GLBasic forum

Main forum => GLBasic - en => Topic started by: retrogren on 2020-Oct-15

Title: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: retrogren on 2020-Oct-15
Hi guys!

I've recently been getting back into GLBasic, after a hiatus of quite a few years!

My GLBasic license dates back to 2012, and I've spotted that new versions are now on Steam.  My previous experience is entirely in 2D games (Space Invaders clone etc...!)   I'm happy to buy the latest version on Steam, but I have a couple of questions that will hopefully re-ignite my passion :D  :-

- The game I started making is a simple 3D maze game; using some of the easier to understand OpenGL commands, making walls/floors programmatically (X_OBJADDVERTEX etc..), and a 3D viewpoint to move around the maze.  Now I want to add "monsters" to the maze, and I'm wondering if there are any tutorials/books/guides/videos to adding/using 3D models in GLBasic.   I did a bit of searching, and the forum results were confusing to say the least!     I've never used any 3D modelling software (I can learn these separately), and how to import into GLBasic would also be extremely useful!  Thanks for the latest info :)

- I'm hoping to receive a DragonBox Pyra fairly soon (next month or so).   Are there any plans to support the Pyra?  I understand the Open Pandora was supported, but even though I have one, I never got around to developing for it!!

Many thanks for your support!
I love GLBasic, and I'm keen to learn more and spread the word  :D
Gren

Title: Re: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: erico on 2020-Oct-16
Welcome back!

-Learning 3D modelling software is a science on its own, but here whatever package will do so long as it can export  .OBJ format, from this point, you run a GLBasic tool called OBJ to DDD or something like that and convert your object to its native format. I think you can have one UVmap attached to it, a color texture and a bump map texture. It is said to be always better to use a texture to color polygons but who knows. It can also convert a sequence of objects, say you have a modeled monster, then you shape a walking pose and save as 001 anther pose and 002, etc. You can access these as animation key frames and can blend through it. I particularly use Lightwave 3d for modelling because of my work, it is an expensive tool and I can´t remember if the demo will do. Blender is great but it is easier to learn machine language for 512bits processors, Sketch up is more or less free and has a neat simple modeling tool, there are also plenty of online 3d modelers.

-There is no plan to support Pyra but I think it should not be a hard deed to do so. Let´s raise the subject when some machines start hitting the crowd for there may be more people interested into such. As far as I tested and ported my 2d games to Pandora, it worked fine, it was just that I had to do some version shuffling. Some one was developing a game called Reggie´s World, I think, and it is a 3d mario/zelda styled one. Runs great on the pandora. If Pyra gets any layer of compatibility with the pandora, then there is already one path to develop for it. :)
Title: Re: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: retrogren on 2020-Oct-17
Thanks for the reply, Erico!

I'll do a bit of research into 3D packages, but for starters I'm only looking at creating very simple, non-animated objects that are un-textured.  So I guess any 3D package that can export .OBJ will suffice.   
As long as it's free, and has decent support  =D
I'll happily go through tutorials, since I have quite a lot of time on my hands now!

Yeah, I'm waiting quite excitedly for the Pyra to arrive - feels like forever since I pre-pre-ordered  :P
Hopefully it will attract lots of attention when it is released, and plenty of people buy it so that EvilDragon can recoup his time and investment.  And maybe bring more potential GLBasic customers into the fold  :)
Title: Re: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: Widget101 on 2020-Oct-17
Hi there,

I've used Anim8or for 3d. It's free and I found it really easy to pick up and use for basic 3d models and 3d levels. Also has its own forum and community.

https://www.anim8or.com/

:)
Title: Re: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: retrogren on 2020-Oct-17
Cheers for that.  Might have a look at Anim8or later.

I've actually done a quick tutorial on Blender today; for absolute beginners!   Basically it was an introduction to the interface, and how to create/manipulate basic objects.
After creating a simple cube I played with the export settings - saving it as .OBJ.
Then I used the IDE tool Convert3D to create a .DDD version of the file and started playing with loading the object into OpenGL.  After a bit of fiddling with scale and X_movement I got it to display nicely in my maze, and was quite impressed with how straightforward it all was!

Of course the next step is something a little more complex, but this has definitely whetted my appetite  :)

Thanks for all the suggestions.
Title: Re: Returning GLBasic user questions :)
Post by: nabz32 on 2020-Oct-29
Blender is really cool for GLBasic, as you can Import almost anything and export it nicely to obj,
you can also export the frames of your models animation to seperate obj files with ease ( perfect for the .ddd conversion tool ),
should you want to add animated Objects to your games ( Be sure to use smoothanimation when animating, or else there is no interpolation between frames ).

Feel free to ask here anytime should you run into trouble.