JET3D

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3-28-2001

JET3D: Concerning Issues, tips for current and potential users

EDITOR: "The last straw" march 27, 20001

As of February 2001 we simply scrapped the use of Jet3Ds level editor, the code is just as much of a mess as the engine. This some time after we dubbed the game engine itself as un-usable, we thought we would try to add the WYSIWYG editor to another game engine. BAd idea! The real problem resides in making the real-time WYSIWYG interface with the engine to work with another engine. We finally decided to go with another level editor. Too much of the Jet3D engine code was intertwined with the editor code. way to much work to be done. In this case rewriting the code from scratch would be the best choice as I believe Wild Tangent must have done. I also would like to mention 3D realms issue with a good engine simply trying to modify it. The Unreal engine. This is reported to be the reason (mainly) for the huge delay in the " Duke Nukem forever" title. They had said something in the effect of. "It would have been easier for us to have written our own game engine and tools rather than to modify an existing engine, as we see now." Now this is a stable Unreal engine, imagine an unstable engine like Jet3D. So there is no wonder why the Jet3D community is small. We brought up serious issue we discovered long before the rest of the community really listened and found out on there own. So now I say the final conclusion, write you own engine and tools, it would be faster than fixing Jet3D for any real use. And now we know the editors best feature can't be used either with other engines. So I must that Jet3D is a waste of time. Try to get example code elsewhere and build your own engine, less effort would be needed my guess is. Try to salvage what you can from Jet3D if there is anything to learn from it. And if you really like it, look into Wild Tangent's game driver.

Don't waste ANY time with this engine for game development of any kind, if at all take it on yourslf as a proficient C++ program to solve the real isues or simply re-write the code and name it something else.

Noted on May 5th, 2000:

Good and bad, novice or advanced, you all may learn something here, I tried to list a few of our experiences with this game engine, and decided to post them here so you all can learn what we have learned, and know what you are getting into. Some of this info is more like user TIPS, while others are like complaints. : )
We know that this engine is only in a pre-alpha stage, I guess we just weren't sure how much had to be done to it to get it up to speed with say Genesis3d.
Take note that some of these "negative" issues may have been remedied, in that case disregard that statement.
All apply to the original Jet3D version released on 11-99, unless otherwise noted. Many issues still apply as the community takes their crack at fixing, updating and enhancing this engine and tools in hopes to enable it to live up to it's potential.

Some things may not relate even as this was posted, this is currently more of a facts sheet for people seriously considering to use this game engine. We hope that users at a crossroads will be able to decide as to what is right of their needs, as far as what game engine to go with. Seriously, at this point I don't recommend Jet3d for beginners nor do I recommend it for serious game developers, it is far from ready and stable for such a project. As-is, it is a great piece of architecture, but better to tinker with for the hobbyist, or would-be game engine developers,
as opposed to the serious game developer. Below I have stated some issues that one may not discover without much time and research on their own.
Either way I hope this information is helpful to all who visit and view this page, and good luck in whatever you endeavor into. You are all my kind of people...

...Welcome to all ...especially those Gamer's who desire to be Game developers.

Jet3D Feature NOTES:

TERRAIN

Can't be sized large enough to be used like actual terrain.
I haven't been able to get the better height maps to work in it, that use shades of gray, dithered, as normal height maps work elsewhere. A good example is the genscape terrain generator for Genesis3d. (see the "World of Genesis" link on this websites "links" page.) I used this hieghtmap that can with this Genscape, and it didn't work with Jet3d at all. Yet, it of course does quite well with other programs. I am not sure if it couldn't handle the more "Dithered" area's. I just know, we need something that works better.
"Holes also a problem, I map a 4 shades of gray height map it mad a cool Yosemite looking rocky cliff. But there were "Holes" all over, that change when you move the camera about.
The terrain object has no collision properties about the contour of the terrain surface. I think it may just be a simple bounding box that wraps around the whole thing. Definitely not ready for primetime.
Texturing your terrain gets unsatisfactory results as well. This feature needs a serious re-work/over haul
Type in the full path and the *.bmp file name in the box and hit enter, if it returns to saying "none" it can't find the file. We made it simple and left or height maps on drive C:\ path. EXAMPLE: C:\hieghtmap1.bmp.
Keep your maps 256 grayscale. Although I haven't had much luck with more elaborate maps as I said.

WORLD TEXTURES

Textures above 256x256 will no show properly in the Jedit texture is thumbnail preview. As though they are being shown with only 16 colors.
You can use textures above 1024 but will seldom need them.
Textures must all be placed in the jet3d\bin\global materials directory.
After you have added a few more of your own textures you will find: A) the thumbnail view is extremely tedious, the pull down list is a faster way to "surf" for desired textures. But... The list, though it may seam to be alphabetized, is really not at all, scroll down some more, welcome to the un-organized pre-alpha version of Jet3d!
When you drop new textures into the global materials directory when the jedit program is open. They will not show in the texture browser kilts or thumbnail preview. You'll have to restart the editor for the to show.

