tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-186700082011-07-28T09:31:51.278-05:00Bleeding Edge Indie is the home of my personal rants, stories, and game development blogs.John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.comBlogger431100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-29012748297549765912010-06-03T12:11:00.000-05:002010-06-03T12:12:43.850-05:00

We are very excited to announce SunBurn 1.3.2, the first full release of 1.3 is now live! As mentioned in previous blogs this release is absolutely massive, and easily the biggest SunBurn update ever.It includes SunBurn's new engine-centric design, component system, new and more streamlined editor, terrain system, volume lights, 2D rendering, avatar rendering, and much, much more.And like all

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-62795730500454278612010-02-11T17:04:00.003-05:002010-02-11T17:16:01.097-05:00

This year for GameFest we put together an awesome demo showing the latest SunBurn Engine 1.3 features including; Xbox LIVE avatar integration, avatar lighting and shadows, and several upcoming unannounced features.Check out the awesomeness, and see what SunBurn Engine 1.3 can do in your projects (requires flash 10):Follow us at GameFest for more details!

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-23876552279703189972009-10-19T20:42:00.004-05:002009-10-19T20:57:13.387-05:00

Over the past couple of weeks we've released awesome new SunBurn updates, including performance enhancements, an updated instancing example, tutorials on ambient occlusion mapping, and sneak-peeks at some of the future examples we're working on. Ambient Occlusion Mapping Tutorial Our lead artist, Alex "Turbosmooth Operator", posted an excellent article on applying high quality ambient occlusion

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-22817282296324073392009-08-25T04:20:00.005-05:002009-08-25T05:12:25.938-05:00

It feels good to say it:Synapse Gaming is proud to announce we are joining the Microsoft XNA Game Studio Partner Program, giving us the opportunity to work even more closely with the XNA Community.Along with helping to support and grow the XNA Community, we are kick-starting the next level of XNA game development by offering special pricing on our SunBurn Engine to XNA Creator Club Premium

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-21856607641341368982009-03-12T16:16:00.006-05:002009-03-12T16:49:51.754-05:00

Wow – it's already been three weeks since we launched SunBurn, where did the time go? ... into cool new updates and videos, that's where! The past two weeks were amazing – the launch went very well, SunBurn is doing excellent, the community is growing, and we received great feedback from the community on how to make buying SunBurn even easier. SunBurn Videos We received a lot of requests from

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-53176662068935128582009-01-27T23:03:00.001-05:002009-01-27T23:04:43.461-05:00

With over two years of research and development and a year of focused peer feedback, SunBurn – Synapse Gaming's latest generation of lighting and rendering technology – is getting ready to launch.What's SunBurn?SunBurn is a feature-rich and flexible lighting and rendering engine that enhances the look and visual style of practically any game or product using XNA Game Studio, making it standout to

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-57530993375632425752008-09-04T22:18:00.023-05:002008-09-05T17:03:44.104-05:00

As we near the launch of SunBurn, our latest generation of lighting and rendering products, I think it's time for a sneak-peek into some of SunBurn's features, tools, and design.What is SunBurn?SunBurn is our (Synapse Gaming's) latest lineup of lighting and rendering products – and follows our very successful Torque Lighting Kit, which now ships with nearly the entire family of Torque game

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-40186554659865081492008-02-12T13:14:00.001-05:002008-12-23T18:11:02.525-05:00

SunBurn Lighting System and BetaThis weekend we announced our latest lighting and material engine, codenamed "SunBurn", for Microsoft's XNA Game Studio. SunBurn provides XNA developers with highly flexible unified dynamic lighting, shadowing, and material systems.SunBurn is the culmination of years of architectural design aimed at creating lighting and material systems that are as easy to

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-63088965982486826662007-04-24T02:11:00.001-05:002007-04-24T02:18:16.356-05:00

Well the big news this month is the release of Constructor, the interior BSP-style editor based on and designed for the Torque family of game engines (and compatible with any engine that supports map files).Constructor was released for free to help make the Torque art pipeline even more complete, and to make sure the latest Torque interior features, like static meshes, smooth shading, and TGE

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1173055347975597632007-03-04T19:40:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:44:20.194-05:00

It's been a while since my last blog. An update on how things are going at Synapse Gaming is long overdue. It's a safe bet that when my blogs slow down I'm deep in the latest of Synapse Gaming's products and projects, and past few months were no exception.GDC 2007I'm representing Synapse Gaming at GDC again this year. I'll be around to meet up with existing partners, publishers, clients and

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1165611119824341212006-12-08T14:36:00.000-05:002006-12-08T15:51:59.893-05:00

I joined the Great Games Experiment (GGE) this week and have to say I'm extremely impressed. The site seems focused on sharing game betas and demos for feedback and constructive criticism. And provides just the right amount of discussion and ranking of retail and home brewed titles to promote the social networking aspect of the site – hey, everyone wants to meet people with similar interests.

