GAME ENGINE CUBE

Definisi Game Engine

Game Engine adalah system perangkat lunak yang dirancang untuk menciptakan dan pengembangan video game. Ada banyak mesin permainan yang dirancang untuk bekerja pada konsol permainan video dan sistem operasi desktop seperti Microsoft Windows, Linux, dan Mac OS X. fungsionalitas inti biasanya disediakan oleh mesin permainan mencakup mesin render ( “renderer”) untuk 2D atau 3D grafis, mesin fisika atau tabrakan (dan tanggapan tabrakan), suara, script, animasi, kecerdasan buatan, jaringan, streaming, manajemen memori, threading, dukungan lokalisasi, dan adegan grafik. Proses pengembangan permainan sering dihemat oleh sebagian besar menggunakan kembali mesin permainan yang sama untuk menciptakan permainan yang berbeda.

Sebuah game engine dibagi lagi menjadi dua bagian besar. Yaitu:

·         API (Applicaiton Programming Interfaces) adalah bagian OS, servis dan libraries yang diperlukan untuk memanfaatkan beberapa feature yang diperlukan. Contohnya DirectX.

·         SDK adalah kumpulan dari libraries dan API yang sudah siap digunakan untuk memodif program yang menggunakan OS dan servis yang sama.

Tipe Tipe Game Engine

·         Roll-your-own game engine

Tipe game engine ini biasanya memperbolehkan developer lebih bebas dalam integrasikan komponen yang ingin dibentuk sebagai game engine mereka. Nah tipe ini lebih disukai karena beberapa dapat digunakan secara gratis. Tetapi dibalik itu semua terdapat kelemahannya yaitu banyak engine yang dibuat dengan cara ini malah menyerang balik developernya.

Biasanya, game engine tipe ini lebih disukai karena selain kemungkinan besar tersedia gratis, juga memperbolehkan mereka, para developer, lebih fleksibel dalam mengintegrasikan komponen yang diinginkan untuk dibentuk sebagai game engine mereka sendiri. Kelemahannya, banyak engine yang dibuat dengan cara semacam ini malah menyerang balik developernya. Menara Games Studio membutuhkan satu tahun penuh untuk menyempurnakan game engine nya, hanya untuk di tulis ulang semuanya dalam beberapa hari penggunaan karena adanya bug kecil yang sangat mengganggu.

·         Mostly-ready game engines

Engine tipe ini memiliki batasan tidak seperti tipe diatas yang memberikan keluwesan bagi developer tehadap gamenya. Nah ini ditujukan untuk tidak terjadi banyak error yang terjadi setelah game dibuat.

Biasanya game engine semacam ini memiliki batasan batasan, terutama jika dibandingkan dengan game engine sebelumnya yang benar benar terbuka lebar. Hal ini ditujukan agar tidak terjadi terlalu banyak error yang mungkin terjadi setelah sebuah game yang menggunakan engine ini dirilis, dan masih memungkinkan game engine nya itu sendiri untuk mengoptimalkan kinerja game nya. Banyak dari game engine seperti ini, Unreal Engine, Source Engine, id Tech Engine dan sebagainya, yang sudah sangat optimal dibandingkan jika harus membuat dari awal. Hal ini dengan serta merta menyingkat sangat banyak waktu dan jelas, biaya dari para Developer game.

Contoh tipe game engine yang seperti ini yaitu:

o    Unreal Engine

o    Source Engine

o    id Tech Engine

Beberapa contoh diatas sudah sangat optimal untuk digunakan dan dapat menghemat waktu dan biaya dari si developer game.

·         Point-and-click engine

Engine ini merupakan engine yang sangat dibatasi, tapi dibuat dengan sangat user friendly. Developer game bahkan bisa buat game sendiri menggunakan engine seperti:

o    GameMaker

o    Torque Game Builder

o    Unity3D

Dengan sedikit memanfaatkan coding, developer bisa rilis gamenya secara langsung.  Kekurangannya terletak pada terbatasnya jenis interaksi yang bisa dilakukan dan biasanya hal ini mencakup semuanya, mulai dari grafis hingga tata suara.

Kekurangannya terletak pada terbatasnya jenis interaksi yang bisa dilakukan, dan biasanya hal ini mencakup semuanya, mulai dari grafis, hingga tata suara. Tapi bukan berarti game engine jenis ini nggak berguna, bagi developer cerdas dan berdaya kreativitas tinggi, game engine bapuk seperti ini bisa dirubah menjadi sebuah game menyenangkan, seperti Flow. Game engine seperti ini memang ditujukan bagi developer yang ingin menyingkat waktu pemrogramman, dan secepatnya merilis game game mereka.

