Stonehenge 3D - great work Mr Blackledge!
Blitz3D Forums/Blitz3D Programming/Stonehenge 3D - great work Mr Blackledge!
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| For those who haven't tried this and who are interested in history and specifically ancient stone circles, this is a must. In the 1980's I became very interested in Stonehenge, and thought I knew a lot about it, until a little while ago, when John showed me this project which was then near to completion. It's got so much in it! If you are an educator you should seriously consider purchasing the product, it is well worth the investment. You get to see how Stonehenge was built, why it was built in stages, with the use of animations, voice over, music and lots of detail, you can explore or enter a story mode and search out the 30 speaking characters - some who challenge you to accomplish tasks for them, in full historical context. The clear and precise explanations of the use of Stonehange as a way to monitor sun and moon movement across the heavens is fascinating. Stonehange 3D is a really great way for kids and adults alike to explore the history and the meaning behind Stonehenge, and I heartily recommend it. John has poured his genuine love and passion for history into this project - it shows and he definatley deserves to do well with it. Excellent work John and good luck with it! IPete2. |
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| Aha, I thought they had stolen his media. I've had a play about with the demo. |
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| Puki - stolen my media? I hope not. Who would do such a thing? Mind you, if it doesn't get stolen will that seriously affect my street-cred? Pete mate, you can write my blurb anytime. Thanks. I know this community has a lot of games writers and players, but just to be clear Stonehenge3D is not a game in the normal sense (sorry, Puki). I've had trouble enough with academics saying "This is a game!" and me saying (best John Cleese mumble) "No it's not." The fact is that most of the info is imparted, as Pete says, by undertaking tasks for the various characters, the idea being that you eventually become a priest of Stonehenge. I've felt for a long time that 3D is totally under-rated as a teaching medium; who really wants to read text in boxes? I'd much rather be shown, through animation. And yes, there is a dragon in there, and you can fly it. Just don't tell English Heritage. ; ) |
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| I have to agree its very well done, i spent some time walking around Stonehenge3D, theres lots of information i wasnt aware of. its great experience for those intrested in stonehenge or archaeology. i hope you have a lot of success with this john. kev |
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| Hi Kev, thanks for the compliments. This one doesn't use WinBlitz3D coz it was started so long ago and the gui is in the same mood as the graphics - Celtic. But for the next one maybe... |
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| Actually, I have insider information... all of the media was stolen from the real Stonehenge! |
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| It's a lie I tell you! A lie! Hey do you know we couldn't even shoot video when we were down there - you have to first write for permission months before, then pay a fee! - to film something that belongs to us all, and that we already maintain through our taxes. |
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| This one doesn't use WinBlitz3D coz it was started so long ago and the gui is in the same mood as the graphics - Celtic. I'm a Gers man meeself ;) Good job! |
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| john i think your choice of gui for Stonehenge3D is the right one, imho winblitz3d would not be suitable. kev |
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| I've always been interested in Stonehenge, and so I think this is an excellent way to present it to people. Great implementation with the choice of tour and exploration etc. Very very good indeed. Unfortunately, I get constant MAVs. One of them occurred when I was playing with the terrain detail slider, one happened when I tapped the guide on the shoulder for a tour, and 2 others just seemed to happen at random times. The last one happened when I approached the river just south of Stonehenge. I was marvelling at the nice water effect and then *bang* back to the desktop. I wish you great success with this, and I hope my MAV reporting helps out. |
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| Ervin - I may be a little quick to say this, but I don't think it does. As the blurb says, this product has essentially been finished for 3 years, but for personal reasons it hasn't been marketed till now. This means that in the meantime it has been tested on at least 15 machines of all different specs, and in that time demo'd in front of the Head of Stonehenge for English Heritage, and four different Heads of Liverpool Museums, so it is the most confidently bug-free program I've ever written. The effects you describe are so unrelated and sporadic that I can only think that there is an external process at work affecting the graphics buffer or draw surface. (Did you know for example that NetMeeting hijacks the graphics card and causes any Blitz program which is then run to report "Cannot create 3D window.") Possibly you have a screen-saver like process trying to kick in? On most PCs you can simply Alt-Tab back into SH3D, but some drivers can't handle a change from full-window to Desktop. If you can provide more info then I'll certainly look into the problem. |
