Furc3D2 - by Trek

About Furc3D2 -- News -- Download -- Bug Tracker -- Thanks

2006 December 31
While there has been some progress toward the loading of encrypted dreams, a lot of work still needs done. However, they recently applied a patch to some of the main maps for winter, and since my last update didn't have the obligatory screenshot, here's one of Furc3D2 handling the meovanni patch purrfectly.

2006 October 22
Dreams compressed with bz2 are now able to be decompressed. Also, a few map loading bugs have been fixed (some maps have their header fields in different orders apparently). This gets another big chunk of dreams working, including the updated AI map. Unfortunately, I've noticed that a lot of dream maps are encrypted, so those will not yet work. Cracking that encryption is next on my list though.

2006 August 06
Dreams that were compressed using LZW should now be enterable (like the Silver Sponsor Dream).

2006 August 05
A lot of internal graphics-related stuff has been improved. Aside from slightly faster loading times, the biggest visual difference should be that text on some video cards no longer has weird off-by-1-pixel stuff all over. It also should hopefully work a little better on ancient video cards now, though there's still next-to-no optimization done on how things are drawn yet.

Obligatory random screenshot of allegria.

2005 December 31
Some major changes have been made as I had time over the break. A new version is up, which almost doesn't even resemble the previous version. The biggest change? All objects are now represented by actual models. Additionally, the OpenGL version is fully functional.

Here's a section of meovanni running using OpenGL.

Note that dreams still don't download, and the winter patch on several of the main maps are basically just treated like a dream. For now, you may wish to play around on the old unpatched server. Just change the line in data\furc_ip.txt to: 64.191.51.88 6500

2005 September 10
Whole new text rendering class has been made from scratch. This one supports variable width characters, and generates the font from windows' fonts rather than a premade bitmap. It's also more effecient and easier to use. Also scrapped the old text window class which never was fully implemented anyways, and rewrote that with scrolling working. The main chat window has a scroll bar now as well. I also took the liberty of color coding things like whispers and looks, partially just to test that text coloring was working right.

Here's an example of the Colored Text.

2005 August 05
I've released a new version (0.0008), as it's been a while. There's probably not any visible changes from the last version (aside from the updated url), but there have been many internal changes, related to having almost fully switched stuff over from the D3DX math library to my own (you'd be amazed how much faster things compile too now). I poked at running it on linux via WinE again also, as I made a couple changes so it wouldn't give up if it couldn't detect the dipslay format; but I think WinE just doesn't support D3D9 in general, so it still dies on me under that.

2005 August 03
Quick update on things. While there has been some progress made on decompressing dreams, it is not yet functional. The time remaining this summer is growing shorter as well, and once the next semester hits theres a good chance I won't be able to do much until next summer again. So I have changed my focus, and entering dreams is no longer a high priority, as I need to got more graphics stuff ready to use for this coming semester.

I currently have two things I'm working on: Opening up the possability of an alternate OpenGL implementation of my graphics framework that is interchangable with the current DirectX one, and beginning work on a new mesh class (old one was tossed out at the beginning of this summer, which was mostly just a wrapper around D3DX's). A lot of work the last few days has been on gutting anything DirectX-specific out of the interface for my graphics class, including the start of a new math/geometry library to replace the use of the D3DX one. Once I have enough of the basic rendering stuff encapsulated, I will change the current Furc3D2 rendering code over to that as a good test of it, then begin work on the Mesh class.

Unfortunately a working OpenGL version is not likely to happen this summer due to time constraints as well as the somewhat messy work being done to unwarp the floor tiles from their skewed perspective into square textures. Also I am unfamiliar with anything but the extreme basics of OpenGL, so it will take some time to learn how this API differs from DirectX. But it is a step in that direction, and may potentially let Furc3D2 run under linux someday.