Beberapa contoh jenis game engine :

1. Freeware game engine/open source game engine

·    Blender

·    Golden T Game Engine (GTGE)

·    DXFramework

·    Ogre

·    Aleph One

·    Axiom Engine

·    Allegro Library

·    Box2D

·    Build Engine

·    Cube

·    Cube 2

·    DarkPlaces

·    jMonkeyEngine (jME)

·    Panda3D

·    Sphere

2. Commercial engines/game engine berbayar (komersial)

·    Alamo

·    A.L.I.V.E

·    BigWorld

·    DXStudio

·    Dunia Engine

·    Euphoria

·    GameStudio

·    Jade Engine

·    Jedi

·    Medusa

·    RPG Maker VX

·    RPG Maker XP

·    RPG Maker 2003

·    RPG Maker 95

·    Vision Engine

CUBE 2 ATAU SAUERBRATEN

Pernah mendengar Cube 2 Engine alias Sauerbraten? Game engine ini adalah multiplayer/singleplayer first person shooter yang GRATIS, dibuat dari desain ulang engine Cube FPS sebelumnya. Game engine ini sangat unik dan relatif mudah digunakan

Game engine ini pada dasarnya ditujukan untuk membuat pengguna atau pemainnya bersemangat untuk memodifikasi dan membuat level game yang sesuai dengan keinginan mereka. Jadi bila anda ingin membuat level game atau fitur yang canggih dengan teknologi terbaru maka anda akan kecewa. Sauerbraten atau Cube 2 tidak ditujukan spesifik untuk itu. Game engine ini tidak terlalu kuno sebenarnya tetapi karena pengembangnya tidak besar (hanya beberapa programmer saja) maka update yang ada tidak terlalu cepat. Tetapi game engine ini cukup fenomenal sebenarnya karena fitur unik yang dimilikinya.

Apa fitur uniknya? Anda bisa langsung membuat level game ketika sedang bermain game. Bahkan anda bisa bersama-sama dengan teman anda melalui jaringan LAN untuk memodifikasi level game yang ada. Menarik bukan? Editor yang ada langsung built ini didalam game. Inilah yang membuat game engine ini menjadi fun dan menantang untuk digunakan. Anda tidak hanya memainkan game yang ada saja namun bisa lebih dari itu.

Code yang ada pada Cube 2 adalah kode original dan anda bisa melihatnya karena game engin ini gratis. Saat ini game engine ini sudah digunakan oleh sebuah perusahaan untuk game komersil. Sementara programmer lain sedang memodifikasi game engin ini untuk genre RPG.

Fitur Game:

• Gameplay yang cepat dan intens seperti Doom2 atau Quake 1
• Mode mltiplayer yang bervariasi seperti: deathmatch, instagib, efficiency, tactics, capture (domination/battlefield style) dan coop edit
• Masterserver & ingame server browser
•  Tidak ada lag dalam gameplay
•  Dua model untuk singleplayer: DMSP (berkelahi melawan monster invasion pada jenis DM map), classic SP (berdasarkan progresi SP seperti game yang lainnya)
• Tersedia 7 senjata untuk kepuasan bermain : double barrelled shogun, rocket launcher, machine gun, rifle, grenade launcher, pistol, fist.

Fitur Engine:

• 6 directional heightfield in octree world structure allowing for instant easy in-game geometry editing (even in multiplayer, coop edit).R
•  Rendering engine optimized for high geometry throughput, supporting hardware occlusion culling.
•  Lightmap based lighting with accurate shadows from everything including mapmodels, smooth lighting for faceted geometry, and fast compiles.
•  Pixel and vertex shader support, each model and world texture can have its own shader assigned.
• Robust physics written specifically for this world structure.
•  Loading of md2/md3 models for animated characters, weapons, items, world objects.
• Network library designed for high speed games, client/server network system.
• Small but complete configuration/scripting language.
• Simple stereo positional sound system.
• Particle engine, supporting text particles.
•  3d menu/gui system, for in-world representation of choices.

Lisensi

Permainan ini freeware, Anda dapat dengan bebas mendistribusikan arsip dan / atau installer dimodifikasi pada media apapun. Anda dapat kembali kompres menggunakan format arsip yang berbeda cocok untuk OS Anda (misalnya zip / tgz / rpm / deb / dmg), setiap perubahan di luar yang membutuhkan izin eksplisit dari pengembang.

Anda dapat memainkan Cube 2: Sauerbraten untuk tujuan apapun selama Anda tidak menyalahkan para penulis untuk kerugian yang terjadi.

