DX Studio News

Silent Nightmare Wins Best Demo Competition

Wed, 04 Jun 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the best demo competition is Iskandar with his game 'Silent Nightmare'.

The game is about a girl who has fallen asleep and cannot wake up from her nightmare until she escapes. We really enjoyed the feel of the game and were very impressed with the menus, camera views and mapping system which together make for a very playable game.

Iskandar previously developed a number of software applications but never before tried his hand at developing a complete game. "I realise now that making games is much more challenging than anything I have tried before. It is not just about writing codes and script but involves modeling, animation, sound, videos, sprites, particles, effects, environments and AI. However, despite the challenges, it is a lot of fun!".

So has all the hard work put Iskandar off games development? Not at all, in fact he is already planning 'Silent Nightmare II' and is looking at starting up his own games company in Brunei. We wish him good luck and look forward to his future work.

You can download Silent Nightmare from http://www.isentertainment.tk

Iskandar wins a copy of DX Studio Pro Edition. Congratulations!

Many thanks to all entrants. If you weren't successful this time, another competition starts now to be drawn in September - please send through your docs for another chance to win.

Like to enter next time? Download the latest free version of DX Studio from here.

DX Studio Team

Coming Soon - Version 3

Tue, 22 Apr 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Here is a sneak preview of the major new features that we have coming up for DX Studio v3:

Live Preview (with the player running in both the 3D and 2D editors)

Terrain Editor (which will include support of paged geometry)

Player to run in Firefox

Additional PhysX Functionality (including Vehicle and Ragdoll)

Full Stereoscopic Support

Improved FBX Importer

Improved Waypoint System

Numerous Peformance Tweaks

We are also squeezing in literally hundreds of other features to help improve DX Studio and will be upgrading the website too with new demos, graphics and navigation.

Version 3.0 is due for full release this summer, but we will be making betas available as and when the new features are ready for testing externally. It will be a free upgrade for anyone who purchases v2 now or anyone who's got an active support period.

We hope you are as excited as we are about v3 and thank everyone who has been involved in helping to shape the future of DX Studio so far.

DX Studio v2.3 Released

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We're pleased to announce a brand new version of DX Studio is now available. There are a lot of new features and improvements, so if you have any compatibility problems with older documents, please send them through to support and we'll make sure they work in a service update this week.

You can download the latest version 2.3 now from the following link...
http://www.dxstudio.com/download.aspx

...or just check out the latest demos (Hut of the Dead is a new game demo) with a player only setup...
http://www.dxstudio.com/downloads/DXStudioPlayerSetup.exe
..and a visit to the gallery...
http://www.dxstudio.com/gallery.aspx

