Balder Release Rss Feed

Updated Release: Balder - SL5 (Apr 13, 2011)

adept — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:45:32 GMT

Balder Silverlight 5 release

Close to parity with the SL3/4 features.

Released: Balder - SL5 (Apr 13, 2011)

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 17:45:32 GMT

Balder Silverlight 5 release

Close to parity with the SL3/4 features.

Updated Release: 0.8.8.9 (Oct 07, 2010)

adept — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:48:28 GMT

Perspective corrected texture mapping
perspective corrected Z buffering
Dual texture support with mixing
Enhanced material support
Shaded textures, flat + gouraud
Rewritten lighting code for rendering
New skybox, utilizing perspective projection in Silverlight
Bilinear filtering
Performance enhancements
Subpixel rendering
Multiple games in one page
Clearer exceptions
InstancingNodes - faster bindable solution
Extensible FileLoader support - one can load from anywhere
ChamferBox primitive type
Vertex coloring support - reads vertex colors from ASE files
Multi/Sub material rewritten - faces no longer has Material, but a Id reference instead
Wireframe support for Materials
Statistics added
Shine + ShineStrength for materials added
Color manipulation optimized, using integers
Smoothing group fix for primitives Cylinder and Ring
Optimized heightmap
CLUT system removed - too slow
Frustum clipping of objects
Matrix optimized - going for the solution most use, public fields instead of array as before
Started implementation of MipMap levels for textures
Rewritten texture system - introducing the concept of map
More details on ManipulationEvents
Optimizations for Windows Phone 7
Added more unit tests
Optimized mouse intersection with objects

Released: 0.8.8.9 (Oct 07, 2010)

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 15:48:28 GMT

Perspective corrected texture mapping
perspective corrected Z buffering
Dual texture support with mixing
Enhanced material support
Shaded textures, flat + gouraud
Rewritten lighting code for rendering
New skybox, utilizing perspective projection in Silverlight
Bilinear filtering
Performance enhancements
Subpixel rendering
Multiple games in one page
Clearer exceptions
InstancingNodes - faster bindable solution
Extensible FileLoader support - one can load from anywhere
ChamferBox primitive type
Vertex coloring support - reads vertex colors from ASE files
Multi/Sub material rewritten - faces no longer has Material, but a Id reference instead
Wireframe support for Materials
Statistics added
Shine + ShineStrength for materials added
Color manipulation optimized, using integers
Smoothing group fix for primitives Cylinder and Ring
Optimized heightmap
CLUT system removed - too slow
Frustum clipping of objects
Matrix optimized - going for the solution most use, public fields instead of array as before
Started implementation of MipMap levels for textures
Rewritten texture system - introducing the concept of map
More details on ManipulationEvents
Optimizations for Windows Phone 7
Added more unit tests
Optimized mouse intersection with objects

Created Release: 0.8.8.9 (Oct 07, 2010)

adept — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:38:23 GMT

Perspective corrected texture mapping
perspective corrected Z buffering
Dual texture support with mixing
Enhanced material support
Shaded textures, flat + gouraud
Rewritten lighting code for rendering
New skybox, utilizing perspective projection in Silverlight
Bilinear filtering
Performance enhancements
Subpixel rendering
Multiple games in one page
Clearer exceptions
InstancingNodes - faster bindable solution
Extensible FileLoader support - one can load from anywhere
ChamferBox primitive type
Vertex coloring support - reads vertex colors from ASE files
Multi/Sub material rewritten - faces no longer has Material, but a Id reference instead
Wireframe support for Materials
Statistics added
Shine + ShineStrength for materials added
Color manipulation optimized, using integers
Smoothing group fix for primitives Cylinder and Ring
Optimized heightmap
CLUT system removed - too slow
Frustum clipping of objects
Matrix optimized - going for the solution most use, public fields instead of array as before
Started implementation of MipMap levels for textures
Rewritten texture system - introducing the concept of map
More details on ManipulationEvents
Optimizations for Windows Phone 7
Added more unit tests
Optimized mouse intersection with objects

Released: 0.8.8.9 (Oct 07, 2010)