Jika Anda ingin menghasilkan konten baru dengan Cube 2 Engine, Anda harus menyadari bahwa kode sumber mungkin Open Source, tapi permainan dan media itu terdiri dari masing-masing memiliki lisensi dan hak cipta. Ini berarti bahwa Anda memiliki sekitar 3 pilihan:

•  Anda dapat menghasilkan konten baru untuk "Sauerbraten" game, misalnya sebagai peta kustom (.ogz / .cfg / tekstur dll). Berkontribusi konten ke game asli paling welcome, dan cara yang paling produktif bekerja dengan masyarakat.
• Jika Anda ingin membuat gameplay Anda sendiri di luar apa yang dapat Anda lakukan dengan peta, cara terbaik untuk melakukan ini adalah sebagai "mod" (sama seperti di atas, tetapi dengan executable baru yang menggabungkan gameplay Anda), yang membutuhkan instalasi yang sudah ada, dan menginstal hanya file baru Anda buat secara paralel ke file yang sudah ada.
• Jika Anda bersikeras untuk membuat permainan standalone berdasarkan Cube 2, menyadari bahwa hanya source adalah milikmu untuk digunakan secara bebas (jika Anda mematuhi lisensi ZLIB, lihat di bawah), sedangkan media tidak. Anda tidak bisa hanya mendistribusikan seluruh paket dengan file Anda diubah, karena mayoritas media permainan yang tidak Anda bebas menggunakan (itu dibuat oleh banyak penulis dengan berbagai lisensi dan pembatasan hak cipta). Kecuali Anda memiliki izin eksplisit dari para penulis, atau readme mengatakan secara eksplisit "dapat digunakan untuk tujuan" atau bahasa yang sama, maka akan ilegal untuk memasukkan dalam permainan standalone Anda berdasarkan mesin (Anda mungkin tidak berasumsi bahwa hanya karena file tidak memiliki izin eksplisit, bahwa itu adalah bebas dari hak cipta). Oleh karena itu, jika Anda ingin menghasilkan permainan mandiri, bersiaplah untuk membuat banyak peta, model, tekstur, suara dll dari awal sendiri.

Dalam pengertian ini Cube 2: Sauerbraten ini mirip dengan permainan seperti Quake (kode adalah Open Source, tapi medianya tidak), itu adalah permainan yang dimaksudkan untuk ditambahkan ke, tidak disalin dan digunakan sebagai template. Sauerbraten tidak dimaksudkan untuk menjadi cepat penciptaan permainan kit, itu adalah permainan.

Jika Anda ingin menggunakan kode sumber (lisensi ZLIB) dengan cara apapun, membaca src / readme_source.txt berkas dengan hati-hati.

Credits / Authors

Programming

• Wouter "Aardappel" van Oortmerssen: A lot of the general code, and the original concept and design. (website)
• Lee "eihrul" Salzman: ENet networking library, *nix ports, and a lot of the general code, especially rendering/lightmaps/physics related. (website)
• Mike "Gilt" Dysart: General programming, especially editing/physics related.
• Robert "baby-rabbit" Pointon: GUI, particle rendering, and movie recording code, MacOSX porting. (website)
• Quinton "quin" Reeves: Bots/AI code. Asissts with community management, documentation/wiki, and development. (website)

Additional Code

• Julian Mayer: MacOSX ports.
• Adrian "driAn" Henke: MD3 code.
• Jerry Siebe: Geometry rendering optimisations.

Level Design

• Kurt "kdoom" Kessler: A bunch of DM/capture maps, k_rpg1.
•  Shane Nieb: academy, authentic, autumn, bt_falls, c_valley, complex, curvy_castle, flagstone, garden, hallo, hashi, island, justice, nevil_c, nmp4, nmp8, nmp9, ot, park, shipwreck, turbine
• John "metlslime" fitzgibbons: metl* maps.
• MitaMan: singleplayer episodes
• With additional maps by: Aardappel, driAn, Gilt, voot, Bryan "KillHour" Shalke, staffy, sparr, JCDPC, ZappaZ, RatBoy, Fanatic, rocknrol, KaiserTodretter, BlikjeBier, wurfel, aftasardem, Lazy [HUN], Gregor Koch, Junebug, Gabriele "Blindabuser" Magurno, MeatROme, TUX, Mayhem, mIscreant, schmutzwurst, Kal, DairyKing, Hero, WahnFred, jonlimle, and others.

