Release Notes for Build 108

Release date: May 27, 2005

• Added the kLightExternalZone flag to the LightObject class. This tells the lighting system that the light may not be physically located in the zone that contains the light node in the scene graph. This flag is useful for lights that are attached to other objects (like a character). It's possible for a character to be in one zone, but the light that he's holding to be in a different zone because his arm extends through a portal. Setting the flag allows the lighting system to build the light's illumination tree correctly at the slight expense of having to find the zone that contains the light.

• Added a tool tip mechanism to the Interface Manager. Any renderable interface element can now have tip text assigned to it, and this text will appear in a little pop-up box whenever the cursor hovers over the element for half a second. Tool tips were added to all of the World Editor palettes.

• Added mouse wheel zooming to the World Editor. Mouse wheel support was also added to the ListBoxElement class.

• Changed the way that portals are rendered in the World Editor. It's much easier to see a portal now when you're looking directly at its face (perpendicular to its plane) and its edges coincide with scene geometry.

• Fixed a model export bug in the World Editor.

• Added a simple progress bar interface element.

• Added more picking capabilities to the GeometryManipulator class. Previously, only geometries that had collision data could be directly selected because the collision detection system is used to pick geometries in the World Editor. Now, a fallback routine takes over for geometries without collision data that just tests a ray against the triangle soup.

• Finished updating the Movie Player tool.