Its only been 2 weeks since the last release, but a new release of Balder is ready.
It can be found here.

Here are the highlights :

• Major breaking changes in namespace : Balder.Core.* is now Balder.*, Balder.Silverlight.Animation is now Balder.Animation.
• Brought everything down from 2 DLLs to 1 DLL - Balder.dll, it contains everything
• Swapped to the latest version of NInject - internally a lot of changes had to be done
• Introducing Windows Phone 7 support in WP7 Silverlight Application with Hardware Accelarated graphics
• Skybox support - property on Game and Viewport
• Started working on iOS (iPhone/iPad) version
• Started working on Xna version
• Started working on Desktop version
• One step closer to desig-time support, not quite there yet - hang in there
• Shading support for textured models (both flat and gourd)
• Lighting has been fixed a lot for OmniLight - takes into account the light color and the material information, still some work ahead on this subject though.
• Some bug fixes in ASE loader + tests
• Cleaned up some samples in SampleBrowser
• Introduced IMap interface for Maps instead of tying everything to Image for DiffuseMap and ReflectionMap on Material. One can now implement any map types - but dimensions must be power of 2.

After a couple of days of work - actually more like a couple of hours over a couple of days (sneaking away during vacation to feed my computer abstinence), I've managed to port Balder to Windows Phone 7, a couple of quirks needed to be fixed - like this one.

For now it uses the same software rendering engine as the Silverlight one. Needless to say, its not exactly the most optimal solution, but at least it proves that most of the code runs across both Silverlight and Windows Phone 7 without doing much to it.

The next goal is now to implement a fully hardware accelerated version of Balder for Windows Phone 7, using Xna.

Wish me luck. :)

The last few days I've been busy porting Balder to other platforms, amongst those; Windows Phone 7 Series. There are some nuances between the different platforms Balder will support, one of these for Windows Phone 7 was that the Load() method does not exist on an AssemblyPart from the deployment object.

Balder has a discover architecture were it discovers different types from the loaded assemblies, in the Silverlight version I could simply go and get all the AssemblyParts and get it as a resource stream and load them to get the actual Assembly instance. Since the Load() method didn't exist I had to to look elsewhere.
Fortunately, the Assembly class in the Windows Phone 7 version of .net has an overload for the Load() method that takes a string. According to the MSDN documentation it needs to take a fully qualified assemblyname, that turned out to be difficult to acquire. But, it turns out that its sufficient to pass it the short name - this can be derived from the DLL name found in the AssemblyParts property called Source.

From the TypeDiscoverer code in Balder :

After quite a hectic 2010, a lot of work at my daytime job at Bouvet, taking on freelance work with projects utilizing Balder and maintaining Balder itself - I finally managed to get a new binary release out the door. Feels like a ton has been lifted off my shoulders.

You might be asking yourself, when is the next release - christmas time? What will it contain?
Lets start with the first one, when. I can't exactly promise an exact time for that. But what I've been working on lately is a build server that will aid me in getting binaries out the door faster.

I've put together a dual core Atom based machine (to the left), that will be my continuous integration and nightly build server. Its running Hudson, a Java based continuous integration server software together with a NAnt build script. The purpose of it is to build continuously to get stuff out the door, but also assure that I'm not breaking anything while I'm developing new stuff. This means that I will commit myself to be a lot better at writing unit tests. Balder has a somewhat 20% test-coverage to date, and the last month I've broken a few of those tests, mostly due to architectural decisions that has rendered the tests unusable. So one of the things I will be working quite a lot on, is getting the existing tests up and running again, and also getting the coverage up to a decent level (80% +). Some parts of the engine is plain simple not testable, nor should it be testable. Such as drawing pixels on the screen, just doesn't make sense to try even to test it. Making that code testable would make performance drop a lot, plus its pretty much impossible to do it.

The build will be dropping new binaries to my DropBox account, and I'm working on a simple Build Viewer in Silverlight that one will be able to use to pick up new stuff from there.