Art / Content

• John "Geartrooper" Siar: Mr. Fixit, Ironsnout, RPG characters, monsters, new hudguns and vweps.
• Gabriele "Blindabuser" Magurno: Logos, loading screen, announcer voices.
• MakkE: Mapmodels, old hudguns, items.
• Dietmar "dcp" Pier: Mapmodels, old hudguns.
• DarthVim: Old hudguns.
• Shane Nieb: Textures, Mapmodels, Skyboxes.
• Sock: The egyptian & tech texture sets (website).
•  Iikka "Fingers" Keranen: The ikbase ik2k texture sets (website).
•  Lunaran, Gibbie, Gregor Koch, Jésus "aftasardem" Maia, MitaMan, and philipk: Normalmapped texture sets.
• Additional art by: metlslime (textures), Than (textures), Remedy Entertainment Ltd (textures), Seth & Ulrich Galbraith (GPL models), Brian "EvilBastard" Collins, Conrad, Magarnigal, Psionic, James Green, Andreas Möller, Ryan Butts & Jeramy Cooke (md2 models), KaiserTodretter (items), Tentus (mapmodels), Kurt Kessler (mapmodels), Philip Klevestav (textures), leileilol/OpenArena (GPL bullet hole decal).

Sound / Music

• Marc "Fanatic" A. Pullen: Soundtrack.

Other

• Kristian "sleepwalkr" Duske: website / messageboard, hosting, master server.
• Pushplay: Documentation help.
• The SDL team: For their libraries (website).

Panduan Instalasi

Hal pertama yang perlu Anda lakukan adalah men-download game dan patch yang tersedia di http://sourceforge.net/projects/sauerbraten/files/ (tersedia juga projek Sourceforge). Paket – paket ini biasanya diberi label dalam format "sauerbraten_YYYY_MM_DD_CODENAME_PLATFORM" dan patch "patch_YYYY-MM-DD_PLATFORM", di mana YYYY adalah tahun, MM adalah bulan, DD adalah tanggal, Codename adalah nama edition, dan PLATFORM adalah OS yang digunakan.

Windows

• Jalankan file instalasi executable.
• Ikuti petunjuk di installer, pilih direktori intalasi (biasanya "C: \ Program Files \ Sauerbraten \").
• Jika ada patch untuk rilis ini, download dan ikuti metode yang sama di atas untuk menginstalnya, pastikan Anda menggunakan direktori instalasi yang sama.
• Pergi ke Desktop Anda / Start Menu dan menjalankan link "Sauerbraten".
• Catatan: Jika Anda ingin bermain Eisenstern (RPG WiP), copy link ini ke lokasi lain, namai dengan "Eisenstern", klik kanan dan pilih "Properties". Di kotak "Target" pada "Shortcut" tab, tambahkan "-grpg" sampai akhir. Seharusnya terlihat seperti: "C: \ Program Files \ Sauerbraten \ sauerbraten.bat"-grpg

Linux / BSD

Untuk game yang berjalan pada sistem berbasis Linux atau BSD dibutuhkan pengetahuan sedikit mengenai command line. Harap dicatat instruksi ini adalah untuk single user install, dalam kebanyakan kasus, Anda mungkin ingin menggunakan sistem kemasan yang disediakan oleh distribusi Anda (yang berada di luar lingkup dokumen ini).

• Pindahkan file instalasi ke direktori home Anda.
•  Bukalah konsol / terminal, Anda harus berada pada prompt yang terlihat seperti, [username @ hostname: ~] $ atau hostname: ~ $ (dalam banyak kasus, "~" adalah dipertukarkan dengan "/ home / username").
•   Ketik perintah ini (mengingat untuk menyesuaikan rilis dan platform):

Untuk menjalankan game, ketik:. / Sauerbraten_unix

Jika terjadi kesalahan:

•  "Cannot find shared object XXXXX". Anda tidak memiliki libraries yang diperlukan, lihat bantuan / dukungan distribusi Anda untuk informasi lebih lanjut tentang cara menginstal ini.
• "Segmentation fault". Hal ini bisa terjadi karena beberapa alasan, salah satu mungkin platform Anda tidak mendukung binari precompiled, cobalah membuatnya sendiri (Anda akan memerlukan libraries pengembangan yang diberikan oleh distribusi Anda).

Mac OS X

Running the game on a Mac OS X based system requires little user input. The user downloads a DMG file, drags the Sauerbraten game to /Applications/ or another location, and they double-click the icon to open it. The game creates the necessary preference files and creates autoexec.cfg in ~/Library/Application Support/sauerbraten/. Note that while it is technically possible to run the Cube 2: Sauerbraten: Trooper Edition or earlier applications unmodified on Mac OS X 10.3.x Panther, this can cause unusual bugs that should not be reported. In future releases Panther support will be dropped.

Mapping basics tutorial

To start mapping, press the "e" key (editmode). You will see a grid being drawn whereever you point. The small squares are a single cube unit (16x16 quake units), and the blue lines indicate 8 unit boundaries (128x128 quake units). Click (& drag) the cube the crosshair is in to select an area (you will see an orangy bounding box indicating your selection).

