The challenge of revising the renderer

Something has been bothering me about the notion of revising the renderer by starting with certain superficial bits like lens flares and 3D models. While this approach is feasible, there is a considerable amount of friction when trying to interface with the old rendering code. The old code makes certain assumptions and behaves in inefficent ways; it is difficult not to let the new GL2 rendering code be overly affected by these inoptimal traits.

Continue reading The challenge of revising the renderer

Thoughts on animation

In the past, the way Doomsday has approached 3D model animation has been exceedingly simple. Since MD2 models are vertex-animated, with a full set of vertices per each frame, Doomsday has simply associated a model frame with each object state. When rendering, the model frame would be selected by looking up which one has been linked with the current state of the object. In other words, each 3D model frame was being treated like a 3D version of the original 2D sprite. Continue reading Thoughts on animation