There is a few other reasons I want to have this system in place. If one takes a look at the Balder site up on Codeplex, you'll notice a promise of not only Silverlight as the supported platform. Balder has since day one been written in a manner that would allow for more platforms, I just haven't gotten around to actually implement anyone else. I had a Windows Forms version once, but dropped it. Now, on the other hand, I've been preparing to scale out to the following platforms :

• Windows Phone 7 Series
  
• iPhone
  
• iPad
  
• Xna - targetting Windows + XBox (Windows Phone 7, partially)

Also, there are quite a few elements in the Core library that needs tender, love and care. As for the Silverlight specifics, I really want to see the following in there soon :

• Shaded textures (Flat + Gouraud)
  
• Multitexturing
  
• Bumpmapping
  
• Managed "pixel/vertex-shaders"
  
• Blend - Design time support

Also worth mentioning, I'll be focusing my energy also on getting documentation up to a decent level - I've included a lot of Xml documentation tags in the code, but have also started work on layout out samples in the help file. In order for people to start learning Balder, I'm also planning a few tutorials and some video tutorials as well.

One could say that I will not get bored with the above tasklist, I have enough to do - better start working. :)

I promised a release last month, but I had to do surgery and got a bit sidetracked with feeling sorry for myself being in pain. Anyhow, all is good and finally got the release out the door.

Its been almost 6 months since the last release. So this better be good. :)

Performance improvements

• Scanline renderers has improved quite a bit
  
• Lighting calculations
  
• NodesControl
  
• Startup improvements
  
• Content caching - loading the same content twice will only clone existing in cache
• Color class - conversion plus operations are rewritten, introduced ColorAsFloats
  
• Dependency properties now represented as Property<> with caching in it

Bugfixes

• World matrix + general matrix fixups
  
• NodesControl fixed, one can now nest these, plus a massive performance improvement during databinding using the ItemsSource.
  
• Mouse events actually working - 0.8.8.6 had quite a few bugs with this, they are pixel perfect
  
• PivotPoint fixed - working recursively
  
• Completely rewritten rendering pipeline for stability, expandability and performance
  
• Memory leaks in mouse event handling
  
• Fixed Asset handling system - had a few bugs in it. Still has to revisit this.
  
• Parsing of ASE files now use invariant culture all over the place. Had a couple of places it didn't.

New features

• Manipulation events on objects, implemented using mouse events.
  
• They contain more detailed information about the object being manipulated, such as material information. Also, the events are not like the mouse events, they actually contain delta information about the manipulation occuring.
  
• Tooltips, there is a property on all objects called Tooltip, you can create tooltips as you please, as you'd do with the TooltipService in Silverlight for other objects. The TooltipService will not work, hence the specialized property for it.
  
• DirectionalLight - basic directional lighting
  
• ViewLight - lighting that is "attached" to the camera/view
  
• ArbitraryHeightMap - heightmap that can have its corners placed arbitrarily
  
• SmoothingGroups implemented
  
• New ASE parser - supporting multiple objects, world matrix. Also a lot faster.
  
• Ring - geometry type
  
• Started implementation of a ChamferBox - very basic at this point
  
• Passive Rendering, will draw in wireframe during interaction and flip to full rendering when interaction has stopped. When no interaction, it will not render, Balder goes idle.
  
• Pausing - for pausing everything.
  
• Grabbing a frame from the Display can now be done
  
• Container for renderable nodes - has its own world coordinate system that can be manipulated, lights can't be placed in this container.
  
• BubbledEvent system for events that needs to bubble up in the hierarchy
  
• Messenger system for decoupling and stability
  
• IGeometryDetailLevel - basically only used for Passive rendering at this point
  
• Geometry artifacts such as Face, Vertex and so forth are now classes and has been generalized. Its now up to the implementing platform to create specialized versions of them.
  
• Removed MEF and introduced a specialized TypeDiscoverer instead.

Development environment

• Changed to Visual Studio 2010
  
• Build server up and running with a more complete Balder.build file for continuous integration

Breaking changes

• IGeometryContext does no longer hold the geometry data directly, introduced something called IGeometryDetailLevel. One can get the full detail level, which is the default (and only for now), by calling the method GetDetailLevel() on the IGeometryContext. In addition, any Geometry has a property called FullDetailLevel for convenience.
  
• Mouse events has been specialized - they are named the same as one is used to from Silverlight, but the MouseEventArgs has been "duplicated" in Balder.Core.Input. The reason for this is that the Silverlight class for this is sealed and does not have a public constructor, and the mouse event handling needs to handled in a special manner in Balder. Also, the events are now bubbled as well through the geometry hierarchy.