Selecting things in the 3D world may be weird at first, experiment in an existing map with selecting various size of areas and bits or geometry. To select cubes occupied by walls, you drag the cursor over the wall, and the selection box will show at the edges of the wall. Remember that you can fly through the map while dragging, so you can actually fly to the other side of a wall to complete the selection. It is best if you try this in combination with texture manipulation, so you can verify you selected what you intended.

Once you have a selection, you can modify it in all sorts of ways. Press [ and ] (raise/lower floor) on different selections to get a feeling for editing in 3D. If while editing, you forget some useful command or what key it is bound to, use the "editing" menu, which contains most editing operations.

To make a new map from scratch, use the "newmap" command. Just type "newmap 7" for now, or pick one from the menu. Cube maps are fixed size as you create them, so if while editing it grows towards its boundaries at some point you won't have any space left (you can then use the "mapenlarge" command to fix this).

if you made a new map, you will now see a large dark square room. This is the area you build your map in. There are several ways to make it brighter, for example your could place some lights (see below), but for now its probably easiest to use the "fullbright" command (console or menus) which makes the map bright until you load it again, or until you press "recalc" (R).

Now lets make a rough layout of your map. The most important command is for making fully solid walls, which has the default key F. Make some selections, and make them solid. At this point its already good to keep in mind that selections on multiples of powers of 2 are more efficient for cube to render than arbitrary sets of cubes, read the tip about "editing on the grid" below if you want to know more. If you want to make something not-solid (space) after you made it solid, simply select the solid and press G.

next you probably want to make some floor level changes and some stairs here and there, as all on one level makes for a rather boring map. select areas in between the solids you created and change their height (keys [ and ]), and also experiment with ceiling heights (keys O and P).

At this stage we have a rough layout, it may probably be wise to save your map (do this frequently). If you just say "savemap blah" in the console, it will end up as "packages/base/blah.cgz" (.cgz is the cube map format, which is short for gzipped-cubemap), and you will be able to reload it using just "map blah". If you want to save it in a non-default package (base), you specify its directory, i.e. "savemap mymappak/blah" saves to "packages/mymappak/blah.cgz". Loading maps works again similarly.

The packages are units of distribution (single projects), each of which can contain one or more maps, new textures etc. The "base" package will contain all standard maps and single maps not part of a bigger project (see map/savemap).

If you are satisfied with the layout at this stage, and you are pretty sure that you won't add extra areas, this may be a good time to go round the edges of the map and make all unused areas solid. Remember, solids block visibility and do not need to be rendered, so its good to make as much solid as you can. If you make an area solid and you still want to build something there, you can always make it not-solid again (G). Sometimes to do this you will need to select an area into the "void" (the blue area outside the map), where there is no editing grid (because cube can't know where you are "pointing"). You can select something here by simply starting your selection inside the map, and flying out into the void, where the camera itself will function as the other end of the selection. Try it.

Now lets do some texturing. Note that there is no texture alignment, so in most cases it may be easier to texture as you do the layout, because you will have the right selections already and can build the geometry to suit the texture alignment, but its quite easy to do afterwards as well, especially given cube's global texture replace feature. Maybe you have been building the map using default textures sofar, and were actually planning to use different textures. Select a large area of floor, and press "insert" repeatedly, you'll see that you are browsing through possible textures. If you browse past a texture and want to go backwards, press "delete" and you'll browse in the reverse direction. When you are satisfied with the texture, select a different area of floor and press "insert" again... suprise, your last selected texture is the first one to come up. And your before last selected texture 2nd, and so forth. This is the way of texturing: after a while, all the textures you are actually using for the map will be a few keypresses away. The system works the same for walls ("home" and "end"), ceilings ("pgup" and "pgdn"), and upper walls ("numpad 7" and "numpad 4"). The difference between "wall" and "upper wall" is something that comes into play when you are texturing non-solid (space) cubes whose floor/ceiling sides are visible, such as a higher platform.

So you have found an ideal floor texture which you want to use for most of the map, do you now need to go and select all floors and change them? not at all. Simply change one area of floor from one texture to another, and do a "replace" (console or menus): cube will repeat your last texture change thruout the map, i.e. all floor textures with the same old texture will get the same new texture. Do the same for your most common wall, upper wall and ceiling textures: this way you have a good default to work from.

Before we go adding detail, it may be a good idea to go add entities, to be able to test the map and make sure we do not need more fundamental layout changes. To add an entity, make a selection of 1 cube on the floor where you want the entity. The precise location of the entity will be where the red dot is as you make the selection. For those entities where the Z coordinate matters, it will be the same as camera eyeheight at the moment you create it, similar for those entities that use a yaw (direction) such as the "playerstart" entity, it will be that of the camera at the moment of creation. To actually create the entity, it is probably easiest to use the editing menu for now ("insert entity..."), but you can also use the console command "newent". Once created, you'll see a blue sparkly at its location, and you will be told its type on the HUD if you fly close enough to it. If you made a mistake, simply use the "delent" command (key x), and the entity show on the HUD will be deleted.

