Hello SunBurn community!

We're kicking the year off with a huge new update to the SunBurn Game Engine!

Last night we released the SunBurn 2.0.18 preview to contributors for feedback, testing - and so they have a chance to update their awesome add-ons, frameworks, and resources with the latest features.

And very soon the update will be available to the entire community, after we add some finishing touches and run it through testing!

So what new features are in the SunBurn 2.0.18 preview?

Integrated Physics

That's right, we've introduced a very lightweight and fast built-in physics system for SunBurn!  It replaces SunBurn's collision system and provides realistic movement, reactions, adds friction support, objects now conform to surfaces they rest on, and much, much more.

We've also added ray casting to SunBurn for calculating projectile impacts, line-of-sight, and more.

The physics system uses a heavily modified, streamlined, and compact version of the Bepu Physics library.  And a big thanks goes out to Ross Nordby creator of Bepu for help with the integration!

But what if your project uses the legacy collision?

No worries, the legacy collision system is still available and supports the same features as in previous SunBurn versions. :)

The CollisionManager and CollisionMove classes were moved to the "SynapseGaming...Collision.Legacy" namespace, but nothing changed in the implementation.

What if your project doesn't need physics or the legacy collision?

Again no worries. :)  Both the new physics system and the legacy collision are contained in a separate assembly named "SynapseGaming-SunBurn-Physics.dll" which is entirely optional.

If you don't need either system simply omit the assembly from your project and the game / product will not include them.

That said the assembly is extremely small and adds only 160KB (compressed) to your distributable package. :)

Enhanced Terrain

We've also enhanced SunBurn's terrain system, adding collisions (via the new physics system), collision material properties like elasticity and friction, and much more.

But probably the biggest addition is control over terrain tiling, which was a hugely requested feature! :)

The terrain now defaults to a single tile and you can increase this (in the editor or in code) to tile as much or little as needed.  Along with this the terrain bounding box is reduced to only the area covered by the tiles, meaning the terrain will now cull based on visibility like other objects in the scene.

Much More!

And there are a ton of other features, enhancements, and improvements in the update!  Things like:

• New events on objects and components to indicate if created in the editor
• Ability to search for objects by unique id
• Additional editor camera controls and support for non-qwert keyboards
• And much, much more!

If you have any questions or comments let us know!

-John Kabus

 

Other SunBurn 2.0 Blogs:

1. Announcing the SunBurn 2.0 Game Engine - free upgrade, new editions, and updated features
2. SunBurn 2.0 Collisions, Scenegraph, and Components - new collision system, components, and more
3. SunBurn 2.0 upgrade for our Torque customers - upgrade path for all of our previous TLK technology customers
4. SunBurn 2.0 goes Mobile on Windows Phone 7! - full Windows Phone 7 support, light mapping, and more
5. Holiday, Components, and more! - read about the new components and more
6. SunBurn 2.0: components, perfabs, and more! - more details about SunBurn's new component system
7. Festive SunBurn 2.0 Starter Kits, yum, yum! - first release of the new SunBurn Starter kit
8. SunBurn 2.0.10 update available - streamlined user experience and integrated starter kits
9. SunBurn Dev Journal: Scenegraph Optimizations - faster scenegraph and City Demo with 10,000 buildings
10. SunBurn 2.0.12 Update Now Available! - edit components and custom scene object types in editor
11. SunBurn Update: Windows Redistributable - ship Windows games using only the XNA Redistributable
12. SunBurn Dev Journal: Workflow Enhancements - background importing, shared materials, Visual Studio templates, and more
13. SunBurn 2.0.13 Update: Get it Now! - the latest goodies are now available
14. SunBurn 2.0.14 Update Available! - extended materials and sprite rendering on Windows Phone 7
15. SunBurn Dev Journal: Reflections and Clipping Planes - the return of the Reflection / Refraction example
16. SunBurn Game Engine: Audio System, Drag-Drop, and More! - announcing the new SunBurn audio system!
17. SunBurn 2.0.15 Released - Audio System, Reflections, and Auto-Unwrap! - check out new the audio system and more
18. SunBurn powers British Airways demo at Microsoft's WP7 Mango event - Microsoft and British Airways chooses SunBurn for huge Mango event demo
19. SunBurn Game Engine Storms into Dream Build Play! - see the awesome SunBurn games in Dream Build Play 2011!
20. SunBurn Game Engine: Advanced Static Lighting - as awesome as SunBurn's dynamic lighting only faster!
21. SunBurn Game Engine: Transparencies, Player Controller, and More! - see the latest upcoming features
22. SunBurn Launches Powerful new Community Plugin System - tools and SDK to develop and share SunBurn plugins, examples, code snippets, tutorials, and more
23. New SunBurn Community Resources Portal! - download and share the latest community resources!
24. SunBurn Game Engine: A Whole New Level of Flexibility! - community resources, editor plugins, and more!
25. Orbitron: Revolution blasts onto Xbox LIVE Marketplace! - Orbitron makes one hell of an impression on Xbox LIVE!
26. SunBurn 2.0.17 Released – Advanced Lighting, Transparencies, and tons of Enhancements! - Wow!
27. New SunBurn Documentation and Silverlight WP7 Example - lots of new resources to get started

 

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Posted 01-27-2012 2:00 PM by JohnK "bobthecbuilder"