Ardor3D has hit another milestone, bringing us up to version 0.3. You can read more about what this version brings here at this forum post. Expect 0.4 in about 2 months.

Enjoy!

The video preview of Wakfu below has been up on YouTube for a while, but I was watching it today and really thought it was quite cool for a number of reasons. For starters, I've always enjoyed Japanese manga as an art form. I also like "lite games" or "casual MMOs" that allow you to jump in and out as time permits and still feel like you've accomplished something.

But probably the bigger deal for me is that Wakfu is developed, both client and server, in Java. Moreover, they are using JOGL (a Java binding to OpenGL also used in Ardor3D) to do hardware accelerated graphics on the client.

So here is a company well known for their popular (4 million accounts created) Flash-based game, Dofus, switching FROM Flash to Java. Not something you see very often, particularly in this particular market segment. It will be interesting to watch them as they blaze new trails there.

So on to the movie. The in-game footage is more prominent in the second half of the video, particularly starting around 3:00.


(click through to YouTube for the HD version)

This past week I spent some time over with the folks in the Intelligent Robotics Group at NASA Ames Research Center. One of their projects is called Viz, a project that "provides scientists, rover operators, and mission planners with an integrated 3-D display for planetary exploration." Viz's last incarnation was written in jME 1.0 (with several tweaks to get it working well in multi-canvas RCP.) This time it is being done in Ardor3D.

It was a productive week I think, starting with a day where I spoke on the architecture of Ardor3D for almost five hours - and subsequently developed laryngitis. The rest of my stay was quieter, going over areas of the architecture specific to the project and even getting some bug fixes and coding done. I left there with a lot of respect for the team, a feeling of accomplishment for our API and some great plans for future development work on Ardor3D.

Oh yeah, and at the end of my visit I got to take a trip out to the Marscape and take a peek at some of the experimental rovers. :) Very cool.

The Ardor3D engine has reached the long awaited version 0.2.1!

Why long awaited? 0.2.1 was our target for making the source code publicly accessible which means everyone can now play with Ardor3D and participate in our forums. Keep in mind that we are still in our early stages and so there is not a lot of documentation, etc. On the other hand, now is a perfect time to get involved and get your hands dirty helping us shape the 3D Java engine of tomorrow.

Come check us out at Ardor3D.com.