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Opencl Voxel Octree Renderer

I will release its source eventually.


How To: Sync Your UDK Folders via Dropbox

I have been using SVN for source control which works quite nicely to share commits with different people, but if I want to develop from two computers and not want to commit untested parts, it’s not very effective. Sure, I could do a branch, but that would be overkill and not fun!

I already use Dropbox to share files between computers so I have decided to extend its usage to share my UDK folders, specifically the code part. Of course, if you want to use Dropbox to share something you have to copy it into the Dropbox directory. However, I discovered a neat trick to share specific folders. This can be used for other purposes, as well. We can use the mklink command in windows to do it. So, here we go:

  1. Install UDK on both computers. The first computer here is the “alternate computer”, while the second computer is the “computer which has the latest files”.
    You can extend this guide to be used with as many computers as you want.
  2. Find the address for Dropbox on the first computer. For me, this is “C:\Dropbox”. I also need to specify what the link’s name should be, so I now have “C:\Dropbox\ARON”.
  3. Find the folder you want to share through Dropbox. For me, this is “C:\UDK\UDK-2011-05\Development\Src\aron\Classes”.
    TAKE BACKUPS OF THIS FOLDER BEFORE CONTINUING.
  4. Open your cmd by pressing Start-R keys at the same time and then typing “cmd” and enter:
  5. Follow this format:

    mklink /D “firstpart” “secondpart”

    The first part is the place where you want your folder’s link to be created, for me it’s C:\Dropbox\ARON, the second part is where your folder is actually located C:\UDK\UDK-2011-05\Development\Src\aron\Classes.
    So, I use
    mklink /D “C:\Dropbox\ARON” “C:\UDK\UDK-2011-05\Development\Src\aron\Classes”

  6. Wait for Dropbox to synchronize your folders.
  7. Go to your second computer, wait for your Dropbox to synchronize the folders, then right click the tray icon and pause syncing.

    8. We need to do this because we don’t want Dropbox to become confused when we create the same link on the second computer.

  8. In the second computer’s Dropbox folder, delete the linked folder you just created (for me, it’s Dropbox/ARON). Since Dropbox is paused, this won’t affect the other computer’s files.
  9. Repeat the steps 3 to 5, so I need to type
    mklink /D “E:\DROP\Dropbox\ARON” “E:\UDK\UDK-2011-05\Development\Src\aron\Classes”
    on the second computer’s cmd.
  10. Resume syncing of Dropbox in the second computer.
  11. Now Dropbox will transfer the files from the second computer’s folder to the first computer’s folder. If you want to use the first computer’s folder as a starting point, just restore your backup of those files and they will be synced on the network!
  12. Modify anything on any computer, the files will be properly synced!
  13. ???
  14. Profit!

If you have any comments or questions, please write them into the comments.


Copying Peter Molyneux’s Room

The first time I saw the video below i searched all around the web for a demo. I couldn’t find it. I searched for games similar to it, they also didn’t exist.

After a while (years) I found out about Prey and Narbacular drop and I remembered how much I loved portals. I worked on a mod in Prey which enabled portals to be created anywhere.

Recorded by PelPix, and the mod’s name (Narbacular Wrench) was also coined by him.
Narbacular wrench is an extension of Delta‘s extension of Sars!‘s Portal Wrench. I  was only 18 then and had too much going on in my life (just finished high school, moving to UK for university, etc) to get it really completed.

Afterwards I played with ExitE (a half-life mod which was in development just before Portal came out, then it got scrapped), I heard about Portalized (by nullsquared) and that was quite amazing, too. But neither got released. And Portalized in beta form only worked well on NVIDIA graphics cards, and the work on it had been stopped (to later be taken over by others, converted into an open source project).

Then I heard about UDK, made portals in it.

However, UDK has too much of its code in native form (especially physics) and it was quite difficult (but not impossible) to work with it if you wanted to make something like “The Room”.

So… I was looking for other engines on the web (as I think it is pointless to write one from scratch when there are so many out there) and I ran into Unity3D. I had finally found the perfect engine to copy “The Room”!

Here’s the latest progress:
Portals:

Digital Clay:

Now you might ask… why? I believe this to be a personal challenge to see that this project is completed before I am dead. Also, it has great educational value (working with portals has taught me a lot of physics and geometry).

Also, maybe I can sell the components of it (such as digital clay or portals) in Unity’s Asset Store (as long as I don’t violate any laws, because my work on this project is obviously highly inspired by the video at the top of this post).

The work on this project is suspended until I complete my other projects that I started before it (mainly: Project Aron).


Project Aron


Project Aron is now recruiting!

Project Aron is a first-person fighting game which employs a tactical use of elemental magic in a competitive multiplayer environment. Movement becomes a essential part of this gameplay, and the environments are encompassed by the concept of truly free movement and maneuvrability.

Fighting is a visceral blend of swords and grappling where the final blows ends in gruesome executions. Magic is performed by using ones internal energy to reshape the elements of the world, for movement, defensive, offensive or supportive purposes.


Metaballs in Flash

Metaballs. Click to regenerate them.
File created by converting python language code into actionscript. Credits go to: hkankaan.
The code is not optimized for anything… yet.
Source code can be found here.
Conversion by Firtina Ozbalikci.


First post!

It works!!