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1162567273991116052006-11-03T10:15:00.000-05:002006-11-22T15:05:08.840-05:00

Three years after the concept was originally discussed and two and a half years after its initial release, the Torque Lighting Kit (TLK) has completed its life-cycle.With last week's release of TGE 1.5 and today's release of TLK 1.4.2 (the final release, not including any necessary maintenance releases), TLK is no longer available (though it's still supported).Leading the Pack (er... rather the

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1159160420008187872006-09-24T23:58:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:45:36.421-05:00

Well it's only two weeks since the Torque Lighting System TDN section went live and already it has grown into 20 some articles and received over 1500 unique hits on the main page.The TDN section covers Torque Lighting System features, customizations, performance tuning, and optimizations. The articles are broken down into product specific groups (TSE, TGE 1.5, TLK, ...) to make finding

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1158095990582159862006-09-12T16:14:00.000-05:002006-09-12T16:19:50.596-05:00

GarageGames and Synapse Gaming are excited to announce Synapse Gaming's Torque Lighting System (the Torque Lighting Kit) is integrated into the upcoming Torque Game Engine 1.5.Torque Game Engine 1.5 will include all of TLK's advanced lighting and rendering, and offer all of the same key features and tools TLK owners are accustomed to, and several new features including improved dynamic lighting

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1157620478570147702006-09-07T04:11:00.000-05:002006-09-07T04:20:29.126-05:00

Both the competed TSE milestone 4 and the TSE Lighting System TDN section were released today to the TSE community.It'll be interesting to see what the community does with this latest TSE drop - there are a ton of new features to work with like dynamic and static lighting and shadows, HDR/DRL with Bloom and Tone Mapping, cinematic lighting filters, high performance relighting tools, and much,

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1157109233860920282006-09-01T06:11:00.000-05:002006-09-01T06:13:53.873-05:00

The Torque Lighting System TDN section just hit private beta (check the TLK forums for details), and I'm rather excited to see it in the wild.The related TDN articles were ported directly from the TLK Modeler's Guide and updated to reflect the differences between the TLK and TSE versions on the lighting system. There are also a number of articles covering product specific features.The TSE

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1157031324575859422006-08-31T08:26:00.000-05:002006-08-31T08:35:24.596-05:00

Ahh, it feels good to have the TSE lighting system more or less ready for MS4 and at the point where other projects can take center-stage. It feels odd to think of TSE's lighting system as only one of the major projects we have in development and in the works. But it's been an exceptional year, and from the sound of it next year will be even better.While working on our latest creation I decided

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1155797297909553542006-08-17T01:38:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:48:44.930-05:00

GarageGames and Synapse Gaming are excited to announce Synapse Gaming's Lighting System (the Torque Lighting Kit) is integrated into the Torque Shader Engine. Starting with milestone 4, TSE will include all of TLK's advanced lighting and rendering, and offer all of the same key features and tools TLK owners are accustomed to, with the added advantage of HDR, TSE's fully integrated shaders, and

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1154815776066041782006-08-05T17:08:00.000-05:002006-08-05T17:12:03.943-05:00

A number of projects that came out of last year's biz-dev cycle are now coming together, interestingly enough, at the same time – hey it's IGC season. In fact some of the projects will celebrate their one year anniversary since inception with a release party (what better way? :).Others, like Constructor, have just passed the one year development mark (since Synapse Gaming's involvement), and are

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1152997884917007582006-07-15T15:59:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:52:30.370-05:00

My GID team and I (two brothers Alex and Ross) were bored waiting for the next GID, so we got together for a mini-GID or GI10H - a game-in-10-hours. This time around we made the theme "paintball", and our game features everyone's favorite orc; Kork.Our GID rules were simple:-Start with a stock Torque Lighting Kit (TLK)-No code changes allowed other than applying paint to DTS objects-Ross and I

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1152523457048443072006-07-10T04:19:00.000-05:002006-07-10T04:45:42.413-05:00

A new group of Torque resources were just approved on the GarageGames site including a bunch of new TLK resources.Torque Lighting Kit - Scene Exposure and Filter ControlProvided by Synapse Gaming this resource allows exposure/gamma control over any area of the Torque window. The gamma can be controlled by both floating point value and texture overlay, which is stretched over the gamma controlled

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1149740847935595192006-06-07T23:24:00.001-05:002008-12-23T18:12:21.223-05:00

