6 replies to this topic

[NiCoX]

The ShiVa 3D game development platform is available in a new version, including a lot of little enhancements and some new features like the multipack support. This version also provides a Russian interface localization.

You can download for free the PLE version of both ShiVa and the Ston3D Server (not limited in time, so you can evaluate them as long as you want) here : http://www.stonetrip.com.

You can also check the developer site : http://developer.stonetrip.com

Any comments will be welcome ;)

[Pallav Nawani]

Would be nice if you had downloadable demos that I could download & run on my PC full screen. Or is your tech browser-only?

[NiCoX]

You can test fullscreen with "right-click > fullscreen" on web demos.

The tech is not only browser based : you can also produce standalone applications (for windows and osx), and windows screen savers (can be useful to make promotional goodies).

But you're right, should be a good thing to provide some demos in standalone mode.

[Pallav Nawani]

Publication STK/STE for the Indie version is limited to 500 files per archive. What is Publication STK? or Publication STE?

[NiCoX]

Basically, STK/STE files can be compared to flash SWF/FLA files :
- STK are platform independent deployment packs, that will be read by the Ston3D engines (standalone, web player or screensaver)
- STE files are development packs, containing edition datas, that can only be read with ShiVa (its is used to backup or exchange datas)

The 500 resources restriction is quite large, I mean you can do a lot of things without reaching the limit. In the PLE version of ShiVa, you can check the resources used by your game from the GameEditor. This will give you a good idea.

[Pallav Nawani]

Well, I downloaded PLE version and tried it. Two comments:

(a) The Car Demo is already hitting 190 something in resources, and that's just a demo.
(b) The PLE version does not seem to come with english help files. In particular, the 'Getting Started' section (& some other stuff as well) is not in english, which kind of prevents me from doing anything except run the demos.

I like your engine, and I am going to mess around with it some more, but the resource limitation in the indie version is something that might cause problems if I want to make a game with it.

[NiCoX]

Hi,

The indie version is made for people that do simple object visualization, virtual tours and advert gaming. All the demos in our gallery use less than 500 resource files. Also, you can do a lot of things to save resources count : group some textures into only one, use few generic materials and override their textures from script... and in a general manner think "instancing" instead of "duplicating".

But you are right, indie version is not suitable for big commercial games. That's why the pro version can be more interesting for those projects. It also includes a profiler module, and a "svn like" tool dedicated to team programming. Last interesting points of the pro version : the price, and the "not title based" licensing.

A last point : indie and pro licenses include free updates to all 1.X versions. There will be 4 versions until 2.0, and they will not be "bugfix" versions : they will include real features. For example, the 1.6 version planned for the end of October will include a DirectX renderer, a powerful terrain editor, and an animation editor.