For a DM/DMSP map: Place some "playerstart" entities, suggested quite a few of them, i.e. from 5 or so in a really small map up to 15 in really big ones. Place some ammo... remember to not just place excessive amounts: ammo spawns VERY quickly (4 to 8 seconds depending on player load), and not having endless ammo forces the player to move around the map more and use different weapons, rather than just using the one she is most effective with all the time. Normal health items... suggested from 3 or 4 for a really small map to 8 or more in really big ones. The items "boost", "yellow armour", "green armour" and "quad damage" all suggested 1 item, or maybe multiple green armours or boosts in bigger maps. Add some teleports if you want, but only if they really make sense for connectivity and gameplay.

For an SP map, place just a single "playerstart", but preferably in an area with some space around it for future coop play. place monster entities thruout the map (take good care of position & orientation: they determine when the monster will wake up). Ammo & health placement should be finely tuned to match monster load, not too much, not too little. By the kinds of ammo you give the player and when you can influence the gameplay a lot. Placement of armours & quad is up to you, but unless you stage massive battles, don't put too many of them in. Additionally, you may want to put quite a few trigger entities in, they can make the map feel less linear (doors whichs need to be triggered to open), create monster "traps" etc (trigger opens walls which have monsters behind them), etc.

Now lets place some lights, too. Press R (recalc) to get rid of the fullbright, and light the map step by step. Lighting in cube takes some care to make look good, as the default light is currently just cyclindrical rather than spherical (this may change in the future). Start by placing lights in the area that should "naturally" be bright (such as where you placed sky texturing). Remember that its much easier to create good looking light using small light source (8/12/16 radius) even in big areas, instead of just padding out your map with 32 radius lights (which will make it all look bland). Do not be afraid to leave some areas/corners quite dark (or put low brightness lights in them), contrast in lighting is what makes a map look atmospheric. Experiment with sizes and placement, and what effect they have on nearby walls (use "delent" to your advantage :)

We now have a playable and lit map, but it still looks rather cubic and boring: we need to add some detailing! of course one route to detail you have a already learned: texturing. Cube comes with a great variety of trims and other detail textures that can spice up a map, remember that where you place textures (and other detail) can have an equally big effect on map rendering efficiency than the location of solids, so its good if you are aware of the "editing on the grid" rule. Even if you don't care about efficiency, there are no texture alignment tools in cube, so the only way to nicely align larger textures is to located them neatly on the grid.

One of the easiest ways to make a map look less cubic is use the "corner" tool(key K), which makes 45 degree corners on walls, platforms, and ceilings. Go to a corner where 2 walls meet, and select the cubes in the corner (either just one, or 2x2, or 4x4), then press K. If all went ok you should now have build a corner. If for some reason it did not give the expected result, remember that for "corner" to work it needs to have exactly 2 solids of the same size as the corner next to it.

You can also create corners on platforms etc. For example, select an 8x8 area of cubes and raise it a few units above its surroundings. now select a 2x2 area at the corner of this 8x8 area and press K. Do this with all 4 corners and voila: and octagonal platform. The way non-solid corners work is similar to solid corners: they pick the the 2 highest (or lowest, in the case of a ceiling) neighbours the same size of the corner, and use them to build a corner against. Note that a corner works for floor and ceiling at the same time, i.e. if you lower the ceiling above the 8x8 area, you'll get corners on that as well.

At this stage, remember that if you get unexpected results you can always "undo" (press U) directly after you changed something. To clean up something that you can't undo anymore, the easiest is probably to select the area an press G (make space), which removes any special cube types such as "corner" etc.

The most powerful, but also most difficult to understand way to create nice detail in a map is using the "heightfield" or "slope" feature. This allows you to build sloped surfaces of any kind on either floor or ceiling, allowing your to create things like arches etc. There are two types of heighfield: floor and ceiling, which are mutually exclusive with the other cube types (solid/space/corner).