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| Ervin, Well I just downloaded the demo and installed it and everything is fine, no MAVs at all, wandered down to the river, tapped everyone I met on the shoulders and they duely spoke to me and all was well. I even fiddled with the terrain detail and the went down to the coast to see the vista, no problems at all to report. I wonder what the problem is? What OS are you running? What anti visus are you running? Yes, the water effect is lovely isn' it? IPete2. |
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| That's really weird. I'm running: Windows XP Pro SP2 NOD32 Counterspy I'll have a dig around and see if I can figure out what is causing the problems. EDIT: Looks like my PC was indeed doing something strange, as I've just now been running Stonehenge 3D for around 15 minutes, and there were no problems whatsoever. I apologise for any confusion this has caused. Is there any way to get my posts removed from this thread? I don't want the wrong impression to get out about this fantastic program. |
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| Is there any way to get my posts removed from this thread? I don't want the wrong impression to get out about this fantastic program. Many thanks for that Ervin. If you can work out what's happening I'm sure all Blitzers would appreciate knowing. |
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| Could someone tell me where to look for the DL?... all Google came up with was a load of old VRML "SuperScape" type walk-throughs? |
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| http://www.stonehenge3d.com demo'd in front of the Head of Stonehenge for English Heritage, and four different Heads of Liverpool Museums. impressive john, how did you pull that of? kev |
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| Thanks Kev :) |
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| Nice work John. Surely an inspiration to the rest of us. |
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| Hi John. I've spent some more time with Stonehenge 3D, and it hasn't crashed on me at all. I honestly can't think what caused the problems before, but I haven't been able to reproduce them. It must have been something on my computer. Incidentally, I really like the way the program goes from sunny weather to gloomy, rainy weather. Very nicely done. EDIT: I run several security applications, and I've been trialling a number of different ones lately, so one of them might have messed things up. In fact, I'm certain it would have been something like this, as some security programs do funny things at kernel level. My system is nice and stable now, and so is Stonehenge 3D. Once again, my apologies for any confusion caused. |
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| Chroma: I'll be getting big-headed. Ta. Ervin: thanks so much for trying to track down the problem, and for the exoneration of SH3D. Yeah, the day/night cycle was one of those things where you think 'I'll just move the sun around the world', then a month later 'What have I bitten off? Everything has to be changed in realtime... fog rgb, sky rgb, stars, character shadow lengths.' Kev: Well since you ask, it would be nice to tell the story for once… The quick answer is ‘b*llsh*t with a smile’. I tried a couple of phone calls to English Heritage and got nowhere with the gatekeeper, so phoned back, asked who the top man was, then rang off. Then rang again asking for him, was told he was out but would be back tomorrow. I said tell him I called and I’ll ring tomorrow. Rang the next day and told the gatekeeper ‘Yes, he’s expecting my call.’ And simply coz he’s a nice guy we got invited down to demo SH3D in front of him and his team. Met a lot of resistance from them (‘What makes you think you know about this?’) but flattered them by saying ‘What I know is due to you people spending years on your knees in the dirt.’ At the end he said ‘I want this. I want it on big screens in the new visitor’s centre. Just make out your proposal and I’ll get it passed by the accountants.’ And now the warning to us all: We sent in the proposal, then phoned the accountant who said, ‘No, we’re not approving this. We already have a CD supplier.’ I said, ‘But the Head of Stonehenge has already approved it.’ She said, ‘We already have an existing contract with a CD supplier.’ To which I said, ‘I know your 2 existing suppliers, and neither produce realtime 3D.’ And she said, ‘I phoned our main supplier, who says that they’re already working on a 3D Stonehenge for us. They have a contract to supply all our CDs.’ I said, ‘Aside from the fact that they can’t do realtime 3D – they do not have this technology - the CD is not the media, merely the method of delivery. Do you get all your paper and books from only one supplier – I think not.’ But the subject was closed, and whenever I tried to phone the Head he wasn’t available (for the next 3 months?). My guess is that he’d been knocked back and put in his place (‘You don’t make marketing decisions.’). My other guess is that the ‘preferred supplier’ were laughing up their sleeves at how clever they’d been – 3 years later and no 3D products have been delivered to English Heritage, but they saw off any potential threat by just one phone call. With the Liverpool museums it was easier coz I lived in the area: ‘We’re a new small Liverpool company…’ Again, nice people, again, very keen, saw the potential of 3D for their line of work. We began serious discussions about adapting the Stonehenge3D engine to show Roman life in and around Liverpool (newly discovered that year), and we talked a budget of about £80k for what they needed. Then the Liverpool Museums all had their funds pulled by the government – this time at least they were apologetic, but they would probably have to let staff go. So sometimes sh*t happens, and it’s absolutely nothing to do with you whatsoever. Oh I nearly forgot. The next thing was that my brother (a landscape architect) got a deal with the people over here who look after all the stately homes, and also swung a deal for a 3D rendition of one of the homes. ‘This is on,’ he said ‘you’d better start the work.’ It’s a good job I waited. They also had their funds pulled, 3 months down the line. So I’ve come to the conclusion that trying to find work through government-backed institutions is an almost complete waste of time – in my case 3 years of it. Though I do know that my good friend IPete2 has had some success there. |