What's new in this release:-

PhysX Support - you can now select whether to use Bullet or PhysX physics in your documents (the default is now PhysX).
PhysX Character - this allows you to control a robust capsule based character that can climb steps. Use autoMove to move it as before.
PhysX Cloth - make a 2d plane (say 10x10 segments) in the modeller and set the physics type to cloth to try.
User controls - you can now create your own 2D controls as dxcontrol files for easy re-use, and a new 'controls' section has been added to the library.
Script includes - shrink down and organize your scripts by using includes. See the Wiki entry for more.
Full tweening on all object properties - all object properties are now tied 1:1 to script properties, and the object sequence editor has been extended to allow keyframing of any of them. You can even keyframe your own script variables.
Default Object Properties - this is a handy feature where you can write the current properties of a 3D object into the mesh (right click the object then Mesh -> Set Default Object Properties). Then whenever a world object is created that uses the mesh, those properties are copied in (either at edit time or runtime). You can examine or tidy up these properties by right clicking a mesh in the Meshes window and going to Edit Default Object Properties.
Scrolling listboxes - object.ui.maxRows set on a listbox (type='drop') causes it to scroll when you add more than that number of items.
Depth of field - cards with shader model 3 will be able to show this.
Material editor - now shows the actual per-pixel shaders.
Performance and memory usage optimization - memory use is down and performance has been increased for larger documents.
DXT support in editor - change your JPG/PNG textures to DDS in the bitmap editor for extra speed and lower memory use (change bitmap properties).
Ability to extract doc resources to disk - a useful feature so you can expose a file at runtime for an external program (such as an XLS for an OLEDB data source). Use system.resources.extract.
Text object properties exposed - you can now set all the colors of a text object in the editor.
Multisampling document option - the ability to specify multisampling or leave it to the user (Document Settings -> Options).
Pixel sampler - hold the SHIFT key when in the palette dialog to sample any pixel you can see.
Media Control Channel - you can now manipulate any media stream by setting media.controlChannel first.
subgroup.subgroupAdd - create nested subgroups in a new mesh.
Camera targeting extended - you can now make the target system zoom in so objects fill the screen and transition smoothly between views. See the Object Properties window with the camera selected for access to the new controls, or object.camera.xxx from script. A new test doc demonstrates this at http://www.dxstudio.com/examples/test_camera_target.dxstudio
New utility functions - VectorMath.min(vector,vector) and VectorMath.max(vector,vector) return the smallest and largest individual x,y,z components respectively as Vectors. Improved Ortho Cam - an ortho camera now uses camera.fovVertical, where the value is in scene units (orthoZoom is depricated).
Spherical map importer - you can now add a 360 degree spherical image (stored as a flat JPG or BMP) into the environment map tool and DX Studio will auto convert it to a cubemap.
onExitRequest support - just handle this event and set system.exitAbort=true if you want to cancel the exit (standalone player only).
scene.maxUpdateCamDist - for kicking out updates of far away objects.
object.areaVisibility - settable via script as a comma separated string.
scene.objectAdd - extended to include pos/rot/scale as optional parameters.
object.camera.polyCount - exposed for counting the load on a camera during testing.
getMaterialMap(index) - for a subgroup this returns the current material for a face material index
scene.update - set to false to disable updates for a scene (pauses it)
system.window.allowFramelessMove - If you set this to false, you will not be able to move a frameless window by clicking in it.
system.window.minimized - Get or set whether the player window is minimized (true/false).
system.window.keepAspect - If you set this to true, the window will adjust to keep the same aspect ratio when sized.
Runtime dxsprite animation editing - texture.animationFramesGet and animationFramesSet allow you to modify the frames and durations from script.
Metadata on a dxmesh exposed to the script as mesh.title and mesh.tags

Purchasing
If you're currently a freeware user and interested in a full version, both commercial and non-commercial licenses can be purchased from the link below...
http://www.dxstudio.com/buy.aspx

..or to upgrade your current edition, see the Licenses section of your account on the website for full details.

RSS Feeds
DX Studio RSS feeds are available so you can keep track of the latest news or new forum topics in your favourite RSS reader...
http://www.dxstudio.com/newsfeed.aspx

December Competition Winners

Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:00:00 GMT

We are pleased to annouce the winners of our two competitions that took place in December.

The new Library Upload Competition winner is Washbucket with his fantastic model of a 1971 Plymouth Roadrunner. Washbucket wins a £100 DX Studio voucher. Many thanks to everyone else who took part. The competition will now run again with a closing date of 31st March 2008.

The best Wiki entry in December prize goes to Michael Cook for his well illustrated and explained page on "Avoiding black edges around your alpha". Michael wins a £50 voucher. If you would like to win one too just enter an article in the Wiki this January and you'll be eligable for the prize at the end of the month.

November Wiki Competition Winner Announced

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The prize for the best Wiki entry in November goes to StereoMike for his "Tools, Content & Tutorials" page.

Providing a comprehensive list of external websites for software, tutorials and much more, we are sure this will be a very useful resource for the community.

Mike wins a £50 voucher. Like to win one too? Just enter an article in the Wiki this December and you'll be eligable for the prize at the end of the month

DX Studio™ Competition Winner Announced

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

We are pleased to announce that the winner of the best demo competition is Daniel Rodríguez and team with the game, PreyInsight'.

The gameplay is not quite complete yet, but it involves navigating your character through a village while trying to avoid some rather angry Koalas. We were impressed with the graphics and found the dancing bears very funny (at least until they ate us anyway).

