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This fork of the Intensity/Syntensity engine is based off of quaker66’s wonderful port of this engine to the newest Sauerbraten SVN code, previously it was believed that (We’ll just call it Syntensity from now on though I prefer Intensity), was based on Sauer code from a while back. (Ask people with better short-term memory exactly when)

quaker and I stay in pretty constant contact and he has decided that we’ll consider his fork the “stable” branch, and my fork the “development” branch of what is now the “new” syntensity. As we don’t know when the other patches will be included and we both seem to frequently develop for the platform we’ll be using these repositories as a way to share code with each other and if you so desire, with you as well.

He is a much more adept C coder than I so you can always expect more stability and sanity from him. I on the other hand am not so adept a C coder and in a way, Helen-Keller my path through things. Even so, you will still find interesting and useful things in my branch, I will also do my best to stay absolutely sync’d with quaker’s branch, as far down as to the minute of his last commit if possible.

Currently in active development I am working on my SkyManager project which is a sort-of environment management system for Syntensity. It’s use is geared towards FPS/RPG style games that would like to include the element of day and night in gameplay (or even just simply as a visual effect for extra eye-candy)

While GLSL shaders do exist to replicate some of what I’ve implemented, I imagine normal users would have trouble modifying them to suit their needs, especially as for a game you might not want to accurately render a sky. Sometimes you just want it to look the way you want it to with little effort. Skymanager can help you do that, even if you have no experience making skyboxes. Since Syntensity is geared towards users with little or no programming experience I hope the plugin is of some use to someone else wanting to include these features in their game. Also, the shaders are already overused for normal things in the game and already aren’t what I’d say is up to par for the render cost. (Don’t hit me eih) I’m specifically referring to the glass shader but regardless I really don’t care. I realize this engine was built for a first person shooter style game and that’s the way it’s written. This actually brings me to a point, the point of this repository other than Skymanager.

Other things I intend to work in to the engine;

= While we can set things like eyeheight ingame through the entity edit dialog, we can’t set things like model scale or other model related variables, I’d like to see this change. There are quite a few different games in which this could be useful. An RPG that has a shrink spell, or a FPS game where the player with the most kills without dying grows bigger and bigger as they kill more players. The possibilities for it’s use aren’t endless but they are justified.

= If you spend any time trying to accomplish advanced things with the javascript system you’ll find it lacking, sometimes even in basic cube commands that you might want to change. (The speed at which water caustics play, for example) – I hope to extend the javascript API set as much as possible to give access to as many different parts of the cube engine as I am able to. Even strange things that no one can see a justifiable use for. (Need to set the ambient level for all mapmodels at once?) No problem, just use my modeltweaks implementation to do crazy weird things just like that. I can see why the feature didn’t exist prior to now, because it wasn’t ever needed at all for first person shooter type games, but if you want to render a convincing day to night transition you can bet you’ll have to tweak the models.

= Eventually I’d like to get to whipping up all sorts of basic structure Syntensity would need to become a persistent world game engine. As it is now it’s more geared towards single world, single use games that don’t know anything about each other. I’d like to change this as well, and perhaps provide some platform for people that would like to have a persistent world, even spanning multiple worldservers- to build upon.

Other things (far off in the twilight);

=A generic spell system would be nice to have, even for just messing around on maps. Not damage “spells” per se, but fun effects- Players being able to knock back or pull forward, flux gravity, etc. Basically a way for players to have even more of an impact on the environment/entities around them.

=If I end up getting very far into my development here you can probably expect to see even stranger implementations, such as player built structures and entities, more realistic dynamic lighting for Skymanager, and I might even go as far as to try to implement a single map that can progress through different seasons as time passes, from the leaves falling from trees in autumn, to the snow piling up on the ground, and the leaves growing back in the spring- (along with other things like flowers and other plants)

If you’d like to chat with quaker or myself about any of this, you can always stop by the main project’s home on Freenode in #syntensity.