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		About this Site: This site is intended to help anyone interested in making 3D games using OpenGL. Not only will I cover OpenGL, but I'll also have tutorials on all kinds of helpful stuff for game development. If there is anything you would like to see here, or maybe you'd like to contribute to the site, please e-mail me at joezimmerman1@hotmail.com. Feel free to link to me too. =] November 30, 1999 -- Progress Update and New Tutorial Online I figured I better update and give you all an idea of what I'm working on. I wrote a tutorial on updating games based on time. Great for making your game run at the right speed at any FPS. Click here to read it, or click here to see all the other great tutorirals I have. DirectInput Class First of all is the DirectInput Class. This is coming along great. So far mouse and keyboard input is flawless, with mouse cursor tracking and timers for setting up keyboard repeat delays and repeat rates. As for joystick input, that's going great too. It detects available joysticks and can tell you how many axes/buttons/POVs it has, and takes care of dead zones and saturation (how far the joystick has to go to be at its maximum). I would let DirectInput handle dead zones/saturation, but that requires me figuring out how the hell to do it. I tell DInput to set the dead zone to something, and it just errors out on me. If anyone would like me to add Force Feedback support, please FedEx me a nice FF joystick. One of the expensive ones will do fine. =] Quake-Style Console My Q2-style console is sweet! It'll be extremely customizable and have full support for binding functions to keys/joystick buttons/mouse buttons, changing variables, and getting debug information. You can set a callback function that's called when the user inputs a command (ex. "bind space jump" or "gl_filter 2"). It returns the type of command, what command was called, and up to 16 parameters (I could do more but who even needs 16?). To add a command, you call a function which returns a constant (ex. CMD_QUIT = Console.MakeBindable("quit")). Then in the callback function, you check if the command the user called equals the constant you set. I use one callback so you can handle both when the user sets a variable and when the user executes a command. With binding keys, it will use the DirectInput class to get its information. Whenever you want to check if a key is pressed, you instead ask the console if the key to the function is being pressed. That way no matter what function the user binds the key to, the game always checks when the function is being activated. The problem is, I have to do the Bitmapped text output tutorial and the DirectInput class tutorial before I can do the console. I've got a lot of polishing up to do on all of them, so don't expect to see my console tutorial for a while. The Outputting Bitmapped Text tutorial should be next I suppose, because it's great for testing DirectInput (especially joysticks). So the order of upcoming tutorials is: bitmapped text output, DirectInput, and the Console. November 24, 1999 -- Thanksgiving Vacation Sorry for lack of updates. The DirectInput wrapper class is almost done, and I'm adding some nice features to it. I may not be able to update for a few days, but I will keep working on the tutorials over the weekend. I've got a nice 5 days off to work on them so look forward to seeing them soon. Also, be sure to check out the new Message Boards. Use it to post questions you have or help others with theirs. By the way, check out the Impact Texture Studio. It lets you use math functions to generate tileable textures. Looks like it could be very useful. Keep checking back for updates and have a nice holiday. November 21, 1999 -- New Message Board Online! Several have asked for this and I decided it would be a great idea to have. So check out the new Message Boards. Enjoy. Anyways sorry for not posting anything new for a few days. I got myself re-addicted to Half-Life, man what a sweet game. If you haven't played that game yet, go out and buy it. Also, I've been busy on the Quake2-style Console which is coming along very nicely. Can't say when the tutorial will be up, but keep checking back cause I've got more on the way. Oh and check out Pauly's Webpage. He's working on a Lightwave loader for OpenGL, which I know a lot of you have been asking for something like that. He's got a bunch of other sample OpenGL projects worth checking out, too. I'm probably going to move to a domain sometime soon, and get a hosting account on HostSave. At $6.95 a month you can't go wrong. Which domain would you rather see me get, www.glgamedeveloper.com or www.glgamedev.com? Let me know if you really even care. =] Now if you'll excuse me, I gotta go flip burgers for 7 hours. Yeah tell me about it. I'm quitting tonight. With my computer knowledge, I don't have to put up with this. Click here for previous news updates

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