My half day for Win8 became a full day for Win8, but the good news is that I finally managed to track it down. Seemed to take ages to trace down, and I never would have guessed the cause. It seems on my Win8 Ultrabook, the DirectInput mouse device call to set the data format failed when I used the default mouse profile. Must have something to do with the newer touch pads on modern devices? I plugged in a corded mouse in the USB and the data format could be set as normal. Amazingly, the bug can be fixed by inserting a mouse, weirdest solution ever! Anyhoo, I have added code to trap this so it at least does not crash and burn any more. Still no clue why the call fails, and there is no information on Google (not surprisingly) on conflicts between DirectInput8 and new Windows 8 devices :)
A byproduct of this hunt is that everything is now running under a single set of redistributables so there is no longer any guesswork what you need to pre-install before running the software. Phew!
And now hopefully onto the fun stuff, which basically means more graphics and features for the engine and editor. As you have come to expect in the last few days, here is one I prepared for the occasion. Late late last night I received a new terrain texture for creating paths through the terrain, so I made a small scene to experiment:
As you can see, I got carried away with edging the path with some nature, but don't be too critical of the shot as I only spent a few seconds on it. I am starting to get that feeling from the editor now that I could easily spend hours carving out terrain features and interesting landscapes. Further, I suspect the mileage you get from editing an outdoor scene greatly exceeds what you could get from a grid based interior scene. We will see soon enough on that score when more users get there hands on the software at the end of the month.
A Flood Of Art
It seemed the universe intended the Win8 work to take half a day because this afternoon I received a flood of new art to integrate into the latest version. As a cruel trick of fate, an hour before finishing the Win8 fix, my one and only pair of glasses (£230 a pair) broke clean in two. My backup glasses are not my latest prescription so everything seems a little smaller and blurry right now :) I can carry on, but certain forces are conspiring against me today it seems, dangling fruits just out of reach.
Signing Off
Still, it's just gone midnight now and I think I can get another hour in before my eyeballs call it a night. Some easy asset additions and build a new internal version for the core team and that should be a day done. With the crash out the way, I can focus back on the good stuff so Thursday should be one of those fun days :)
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