Thu, 07 Oct 2010 18:38:23 GMT

Perspective corrected texture mapping
perspective corrected Z buffering
Dual texture support with mixing
Enhanced material support
Shaded textures, flat + gouraud
Rewritten lighting code for rendering
New skybox, utilizing perspective projection in Silverlight
Bilinear filtering
Performance enhancements
Subpixel rendering
Multiple games in one page
Clearer exceptions
InstancingNodes - faster bindable solution
Extensible FileLoader support - one can load from anywhere
ChamferBox primitive type
Vertex coloring support - reads vertex colors from ASE files
Multi/Sub material rewritten - faces no longer has Material, but a Id reference instead
Wireframe support for Materials
Statistics added
Shine + ShineStrength for materials added
Color manipulation optimized, using integers
Smoothing group fix for primitives Cylinder and Ring
Optimized heightmap
CLUT system removed - too slow
Frustum clipping of objects
Matrix optimized - going for the solution most use, public fields instead of array as before
Started implementation of MipMap levels for textures
Rewritten texture system - introducing the concept of map
More details on ManipulationEvents
Optimizations for Windows Phone 7
Added more unit tests
Optimized mouse intersection with objects

Updated Release: 0.8.8.8 (Jul 26, 2010)

adept — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:17:25 GMT

Major breaking changes in namespace : Balder.Core.* is now Balder.*, Balder.Silverlight.Animation is now Balder.Animation.
Brought everything down from 2 DLLs to 1 DLL - Balder.dll, it contains everything
Swapped to the latest version of NInject - internally a lot of changes had to be done
Introducing Windows Phone 7 support in WP7 Silverlight Application with Hardware Accelarated graphics
Skybox support - property on Game and Viewport
Started working on iOS (iPhone/iPad) version
Started working on Xna version
Started working on Desktop version
One step closer to desig-time support, not quite there yet - hang in there
Shading support for textured models (both flat and gourd)
Lighting has been fixed a lot for OmniLight - takes into account the light color and the material information, still some work ahead on this subject though.
Some bug fixes in ASE loader + tests
Cleaned up some samples in SampleBrowser
Introduced IMap interface for Maps instead of tying everything to Image for DiffuseMap and ReflectionMap on Material. One can now implement any map types - but dimensions must be power of 2.

Released: 0.8.8.8 (Jul 26, 2010)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 21:17:25 GMT

Major breaking changes in namespace : Balder.Core.* is now Balder.*, Balder.Silverlight.Animation is now Balder.Animation.
Brought everything down from 2 DLLs to 1 DLL - Balder.dll, it contains everything
Swapped to the latest version of NInject - internally a lot of changes had to be done
Introducing Windows Phone 7 support in WP7 Silverlight Application with Hardware Accelarated graphics
Skybox support - property on Game and Viewport
Started working on iOS (iPhone/iPad) version
Started working on Xna version
Started working on Desktop version
One step closer to desig-time support, not quite there yet - hang in there
Shading support for textured models (both flat and gourd)
Lighting has been fixed a lot for OmniLight - takes into account the light color and the material information, still some work ahead on this subject though.
Some bug fixes in ASE loader + tests
Cleaned up some samples in SampleBrowser
Introduced IMap interface for Maps instead of tying everything to Image for DiffuseMap and ReflectionMap on Material. One can now implement any map types - but dimensions must be power of 2.

Updated Release: 0.8.8.7 (Jul 08, 2010)

adept — Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:18:45 GMT

The new version represents a quantum leap in some areas for the engine.
Especially around performance and featureset. Its been almost 6 months
since the last release, and a lot has happened in those 6 months.
You'll find the highlights below.

Performance improvements :

Scanline renderers has improved quite a bit
Lighting calculations
NodesControl
Startup improvements
Content caching - loading the same content twice will only clone existing in cache
Color class - conversion plus operations are rewritten, introduced ColorAsFloats
Dependency properties now represented as Property<> with caching in it

Bugfixes :

World matrix + general matrix fixups
NodesControl fixed, one can now nest these, plus a massive performance improvement during databinding using the ItemsSource.
Mouse events actually working - 0.8.8.6 had quite a few bugs with this, they are pixel perfect
PivotPoint fixed - working recursively
Completely rewritten rendering pipeline for stability, expandability and performance
Memory leaks in mouse event handling
Fixed Asset handling system - had a few bugs in it. Still has to revisit this.
Parsing of ASE files now use invariant culture all over the place. Had a couple of places it didn't.