Daniel wins a copy of DX Studio Pro Edition. Congratulations!

Many thanks to all entrants. If you weren't successful this time, another competition starts now to be drawn in February - please send through your docs for another chance to win (note that all entrants must agree to provide an encrypted playable demo).

Like to enter next time? Download the latest free version of DX Studio from here.

DX Studio Team

October Wiki Competition Winner

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The prize for the best Wiki entry in October goes to Martynas for his "Script Based Star Field" tutorial. We really enjoyed his writing style, appropriate use of screen caps and script breakdown. Martynas wins a £50 voucher. Like to win one too? Just enter an article in the Wiki this November and you'll be eligable for the prize at the end of the month.

DX Studio v2.2 Now Available

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

A major update to the DX Studio engine is now available. Here's what's been added in version 2.2...

Emissive maps are now supported - you can set them in the material editor.
Gradient based reflection - the environment reflection now works with normal maps and supports a new gradient property for a polished metal effect. Also in the material editor.
Improved culling - you should see a speed improvement in more complex scenes.
New visibility settings - you can now select which objects are visible from an area. Just define an area with an effectcube, then click on the object's Advanced visibility button.
Animated textures and bitmaps - a new dxsprite base format can now be created (right click in the resources window for new or just add an animated GIF anywhere). These can be used in 2D or 3D in most places that static bitmaps were used, including texture maps, specular/emissive maps (not normal maps yet).
Collision in 2D - just check the collision detection enable in the editor and you'll get onCollision events for 2d bitmaps.
Vertex Morphing (Standard/Pro feature) - see the Wiki entry for more.
Multiple Media Channels - you can now stream more than one media channel (video/mp3) at a time into a scene.
Cached text rendering - renders over 100 times faster for a typical page of text.
FBX Skin support - Maya and Lightwave users should now be able to get their skinned animated meshes straight into DX Studio.
Dynamic waypoint linking - you can now link/unlink waypoints from script. Also the system will only traverse waypoints set to 'visible', so you can control which ones to use.
Smooth merged animations - animationMergeTransitionPeriod allows smooth merges by applying the merged animation in/out over this time.
Lighting Improvements - normal and bump maps are now auto-mipmapped which fixes aliasing when further away.
Runtime texture editing - you can now get/set texture pixels RGBA values using texture.getPixel() texture.setPixel() methods.
system.xml.createDocument() - you can now pass a XML string as a parameter for createDocument to set up an initial XML doc.
keys.any - you can now test keys.any for any key down.
Delayed network connection is now possible. You can also change the network IDs from script, and a new system.generateGUID() function can build guids at runtime.
Undo/Redo now remembers selection and hierarchy expansion.
scene.environmentLoad function - will load a dxenvironment file from any location at runtime.
object.size property - returns the pixel size of 2d objects (including text) or world units size of 3d objects.
subgroup.pivotPos property - lets you control the pivot point of a hierarchy of subgroups at runtime.
system.uploadFile - allows uploading of files to a server.
system.ui.mouse.trap - traps the mouse inside the display window while it has focus.
system.folders.documentExecutable - if running as an EXE this returns the launch directory.
object.selectionMask and scene.selectionMask - allow custom selection groups.

You can download the latest version 2.2 now from the following link... http://www.dxstudio.com/download.aspx

September Wiki Competiton Winner Announced

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:00:00 GMT

The prize for the best Wiki entry in September goes to CarlJ for his "Click the Ball" entry.

We liked it as it was quick to run through, with good explanations of what's going on beside the script.

Daniel wins a £50 voucher. Like to win one too? Just enter an article in the Wiki this October and you'll be eligable for the prize at the end of the month.

New DX Studio Wiki Competition

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:00:00 GMT

Have you learnt how to do something new in DX Studio? If so, you might like to know that we are launching a new monthly competition. All you have to do to take part is write an entry in the DX Studio Wiki. The best entry each month will receive a £50 discount voucher for DX Studio (and yes, repeat entries are allowed so you could even end up winning yourself a full commercial pro edition). The competition starts now and the first winner (for September) will be announced in early October. Good luck......