For probably more than a year now, submitting an email to me on my blog hasn't worked. I've looked at the settings a bunch of times but without figuring out the problem. No error messages to be found anywhere. Well, turns out, there was a small typo in the email adress and it has been sending to an inbox that doesn't exist.So, if anyone has been trying to contact me through the contact page, I'm sorry I haven't gotten back to you.

Today Balder is licensed under the Microsoft Permissive License.

I am preparing these days to introduce more platforms, specifically the iPhone, iPad and Windows Phone 7 Series, but want to do a review of the license for the project. I would really love some feedback on this subject, as I have really not landed anything.

My thoughts for now is as follows: Change to a triple-licensing model.
Keep the existing Microsoft Permissive License for the Silverlight version, and not change it at all. Introduce 2 other licenses for the new platforms being added, one commercial license and one open source license. For the open source license for the new platform additions I have been pondering about GPL.

As for the commercial license, I also want to look at pricing, which is also a subject I have yet to decide on. My initial thoughts has been to have a per platform license and a discounted bundle price for all platforms. In addition I've been considering a per developer license, and discounts for 5 developers and a enterprise license for unlimited number of developers. I am not sure what price range to have for this, so feedback for this would be great as well. The numbers I've been toying around with is $200 for a bundle license with 3 platforms in addition to the free Silverlight version (iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone 7) per developer.

Also worth mentioning, in addition to the above mentioned platforms, Xna and OpenGL will get focus as well, and also looking into implementing a hardware accelerated Silverlight version utilizing WebGL for those browsers supporting WebGL. Another thing is added focus on cross platform work for making sure Balder runs on Moonlight.

 

If you feel you have input on the subjects above, please go here and enter the discussion. 

Its been some 4 months since the last official binary drop of Balder and its just about time to get a new version out. The reason for the "hold up" is that I've been quite busy with working 2 jobs; my daytime job and Balder related freelance work at night. Combining that with having a family of 2 kids and a wife, there simply hasn't been any time left get binaries out there. 

But, as part of the work that I've been doing freelance, Balder has gotten a lot of improvements. Among these are the following : 

- Further optimizations in the rendering pipeline

- Rewritten NodesControl, speed up and more capable

- General cleanups

- More Xml comments for documentation purposes

- Retrofitted some unittests

- Mouse events working properly

- Tooltip for Nodes

- Arbitrary Heightmap - corners of heightmap can be placed anywhere

- New AseLoader with more support than before (Smoothings groups, more objects, more material details, colors++)

- Rewritten AssetLoader system

- Fixed bugs with primitives

- More samples in SampleBrowser

- Visual Studio 2010 solution + project files

- Optimized lighting

- Added ViewLight - lighting relative to view, basically directional lighting

- Passive Rendering, making the rendering halt unless properties are changed on any object in the scene

- Content caching for faster startups

- A lot of code cleanups for decoupling the platform even more

- Material detection for mouse events 

 

And a whole bunch of other improvements.

The only thing left before a release can be done is to tie together some lose ends and fix a couple of bugs - then its ready for deployment. I'll be sure to post about all the new features and how they can be used in a post when the release is ready.

The next iteration will focus more on increasing code quality, more cleanups, get more documentation up and running, continuous integration server up and running and things that will improve further development on the project. 

Its been the most hectic couple of months I've ever had since February. 

I've had a few Silverlight courses, been out in the field at all kinda customers, traveling across Norway, doing talks at user groups and at the same time doing some moonlighting for a U.S. based company - and during this time, working hard on Balder and getting more and more features in it, optimizing it and fixing bugs. It has come at a price though, me not being able to post any blogposts and pretty much be passive on Twitter, Facebook and Messenger. My family will be surprised to see me soon, I guess. :) 

Balder is coming a long nicely and I'll be posting a bit about the new features and changes when I get some more time. Soon there will be a new official release, and I'm working on getting together a continuous integration server that will also do nightly builds and push them automatically to Codeplex. Just have to decide which platform I want to run it on - Mac or Windows. 

So until then, have patience with my blog - I'll return and put out quite a few articles I have running around in my brain. 

After just 4 hours of dedicated optimizations with the aid of the EQATEC profiler for Silverlight - I managed to speed up the rendering pipeline of Balder quite dramatically. The profiler has a great comparison feature - simple and straight to the point. It shows that the rendering pipeline for Balder got optimized at an average og 2.28 times. (RenderingManagerRender) :