First, lets create an easy prefab heighfield arch, to get a taste for what heighfields can do, before diving into technicalities. Make two solid walls (4x4 each) on either side of a 8x4 area of space in the middle of the room. Now select the 8x4 area, and lower it 4 units from the ceiling, so it looks like a cubic arch already. if you want, change the ceiling texture to something with a clear structure, so you can more easily see the effect. Now press I to make the area a ceiling heightfield, followed by typing "arch 2" in the console. if all went well, you should now see an actual arch spanning the 8 cubes area, and have a slight rounding in the 4 cubes direction as well (this was caused by the "2" parameter, supplying "0" would have just made the arch in 1 direction only). Note that cubes that have a floor or ceiling heighfield are marked by green gridlines.

so how does this all work? for each cube in a map, a so called "vertex delta" value is stored, which determines the offset for heightfields off the normal floor or ceiling level. For normal non-solid cubes, these values are simply ignored, but for heighfields they are not. This is why the difference between heighfield or not matters, otherwise there would be no way to make the arch stop (notice that whereever the arch touches a non-heighfield area, the side of the arch has correct polygons on it (called "caps")). The vertex delta of a cube specifies the delta for the top-left corner vertex (i.e. where the red dot is on a cube), so to determine the full orientation of a single heighfield cube, it needs 3 more vertex deltas besides its own, those to the right and below of it. That's why our 8x4 heighfield requires the vertex delta values of 9x5 cubes!

To try this out for yourself, first select a single cube somewhere in the middle of the arch, and press keys 8 and 9 (change vertex delta). You should see the vertex at the red corner of your selection move up and down. This way you can change everything about the arch. You can change multiple vertices at once with bigger selections, but remember that only the top-left corner vertices of your selection are affected, so to move 2x2 cubes in a heighfield, spanning 3x3 vertices, you thus need the correct 3x3 cube selection (use the red dot as anchor). Also try, as an execise, to affect vertices on the outer edges of the arch (hint: you may need to select a cube on the ceiling next to it, depending on orientation). Last but not least, notice a few things about pressing keys 8/9: first of all, they move a quarter unit at a time, giving you more precision. Second, notice that the original ceiling level is the base level past which you cannot move: all vertex deltas are an offset away from the ceiling or floor.

These are the basics of cube editing, if you tried out the above you should be ready to make any map. Check out the tips below, use the editing reference , and experiment!

Mapping tips

This explains how to make the most from a map in cube. Cube is very strong at certain things, yet very weak in other areas, in different ways you are used to (from, say, quake). To make a good map, keep the following in mind:

Most important rule of all: map "on the grid".

The mipmapping process will benefit from geometry that is aligned with powers of 2 units. So if you are going to make a wall that is 4x12 units, make sure it starts and ends on 4 unit boundaries (use the blue lines in the grid to determine 8 unit boundaries as a starting point). The more aligned your geometry is this way, the faster it will render (allows higher LOD) and/or the less LOD popup it will generate on slow machines (a 4x4 aligned block looks identical in the first 3 mipmaps, and thus renders fast at any distance).

You can imagine the speed of rendering as proportional to the amount of visible cubes to render within the player's FOV. A 1x1 cube is equally fast to a 2x2 or 4x4 cube, so the bigger cubes can be used for rendering an area, the more area can be rendered before a coarser LOD is forced (higher LOD factor).

Besides speed and visual quality, another reason to align to the grid, is that it makes it easier for the textures to align with your geometry.

You can use the "showmip" command to view what areas are drawn using what sizes of cubes, and optimize accordingly. Also run through your map keeping an eye on the "wqd" and "wvt" figures (while using a high minlod, such as 100), they indicate the polygon load for the current viewpoint: for wqd, below 1000 is great, up to 2000 is still ok, above that it may start to become slow on lesser hardware.

the map has a less strong need for "vis blockers" as are common in the quake engines. Forget about s-bends and u-bends, you can let areas look into eachother at will. Occluders always help to speed up a level of course, but they need not ruin your layout, even the tiniest walls can already be effective as occluders because cube's occlusion culling is very precise.

Open maps (with few or no occluders) in cube rely on LOD to keep the amount of polys reasonable, which forces the player to make a tradeoff between visual quality and speed. As such, relying on LOD is a bit of a last resort.

To see the effect of cube's occlusion culling, fly out above the map in edit mode to see what areas are drawn if you were on the ground below (use the toggleocull command for a map overview). Notice how even small occluders can cull large amounts of cubes, and how small gaps between rooms only cause small amounts of cubes extra to be rendered.

To see the effect of LOD, do the same, but on a large map and see how cubes differ in representation depending on distance and viewing angle. If you see no LOD in action because your machine is "too fast", you can force the issue by setting a low minlod and a fpsrange which your machine can't manage.

"detail" doesn't cost a lot compared to relatively bland architecture, experiment with interesting designs. Especially in small scale maps, you will have a big "cube budget" for interesting detail, use it! However, you will get most out of the engine if you observe the grid rule with this (see above).