New features :

Manipulation events on objects, implemented using mouse events. They contain more detailed information about the object being manipulated, such as material information. Also, the events are not like the mouse events, they actually contain delta information about the manipulation occuring.
Tooltips, there is a property on all objects called Tooltip, you can create tooltips as you please, as you'd do with the TooltipService in Silverlight for other objects. The TooltipService will not work, hence the specialized property for it.
DirectionalLight - basic directional lighting
ViewLight - lighting that is "attached" to the camera/view
ArbitraryHeightMap - heightmap that can have its corners placed arbitrarily
SmoothingGroups implemented
New ASE parser - supporting multiple objects, world matrix. Also a lot faster.
Ring - geometry type
Started implementation of a ChamferBox - very basic at this point
Passive Rendering, will draw in wireframe during interaction and flip to full rendering

when interaction has stopped. When no interaction, it will not render, Balder goes idle.

Pausing - for pausing everything.
Grabbing a frame from the Display can now be done
Container for renderable nodes - has its own world coordinate system that can be manipulated. Lights can't be placed in this container.
BubbledEvent system for events that needs to bubble up in the hierarchy
Messenger system for decoupling and stability
IGeometryDetailLevel - basically only used for Passive rendering at this point
Geometry artifacts such as Face, Vertex and so forth are now classes and has been generalized. Its now up to the implementing platform to create specialized versions of them.
Removed MEF and introduced a specialized TypeDiscoverer instead.

Development environment :

Changed to Visual Studio 2010
Build server up and running with a more complete Balder.build file for continuous integration

Breaking changes :

IGeometryContext does no longer hold the geometry data directly, introduced something called. IGeometryDetailLevel. One can get the full detail level, which is the default (and only for now), by calling the method GetDetailLevel() on the IGeometryContext. In addition, any Geometry has a property called FullDetailLevel for convenience.
Mouse events has been specialized - they are named the same as one is used to from Silverlight, but the MouseEventArgs has been "duplicated" in Balder.Core.Input. The reason for this is that the Silverlight class for this is sealed and does not have a public constructor, and the mouse event handling needs to handled in a special manner in Balder. Also, the events are now bubbled

Released: 0.8.8.7 (Jul 08, 2010)

Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:18:45 GMT

Scanline renderers has improved quite a bit
Lighting calculations
NodesControl
Startup improvements
Content caching - loading the same content twice will only clone existing in cache
Color class - conversion plus operations are rewritten, introduced ColorAsFloats
Dependency properties now represented as Property<> with caching in it

Bugfixes :

World matrix + general matrix fixups
NodesControl fixed, one can now nest these, plus a massive performance improvement during databinding using the ItemsSource.
Mouse events actually working - 0.8.8.6 had quite a few bugs with this, they are pixel perfect
PivotPoint fixed - working recursively
Completely rewritten rendering pipeline for stability, expandability and performance
Memory leaks in mouse event handling
Fixed Asset handling system - had a few bugs in it. Still has to revisit this.
Parsing of ASE files now use invariant culture all over the place. Had a couple of places it didn't.

New features :

Manipulation events on objects, implemented using mouse events. They contain more detailed information about the object being manipulated, such as material information. Also, the events are not like the mouse events, they actually contain delta information about the manipulation occuring.
Tooltips, there is a property on all objects called Tooltip, you can create tooltips as you please, as you'd do with the TooltipService in Silverlight for other objects. The TooltipService will not work, hence the specialized property for it.
DirectionalLight - basic directional lighting
ViewLight - lighting that is "attached" to the camera/view
ArbitraryHeightMap - heightmap that can have its corners placed arbitrarily
SmoothingGroups implemented
New ASE parser - supporting multiple objects, world matrix. Also a lot faster.
Ring - geometry type
Started implementation of a ChamferBox - very basic at this point
Passive Rendering, will draw in wireframe during interaction and flip to full rendering

when interaction has stopped. When no interaction, it will not render, Balder goes idle.

Pausing - for pausing everything.
Grabbing a frame from the Display can now be done
Container for renderable nodes - has its own world coordinate system that can be manipulated. Lights can't be placed in this container.
BubbledEvent system for events that needs to bubble up in the hierarchy
Messenger system for decoupling and stability
IGeometryDetailLevel - basically only used for Passive rendering at this point
Geometry artifacts such as Face, Vertex and so forth are now classes and has been generalized. Its now up to the implementing platform to create specialized versions of them.
Removed MEF and introduced a specialized TypeDiscoverer instead.

