The day you've all been waiting for (whether you knew it or not) has finally arrived. The dynamic duo of Keaton Mullis (kmullis) and Mattias Jansson (arithon) are proud to announce that they are currently in the process of writing a book for Charles River Media tentatively titled Game Development Using an Open Source Engine. Since we are naturally more familiar with NeoEngine than any other Open Source engine, it will be the engine of choice for this book. The book will, however, thoroughly discuss each topic in a way that will support its use with any other engine. The book explains the complete process of programming a game for both independent game developers and game development students. The primary audience is people with little to no experience in game development but who have a firm understanding of C++ and object-oriented design. The current plan is to have the book completed by June 25th 2004. Any comments, suggestions, or questions should be directed to the Lounge board in the forums.

Even though 0.7.1 is close, here is a patched version of execute.cpp for the OpenGL backend, fixing the VBO deactivation crash discussed in the Forums. If you are experiencing crashes with the 0.7.0 release, replace the above file and recompile the engine.

Due to a last-minute bug that reared its ugly head after the release (as always), we decided to update the release tarball with a fix. Everyone who has downloaded the 0.7.0 main neoengine package should re-download to get the bugfixed version. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

Note! This updated tarball also includes a fix for the BSP tutorial crash in the OpenGL backend that plauged some people (those with graphic cards that didn't sport VRAM vertex buffer storage). Enjoy!

Version 0.7.0 has been released! Highlights of this release are:

• Fully functional collision detection system
• New physics simulation system
• Redesigned programmable pipeline system
• Change to MPL license

A new Lua scripting extension has been added in CVS with initial core classes and bindings, among them one for triggering a script execution at WTK events. Scripts can be loaded from files, and embedded in chunks (for example, a WTK object chunk can have a lua script chunk embedded that will be executed at the specified event/message).

The redesign of the system for using the programmable pipeline is complete and available in the CVS. Cg is no longer used as the language for uploading GPU programs, but rather the native assembly languages for the different "targets" we support. By doing this, we now also support OpenGL extensions like ATI_fragment_shader and NV_register_combiners, while still allowing applications to use Cg as a frontend to compile for the target the device expects.

There is also support in the neochunkio library for integrating GPU program source in the materials, as well as choosing the preferred target automatically (a material can have multiple techniques, one for each supported target).

There is a new iteration of the physics subsystem in the CVS, featuring stacking and friction as well as an integrated manager for systems of rigid bodies. Screenshots and a Win32 binary demo. The tutorial number 10 has also been updated to use the new system.

We now have initial support for the AMD Opteron 64bit processor in the engine.

The collision detection methods for AABBs, OBBs, Spheres and triangles are now complete, consistent and fairly well-tested.

The news items for 2003 have been moved to an archive page, you can find the link in the menu to the left.