all I have is a running “I-Robot” Ok…but I think I will make progress and hopefully will have something to release tomorrow!

I really should have done as I thought first. Do a Ultima6-like game….too late for that now!