Optimize your use of detail by making nice detail (slants / slopes / texturing) for cubes that have to be small anyway because of the way your architecture is done, rather than unnecessarily cutting up bigger cubes (use "showmip").

be precise about the areas you mark as "heightfield". Automatic caps (side faces) are generated for edges of heightfields, and heightfields are also slower than non-heightfields. So marking large areas as heighfield and then make some vdelta adjustments here and there would be a sub-optimal approach.

not all combinations of all possible cube types and mipmap size next to eachother work correctly (often by showing HOM or otherwise). This can either be a bug (there are a large number of cases to consider) or on purpose. Either way there is usually an easy workaround by arranging the cubes slightly differently, and if all else fails, complain about it :)

Contoh tampilan game yang dibuat dari game engine Cube

Game lain yang dibuat dengan Cube

Game online Point Blank merupakan game untuk platform Microsoft Windows yang dikembangkan dan diterbitkan oleh Zepetto dari Korea Selatan. Sebenanrya game ini belum lama dirilis, terhitung Point Blank hadir sejak bulan Juni 2009 dan mulai populer di Indonesia tahun 2010. Selain di Korea Selatan dan Indonesia, server Point Blank juga tersedia diberbagai negara seperti Thailand, Rusia, Turki, Amerika Serikat, Peru dan Brazil.

Di Indonesia Game online Point Blank ini dikelola oleh Gemscool dari PT.Kreon. Mode yang disediakan tentunya adalah Multiplayer Online dengan penempatan room bernomor. Media distribusinya sendiri hanya tersedia dengan download digital lewat situs resmi Gemscool. Plot cerita Point Blank sendiri tidaklah rumit, berawal dari pertikaian kelompok Free Rebels, kelompok kriminal yang menjadi geng narkoba melawan CT Force sebagai aparat negara. Nah, sayangnya predikat sebagai game terpopuler menjadi agak rancu karena banyak sekali kekurangan dalam game ini. Berikut ini kami tuliskan beberapa kelebihan dan kekurangan Point Blank

Kelebihan

Pemaksimalan tampilan grafis

Point Blank dirancang dengan mesin game I-Cube Engine yang membuatnya menghasilkan objek dan efek realistis. Graphics Quality I-Cube Engine ini juga memungkinkan Point Blank untuk menampilkan kualitas grafik kelas tinggi meskipun hanya dengan system requirement yang cukup rendah. Kelebihan lain, pemain dapat mengatur sendiri tingkat kualitas grafik agar disesuaikan dengan spesifikasi komputer yang digunakan.

Mode yang banyak

Salah satu yang menarik dari Point Blank adalah mode game yang cukup banyak. Anda bisa memilih Death Match, Boms Mission, Destroy, Eliminate, Shotgun Match dan AI Match. Setiap mode memiliki aturan sendiri dan dengan misi berbeda.

Fitur kelompok Clan

Tersedia Clan atau lebih mirip kelompok, dimana Anda bisa bergabung didalamnya seizin pemimpin yang disebut Master. Anda yang tergabung dalam Clan juga dapat melakukan pertandingan melawan Clan lain dalam server khusus Caln. Pertandingan antar Clan sering disebut dengan kata ‘War’.

Tempat yang banyak dan berbeda-beda

Awalnya Point Blank tidak mempunyai banyak tempat, namun sekarang sudah berkembang dengan berbagai Map baru. Map Point Blank juga bermacam-macam bentuknya, mulai dari komplek pertokoan, rumah sakit, tempat latihan militer, gudang, rumah mewah, hotel sampai stasiun.

Senjata yang lengkap

Ada banyak senjata militer yang biasa digunakan oleh tentara yang dapat Anda temukan dalam Point Blanl. Diantaranya yang populer adalah Sniper Riffle, MP7, AK-47, Kriss SV, P90, SG 550 Ext, Dragonav, F2000 dan lain-lain.

Setelah membahas beberapa kelebihan yang ada, mari kita bahas kekurangan Point Blank yang sangat mencolok sebagai FPS terpopuler di Indonesia

Kekurangan

Minim karakter

Sayang sekali bahwa karakter dalam Point Blank dianggap sangat terbatas. Memang secara total ada sekitar 8 karakter, dengan proporsi 4 untuk Free Rebel yakni Red Bulls, Tarantula, D-Fox, dan Viper Red serta 4 lagi untuk CT Force yakni Acid Pool atau Paul, Keen Eyes, Leopard dan Hide. Dari antara 8 karakter tersebut hanya Red Bulls dan Acid Poll yang tersedia gratis. Sisanya Anda hanya bisa menggunakan dengan membeli cash maupun menggunakan poin exp untuk karakter Tarantula saja.

DAFTAR PUSTAKA

http://samuelhenry.com/sauerbraten-cube-2-game-engine

http://cube.wikispaces.com/Install+Guide

http://sauerbraten.org/README.html

http://portal.paseban.com