Ahhh... I made a final pass on the Synapse Gaming site this week – doing a bit of needed reorganization and a few copy/bug fixes.Along with reorganizing the menu flow, adding support for Safari, and a more consistent layout across browsers, I resolved an issue with browsers applying old cached stylesheets to the site.The Torque Lighting Kit page was also updated with downloads to the TLK Shaman

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1146556576803591272006-05-02T02:50:00.000-05:002006-05-11T17:52:22.110-05:00

Wow it's been a month since I last posted – I can't believe how the time flies. We've been so insanely busy here it feels like GDC was only last week.April is always a killer month (killer bad, not killer good), with taxes, both my wife's birthday and mine, and what seems like an unusual number of new products and contracts that always flood in around this time. To complicate the mix I attended

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1143009677501340752006-03-22T01:40:00.000-05:002006-03-23T17:10:52.376-05:00

Well, tomorrow morning I head off to GDC, and with only two hours before I need to wake up it looks like I'll be sleeping on the plane. I probably should have gone to bed early - I can never sleep when I know I have to get up soon, but we had a major site update that was, more or less, finished up only an hour ago. Generally I wouldn't rush this sort of thing through, but, heading off to GDC,

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1142009589200665042006-03-10T11:48:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:55:06.289-05:00

After a week of testing and feedback from the Torque Lighting Kit community, the TLK Shaman Demo is ready for its public debut. Initially we're soft launching the demo here, and if all goes well it will be ready for a full public release shortly.The demo, which was produced by Synapse Gaming and features TLK technology, also features artwork by Christophe Canon and music by Ajari Wilson. It shows

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1141855448379214942006-03-08T17:02:00.000-05:002006-03-08T17:15:14.030-05:00

Synapse Gaming is always working with community members to help with TLK based resources. This week we released two new resources; a Dynamic Range Lighting and Bloom resource created by Jeff Raab and Alex Scarborough, and an updated GuiObjectView for TLK.Jeff and Alex's resource supports Dynamic Range Lighting (which adjusts the screen exposure based on scene lighting), Bloom, and Tone Mapping -

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1141411836604939552006-03-03T13:48:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:55:43.945-05:00

Oh ya, the TLK Shaman demo sneak preview just launched in the TLK private forums. The demo, which was produced by Synapse Gaming and features TLK technology, also features artwork by Christophe Canon and music by Ajari Wilson. Now it's only a matter of time before the public release... :)-John

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1141226024245040982006-03-01T10:11:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:56:16.182-05:00

During these past two weeks I had time to finish up work to the TLK Shaman demo, and I'm hoping we'll release it very soon. Unfortunately due to time constraints the Shaman demo hadn't changed much since IGC, but over the past two weeks I've made up for that.The demo, which was produced by Synapse Gaming and features its technology, also features artwork by Christophe Canon and music by Ajari

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1140847372487334462006-02-25T01:00:00.000-05:002006-02-25T01:04:25.293-05:00

Interestingly enough the recent claims that Radiant is free for any use may actually be accurate. Originally disregarding this as yet another wild claim (of which there have be many over the years, regarding both Radiant and Hammer), I was rather surprised to see that it had more substance than I originally thought.I'll reserve judgment though, as some things about the license still bother me.

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1140777657165613052006-02-24T05:34:00.000-05:002006-02-25T07:55:36.786-05:00

Yes, it's started again - the obligatory bi-monthly "Is Radiant Free" thread kicked-off today. Once again the GPL license is being used as a blanket of protection against what seems to be a commercial tool."But it's GLP'ed!"To the surprise of many GPL is not a license for providing free software - it's a license designed to keep the software's source code open and available (hence open source).

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1139464035211426932006-02-09T00:41:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:57:43.392-05:00

It's been a month since the Torque Lighting Kit's 1.4 silent release, and it's definitely time to start letting the rest of the GarageGames community in on the release. The response to TLK 1.4 was overwhelming; once again TLK takes Torque to a whole new level!Whats in the latest TLK?More than even I could imagine. Among the usual tweaks and enhancements TLK received a massive upgrade, including

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1138323850627674052006-01-26T19:57:00.001-05:002008-12-23T17:59:08.375-05:00

I recently received a few inquiries into using Synapse Gaming's Lighting System (featured in the Torque Lighting Kit) in game engines other than Torque. Though the Torque Lighting Kit is not compatible with other engines, its core (the Synapse Gaming Lighting System) is.As you can imagine we keep internal builds of all Synapse Gaming technology in several engines and on several platforms. And

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1137895572520237002006-01-21T21:05:00.000-05:002006-01-21T21:06:20.096-05:00