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| It's great! The sounds, the sights, the whole presentation was very professional and enjoyable. I feel like I've been to the Stonehenge visitors center now. Even learned a few things. Bravo, well done John. |
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| Very cool, i went through a 'Weird Wiltshire' & stonehengy phase a few years back. I thought your app was very informative and fun. You should send this to every history teacher in the UK! Have you thought about bulk licences for schools? Im sure you would sell many :) |
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| Schools, Dan? Let me tell you how it is: - They are all supplied by a central authority. - They are not allowed to decide or buy their own material. - The central authority always says: Is it in the current curriculum? - Even if it is, we can only buy from one of our 'preferred suppliers'. |
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| yeah, same with prisons.. |
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| - They are all supplied by a central authority. - They are not allowed to decide or buy their own material. - The central authority always says: Is it in the current curriculum? - Even if it is, we can only buy from one of our 'preferred suppliers'. Ugh, beaurocracy! Thats a shame. I recently sold several teds to a game development class in the US. So i was thinking uk schools could do the same (ie. still be allowed to think for themselvesif they think something would be an invaluable learning tool...) obviously not. At the very least the authority should be able to! Using 'prefered suppliers' sounds like unfair tender to me. :/ -It almost sounds sinsister ( ministry of truth :O type stuff ) It seems the UKs getting more COMMUNIST by the second. They will be deciding what bookshops & libraries are allowed to buy next. Prehaps the private schools will have more sense :/ -Edit- (more ranting) Check this out, they wont take your fun2learn educational boon yet they get away with this: Anyone for actual school lessons in how not to speak proper english? http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/4836406.stm LOL! I mean come on, for gods sake! loads of kids can barely speak english as it is! Im sure they will pick up the local slang soon enough anyway!! (i am not dissing local dialects by the way, got one myself, i just feel the time would be better spent actually learning something useful) En-e-way, 'nuf rantin, grate produkt john! :) |
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| Thanks Dan, While we're having a rant (sorry BRL, I know this should be in General Discussion - this will stop after this) let me replay a conversation I had with a teacher friend of mine, after one of my daughter's boyfriends said "Learning, what's the point?" So I phoned my friend Liz, a teacher, spluttering “And then I mentioned Priestley and Einstein, and the mistakes they made…” “John, they’ve probably never heard of Einstein.” “Of course they’ve heard of Einstein. Everybody’s heard of Einstein.” “They have - if they’ve been taught history and science. Otherwise he’s just the silly bloke with the fluffy hair.” “Sorry, Liz, you lost me there. How could they not be taught history?” “Because, generally it’s not taught in schools anymore.” “What are you talking about? It’s the basis. It’s the framework… I mean, I hated it, but it’s the backdrop to all other subjects!” “The present government has declared history to be one of the ‘wooley’ subjects, along with philosophy and a few others, and so it is now not one of the mandatory subjects.” “Liz – are you telling me that there’s no history being taught in schools at all?” “Well, history is now considered to be part of the social sciences. And is taught by the Social Science teacher. Or not.” “And if the Social Science teacher doesn’t know any history…” “It doesn’t get taught.” Right, enough. Let's get back to programming. |
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| Agreed. -hisssssss- (Dan releases steam pressure) What systems did you use to do the fog rgb, sky rgb, stars, character shadow lengths.' . Was it your own or 3rd party? |
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| Why don't you inquire/investigate how to become a "preferred supplier"? THEN, you could get your project in ALL the schools! |
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| @Dan: All Blitz's own, for fog, sky rgb. Character shadow lengths increase/decrease depending on the sun's position. I used a very simple Blitz sprite, though I must admit it took a lot of experimentation to get the sprite colour just right, then alpha it just right. But the trickiest part (for me, crap at maths) was calculating the angle of the sun to the character head, then the length of the shadow along the ground from that. @Sir Gak: The quick answer has already been given above; that most educational suppliers would rather not see us guys enter the market, because it's a market they want to completely control... to the point where the client was deliberately lied to, as descibed. (IPete2 might also have some stories along these lines.) I have friends in local government, education, and the health service, and they all say the same thing: Obvious bad performance is not due in any sense to deliberate malice, just the simple human imcompetence of people who in the current political climate are being forced to work like private companies, and have zero experience of doing that. |
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