WORLD EDITOR - JEDIT

The world parameters are approximately 8184 x 8184. that is 4092 in any direction from the coordinate point of 0,0,0.
If you cross this point you level will render black as though you have no lights.
You are limited to a certain number of light map faces. Jet3D seams to assign far to many light maps faces per brush face. This means that if you try to build any normal size world. You will at one point or another end up with a "White screen" in the 3d view port. All attempts to rebuild or update, or even resizing the view ports can cause a crash. You will have to delete the number of brushes until you get the total face count down again. Currently no one is really taking this seriously. What it means is that you will have levels that zoom in Genesis3d, but crawl (frame-rate) in Jet3d.
You will be limited to about 1/4 the size of the world you can create in Genesis3d, thus nullifying the larger world parameters (bounds) ability. This because of the "light-map" problem.
I seriously recommend re-thinking things before you decide to make an elaborate map with the currently available version of Jet3D. [5-5-00]. For the reasons stated above, and the fact that your level you worked so hard on may not load into newer versions of the editor. This also tells us that Jet3D is far from ready to be used for a commercial game development project, mainly real-time rendered games.
There is a section of the code that says (commented) "not ready for prime time", this was found when trying to figure what kind of visibility optimization could be used, or if there was one floating around inside the code waiting to be implemented. Anything to make this slow ass engine to run better on maps that ran great in G3D.
Resizing the viewports while you have a larger (normal size) map opened in the editor can be fun while you wait for the views to be "redrawn." The best way around this is to resize so that one window is always larger. Then, if you require more view space for a particular view, simply change that port to display that view.
LOAD?START?IMPORT- JEDIT: Bugs / crashes
- Every time you load a map back into Jedit, it rebuilds all of the map and lighting, so be prepared to wait a while.
- The same occurs every time you preview the level in full screen. (I maybe wrong about this here, but that takes a while as well, as though it's doing the same thing. Note that much of what is mention on this webpage will not be noticed if you are not working with full size/normal level maps.)
- Also in the application that you may have to run the game like "JSHELL", the same goes as with one and two above.
- The *.j3d world level files seem to store all the textures you ever used, even if you delete them, so be prepared for huge files, all is store here maybe even sounds. We also noted this applies to previously used objects that were deleted as well like actors.
- Applying any objects besides lights may mean that you will NOT be able to re-load you map into the next release of Jet3D. Yes this applies more so to maps with ACTORS and other objects that were once added. Avoid placing objects in any of your maps until this engine/editor is stable!
- Be nice to see some way to import prefabs for Jet3D. with that wacky way that Jet3D stores it's texture info in the file (see VFILE notes about the forum), save and importing files with the proper texture coordinates has been unsuccessful. We have successfully imported a *.j3d file, but without any texture info. Re-applying textures and "fitting", panning, adjusting them again and again, can be a pain to one who is spoiled by the likes of Fabulous editors like UnrealED, BSP, and WorldCraft. Lets see how the community comes up with their import function, which will save the info as a text file. Like the *.t3d format in UnrealED. good luck guys!~

WINDOWS 2000 ISSUES

Directx issue? The 3d view tends to draw cross connecting wireframes in the 3d view when it is in the wireframe mode.(If your able to code in this "wireframe" mode/ability.) It does this is 3DSMAX as well.
Also actor studio no longer works in the D3D mode in windows2000.
No DOS windows are supported either in case you decide to write something like a utility. Make it all windows.
We have trouble after adding our own updates and enhancements getting the engine to run under windows2000, and on machines with windows98/IE5.01. We spent far to much time back tracking the added code, debugging, only to come up with the source of the problem but no solution.

SYSTEM & SOFTWARE REQUIREMENTS/PERFORMANCE NOTES

Windows 95 must have internet explorer 4.01 or higher to run Jet3d.
Updating to Internet explorer 5.01 has cause some machines to not be able to run Jet3D, for what we can tell. Still trying to figure that one out.
Direct X 7.0 or higher is required.
Your video display needs to be set to 1024x768
Software mode may not work at all when you set-up/change the 3d view config.
Should have 64 Megs, but recommend 128 just like with Unreal. Mainly for larger maps to be loaded.
CPU: 266 or higher, I say this because anything you create with this engine will need that fast of a CPU or higher, and you will want to test the frame rates as you build with the recommended CPU speed. (Good practice)
3D acceleration Card. 8 MEG RAM or higher. Software mode simply sucks! Remember how slow the animated Genesis3D logo went when you chose the software driver? That was just a small preview of what kind of frame rate/game speed you were to deal with.
Glide is not supported, lets face it when Direct 3d about to completely pass up Glide, we won' hear much about it for long anyways. D3D is the video driver for Jet3D.
Cyrix CPU chips are NOT supported.

