Delta Engine Blog

As many of you propably already know this Friday (10. February) the DirectX 9 SDK February 2006 came out. It includes many updates of the DirectX 10 SDK for Windows Vista (you should use the Vista Feb 2006 CTP to use DirectX 10). But since DirectX 10 is c++ only and there is no hardware available to test (only software rasterizers) I'm not testing all that stuff out yet. But I can tell you the Help and the samples are really nice (they are prerendered into videos for seeing them without having to get Vista).

Another nice update in the SDK are the Managed DirectX for .NET 2.0 samples, most .NET 1.1 samples are now converted and it really makes sense to start using MDX 2.0. The only VERY ANNOYING fact is still the missing help for MDX 2.0 and the Tutorials are not converted either. What the fuck? Seems like we have to find out everything with the Object Brower in Visual Studio again. Oh my god, does MS have no resources to get this together? This is the third MDX 2.0 beta already.

I told you last time in my post about the December 2005 DirectX 9 SDK that I couldn't update the NormalMapCompressor tool to MDX 2.0. The main issue was the missing Texture Save method, but I had some other problems too. A quick look into the classes and methods of the new SDK indicates that most of this stuff has been resolved (many thanks to Tom Miller and Co. for implementing that).

In my next polynapping phase I will try to convert the NormalMapCompressor to MDX 2.0 and post the results here if that works.

As a sidenote: Polynapping works fine for me. I overslept again on friday a bit. I was trying to sleep at work, but it was too loud and when I finally was sleeping I wasn't waking up to my alarm clock and noone wake me up ^^. Yesterday I was a little bit more tired than the days before, but today I feel better again. I can also fall asleep more quickly now. Strange thing is I remember nothing after sleeping and it feels much longer than 30 minutes when sleeping just 30 minutes (or less if it takes some minutes to fall asleep). Maybe the REM sleep is still deprived and will kick in tomorrow (then 1 week has passed).