As Synapse Gaming grows, its business tools need to grow with it. The most recent incarnation of our tools include a home-brewed Customer Relation Management, Project Management, Issue Tracking, and Sale and Accounting system.Dissatisfied with the business software currently available, either by lack of features, workflow, or price, I decided to invest a little R&D into researching the ideal

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1137852349131260352006-01-21T09:02:00.000-05:002006-01-21T09:05:49.146-05:00

It's not surprising that growth, especially in a company, requires a little adaptation, and it's always interesting to see how people, processes, and the company itself matures and adapts to fill out the business' roles. In my experience, with the right planning, growth is also relatively painless.Synapse Gaming's growth over the past year has been amazing to say the least. In that time Synapse

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1137412842183228322006-01-16T06:53:00.000-05:002006-01-16T16:26:13.976-05:00

Technically TLK 1.4 has been out for a week, but we decided to go with a quiet soft-launch, only drawing in existing TLK users.The response was overwhelming; TLK once again took Torque to a whole new level. For those who didn't make it to IGC their first glimpse of the latest TLK was while running it on their PC. Now thats a great feeling, no waiting, just instant gratification. I enjoy

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1137315388215444362006-01-15T03:54:00.000-05:002006-01-15T03:56:28.216-05:00

Well it looks like the Red Green show finished filming its fifteenth and final season. Fifteen seasons is impressive for any show, let alone a show as quirky and unusual as the Red Green show. Looking back I'm amazed at how fresh and funny the show has remained over the years. I'm also continually amazed at the number of well-know actors that popped-up in the show - some frequently enough to

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1133171423432930752005-11-28T04:48:00.000-05:002005-11-28T04:50:23.723-05:00

Well the next few weeks are looking very busy, so not surprisingly I ran low on partition space on the primary cvs server. I'd say that it seems like these things always happen when I'm busy, but in reality I've been watching the partitions slowly fill up over the past few months.Up until now I haven't had the downtime to poke around with the server, but after taking an extended weekend for the

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1132640012716420242005-11-22T01:10:00.000-05:002005-11-22T01:17:06.136-05:00

Well among all of the other things going on this week I managed to sneak in a few hours of work on the kitchen today. I'm still working on a combination of the accent and ambient lighting - so far I've dropped a few recessed lights into the ceiling to add accents onto the cabinets and to add some fill lighting into the corners of the kitchen.Unfortunately the down-lights are being overpowered by

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1132039985405183862005-11-15T02:28:00.000-05:002005-11-15T10:44:57.716-05:00

Well after a disappointing weekend working on the kitchen I managed to come up with a solid foundation lighting layer, and already the chosen color scheme looks better - I can't wait to start painting. :)For a point of reference the kitchen looked like this (excuse the mess):Though acceptable it did have a very "fluorescent Grandma" theme, and frankly made finding and matching paint colors

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1131896663758677772005-11-13T10:40:00.000-05:002005-11-13T10:47:38.843-05:00

Recently I started forcing myself to take the weekends off. This isn't as easy as it seems. As a full time indie my office, and therefore my work, is only a flight of steps away. Obviously this makes commuting terribly convenient, however it also makes it far too easy to just swing by for a few lines of code, to check the email, or to read what's going on in the community.Lately I've become moody

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1131529685512392342005-11-09T04:26:00.000-05:002005-11-09T18:39:09.496-05:00

Not surprisingly there was a vocal minority (actually one guy – there's always one) apparently outraged by our work on Constructor – how dare we create a solid tool for the community. People like that really have no idea what goes into shipping a product. Two years of fighting with half-baked and poorly designed 3rd party products practically forced us into making Constructor, but apparently

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1131467335485951032005-11-08T10:57:00.000-05:002005-11-08T11:28:55.503-05:00

Today Matt Fairfax of GarageGames posted a blog that gives a glimpse into our team's work on Constructor, Torque's next-generation interior editor (CSG editor like Hammer). Constructor is set to light the indie gaming world on fire as the only easy to use, cross-platform, interior editor that's priced for the indie budget.The core Constructor development team reads like a who's, who's of the

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18670008.post-1131192813058325202005-11-05T06:55:00.001-05:002008-12-23T18:00:13.770-05:00

Now that I've entered the euphoria of post IGC development (ie: relaxed schedule and reasonable development plans) I decided to finally create a personal blog as a home for all of my rants, stories, and technology development info.This year's IGC was amazing - XBox 360 stories aside, I managed to ramp up five solid demos and a ton of new technology for Synapse Gaming's flagship product: the

John Kabushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07702817807061372110noreply@blogger.com0