2005 July 08
Been busy with various things (mostly classes) lately, as well as completely rewriting the scripts that generate my whole site. Notice the new domain name and such now. The end result of all that (aside from a bettter url), is the code that makes up my site is much cleaner now and easier to maintain. When I originally wrote it all I barely knew anything about php. New scripts (such as the one that generated this page your reading now) make it trivial for me to post updates now as well (before I had been manually editing multiple .html files and copying stuff around, etc).

I finally got a chance to work on Furc3D2 again last night. What I'm working on now is decompressing/extracting the individual files from the .dream file the server sends. This is a slightly complicated process, but once I get it all worked out, you will be able to enter dreams using Furc3D2.

2005 June 17
I finished figuring out how the file server handles downloads, and have implemented this in Furc3D2. A document on this protocol has been added to the relevent section of this site. Now when you step into a dream, it will download the dream file and save it in \f3d2_tmp\, but it doesn't decompress this file yet. So you still cannot actually enter dreams (it boots you back out for now though). Also, there have been some pretty major improvements and changes to the networking code in Furc3D2. Originally it was designed to only handle a single connection, but now it can handle any arbitrary number of them (which was needed for dream downloads, and in the distant future, port downloads). I've put the new version up, v0.0007.

2005 June 07
Finally have a few days free to work on stuff again. I'm currently in the process of reverse engineering how furc's file server works, so that I can add dream downloading to Furc3D2. I'll probably make a seperate document from my current furc protocol document to cover the details I learn from this. It's hard to say how long this will take though.

2005 May 25
v0.0006 is out. Players have colors now (based off their fur/vest color). A lot of the work being done right now is on internal restructuring.
Players, now in color!

2005 May 15
A new resource manager has been made, and a lot of internal stuff has been switched over to using that. There are no visible changes, but I put a new version up anyways because this needs tested. This should speed up work on a few other resource wrappers in the future.

2005 May 05
v0.0004 is up. I figured out what data the server sends to tell the client to display dreams. So you can see dreams now, though you still can't enter them.
Allegria Island

2005 April 29
Spent some time completely restructuring a few of the main code modules. I also added the / command to whisper like in furc, and put a highlight for where your cusror is at (this is only temporary). You can also click other players now. New version is up (v0.0002)

2005 April 28
Added the ability to select which .ini file to use at startup. This puts the client in a state that it can at least be used by other people on the main maps. I have put the first publicly released version in the download section. Have fun!

2005 April 27
.fsh files can be loaded now. The floor tiles from furcadia are loaded in and "un-skewed" and loaded onto Direct3D textures. This saves me a huge amount of work, as I don't have to manually (and probably poorly) remake a texture for every floor tile furc has. It will also help out later in dreams that have their own floor patches.
The floor look familiar?

2005 April 26
This page is made! I finally got around to making a web page for Furc3D2. Sea of Chaos is finished, and I'm almost done with finals, so I finally have time to work on this project again. Expect a lot of improvements this coming summer. Today I updated a lot of the basic components (debug helper stuff, etc) to more modern versions of stuff I'd made, but the main program itself is still the same.

2004 August 08
No real visible differences, but the visibility testing code and floor rendering has been rewritten into a more final version (as opposed to a temporary hack to just test it). Result is going from about 10fps to 200+ fps.
Canal

2004 August 07
Walls and objects set up to draw in their correct positions. Some temporary mesh's used now just to test that.
Walls

2004 August 04
Changed text window to something more user-friendly. Players are now visible as triangles (players using weird avatars like pheonix aren't parsed correctly yet):
Players

2004 August 04
Map now loads and is converted from furc's coordinate system into something more normal.
Unskewed Ground

2004 August 03
Map now loads, but is skewed due to furc's strange coordinate system. It is temporarily drawn from a random viewpoint. Note that the textures used are from my OLD client (Furc3D); I plan to completely replace all of them in time.
Ground Tiles

2004 May 29
Basic networking functionality is working, as well as tracking players and parsing out displayable text.
Network Stuff!