Development environment :

Changed to Visual Studio 2010
Build server up and running with a more complete Balder.build file for continuous integration

Breaking changes :

IGeometryContext does no longer hold the geometry data directly, introduced something called. IGeometryDetailLevel. One can get the full detail level, which is the default (and only for now), by calling the method GetDetailLevel() on the IGeometryContext. In addition, any Geometry has a property called FullDetailLevel for convenience.
Mouse events has been specialized - they are named the same as one is used to from Silverlight, but the MouseEventArgs has been "duplicated" in Balder.Core.Input. The reason for this is that the Silverlight class for this is sealed and does not have a public constructor, and the mouse event handling needs to handled in a special manner in Balder. Also, the events are now bubbled

Updated Release: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

adept — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:19:28 GMT

IMPORTANT
Major namespace changes. In 0.8.8.0 we introduced a set of Controls that could be used directly in Xaml, these were located in the Balder.Silverlight assembly in the Balder.Silverlight.Controls namespace. Shortly after the release, we realized a better way of doing this and started to move things around.

All "native" elements in Balder.Core is now possible to use directly on a Silverlight Xaml surface.

This basically means for existing applications already utilizing the Controls namespace introduced in previous version, that you need to point it to another namespace.
All tutorials will be updated to reflect the changes.

All changes:

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Released: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 07:19:28 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Updated Release: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

adept — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:30:46 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Released: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 16:30:46 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Updated Release: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

adept — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:16:26 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Released: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:16:26 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Created Release: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

adept — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:10:17 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Released: 0.8.8.6 (Feb 08, 2010)

Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:10:17 GMT

Introduced Silverlight in Core, but still maintaining platform independence
- Using core objects directly in Xaml can now be done

Removed all controls in Balder.Core.Silverlight.Controls - not needed anymore

Introduced View namespace with IView interface and Camera implementing it

Viewport has View property insted of Camera

Moved rendering from a multithread environment to run synchronously on the CompositionTarget. It gives better performance, due to synchronization issues between all threads. Will be revisited in the future.

DebugLevel is now known as DebugInfo and is an object containing booleans - present on the Game control/class

Cylinder primitive introduced

Box primitive introduced

Pivot point for all nodes

Sprites rendering with alpha channel

Material system in place

Support for ReflectionMapping on materials

Rotation, Scale on nodes

New drawing routines, optimized

Heightmap primitive

SampleBrowser, can be found here

NodesControl - datadriven nodes control with templating - In Balder.Silverlight.Controls

NodesStack - datadriven stacking of nodes with templating - in Balder.Silverlight.Controls

Updated Release: 0.8.8 (Nov 30, 2009)

adept — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:43:23 GMT

Silverlight 3 only
Note: Source code at CodePlex does not reflect the changes - please go to GitHub for the latest source code.

Changes:

IMPORTANT: Coordinate system has been changed (Up is now positive Y instead of negative as with previous release)
Major namespace changes - any code that breaks, chances are things have moved into other namespace.
Rewritten Xaml support
- Game control, any children to Game are considered Nodes / objects - must be controls inheriting Node control
- Light support - OmniLight
- Mesh support
- Nodes can be manipulated by DataBinding and Storyboards - typically position, color and such
- Camera support on Game, property
- TypeConverter for Vectors - can be used as Position="0,0,0"
- Command support - Click event on nodes are forwarded as Commands
- Mouse events for Nodes (MouseEnter, MouseLeave, MouseLeftButtonDown, MouseLeftButtonUp)
- Debug Information can be set on Game (BoundingSphere is the only supported option for now)
Minor speedups
Totally rewritten initialization - no need to use TargetDevice.Initialize<>() anymore (marked obsolete) - just use the Game control.

Released: 0.8.8 (Nov 30, 2009)

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 20:43:23 GMT

Silverlight 3 only
Note: Source code at CodePlex does not reflect the changes - please go to GitHub for the latest source code.

Changes:

IMPORTANT: Coordinate system has been changed (Up is now positive Y instead of negative as with previous release)
Major namespace changes - any code that breaks, chances are things have moved into other namespace.
Rewritten Xaml support
- Game control, any children to Game are considered Nodes / objects - must be controls inheriting Node control
- Light support - OmniLight
- Mesh support
- Nodes can be manipulated by DataBinding and Storyboards - typically position, color and such
- Camera support on Game, property
- TypeConverter for Vectors - can be used as Position="0,0,0"
- Command support - Click event on nodes are forwarded as Commands
- Mouse events for Nodes (MouseEnter, MouseLeave, MouseLeftButtonDown, MouseLeftButtonUp)
- Debug Information can be set on Game (BoundingSphere is the only supported option for now)
Minor speedups
Totally rewritten initialization - no need to use TargetDevice.Initialize<>() anymore (marked obsolete) - just use the Game control.