ACTOR STUDIO

Follow the same instructions as you did with Genesis3D actor studio to create an actor.
Get the CVS version to avoid those crashes you get with the jet3d version of actor studio when you hit the settings tab.
We haven't figured out how to use Actor studio for Jet3d without first building with the Genesis3D version and then opening the saved *.prj file in the Jet3d version, point to the *.NFO file for that actor and build. If you add a Vertex weighting property to your actor, it will lose this in the translation. However, I think that when this property is applied, it will build in Jet3d's actor studio stand alone. Maybe you can let us know about this? ; )
Always empty your .BLD temp directory when you re-build any actor. You can do this by selecting "project/clean" from the project pull down menu.
Textures in fact be rectangular. 64x128, 128x256, etc. Stay with-in the parameters allowed. 32,64,128,256 squared at 256 colors.
The color that sits in the #255 palette position (the 256th color), will in fact be render as "see-through", or "invisible". Save you textures in 255 colors to avoid this, unless you want to make special use of this feature. ; )
3DSMAX users: Don't forget to bone and "physique" your models. Add at least one bone to any model, even a static object.
Don't have 3DSMAX? Try Truespace or Milkshape3d, Truespace v1.02 is free! See our 3d modeling link / webpage as to how to download this freebie.

WHAT IS JET3D over GENSIS3D?

Jet3d: What's good about it compared to Genesis3D?

*(Plus-other added notes)

Added vertex weighting ability to 3d models.
World engine can handle larger than 256x256 textures on actors as well. (would need to change the code in actor studio though)
WYSIWYG editor, nothing tops in editor light placements when you can see the results instantly! By July 2000, expect Architect III (formerly Geometry Box III) to take the prize for best editor. (hint - hint)
No BSP compile. Remember compiling maps from morning til night? Try 20 minutes max with Jet3D.
Love that CSG geometry construction!
Technology, if it ever gets stable enough to seriously use. This engine in many ways is better than Unreal!
Comments: No documentation, No forum support at all from it's developer "Eclipse", our on you own in this un-commented mess of code.
Curved surfaces is NOT anywhere in the code, you would have to add it from scratch.
Neither is Radiosity lighting, though community members have tossed the idea around, we may not see this soon, or really need this for that matter. After all, colored lights can be almost just as fun!

Genesis3D over JET3D:

Not the newest technology, but is a stable as can be!
Ready for serious use without having to deal with any real engine problems.
Ask yourself if you want to develop a game or develop a game engine. If the second is true go with Jet3D. but if you seriously want to make a game, use Genesis3D and check on Jet3d in 6 months (or more). Half-life opposing force, Soldier of Fortune, they still used this "QUAKE" style technology, which is basically what Genesis3D is. So it can be of some serious use for those with some fresh ideas.
The G3D Forum is loaded with help! If you have the time you can find answers to almost any Question you have, I also noted that you get many answers from the developers themselves.
Lots more tutorials on this, and some handy API references!
Has a track record of published games unlike Jet3d.
Radiosity Lighting - Mention to the fans of this rendering option

JET3D: THE CVS VERSION: Good stuff Maynard!

The community as a whole has organized itself impressively to provide incremental updates to the Jet3d engine and tools. This is called the CVS project.
See the www.jet3d.com pages for more info on this, and where you can download the latest version (sourceforge) The Jet3d community seems more friendly and professional in a way than others. No flame wars or bad attitudes, just a friendly serious community. However, what I am able to gather from this, is that the team is more inclined to add the "buzzers and whistles" to the editor. While the more serious problems lay unsolved with the engine. If this keeps up we will have a long time to wait for this engine to really be of some use to ANY real-time game developers out there. But the editor is looking good !This needs to be considered as well if you are considering Jet3D and are curious as to how the community is coming along with Jet. Basically, the engine has been left solely to the community to update, enhance, debug, so we really need to pay attention to the progress of the CVS, and other posted fixes and enhancements released by the Jet3D community.

VERTEX EDITING - (CVS version only)

If you are using the CVS version of JET3D note that if you drag vertexes together to make something like a roof peak, that this will not produce un-predictable results. The way around this is to zoom in close and make an slight distance between the two, that will make it look a peak/point from further away. This cause a "face with no normal" error in Genesis3d when importing a brush that has the vertexes touch or overlapping.
Left click to select vertex, while in vertex mode. And hold shift key down while you hold the left mouse button and drag the vertex.
Watch of for the dreaded "concave" shape/brush that also doesn't work in Quake engines. The Quake Qoole editor had it set so it would "snap" back and display a warning dialog when you started to create an "Illegal" brush shape. But that was the only editor that had that luxury, this editor is no exception.