Sometime ago when I started playing with WebSockets I created a tiny server in nodejs that would bounce back all the packets received to all the connected users. I kept improving it and today I decided it would be nice to refactor,document and share it. I have upload it to github.
It comes with some handy functionalities like rooms, data storage, REST API to retrieve info about rooms, and with its own client library so you don’t need to memorize the API. I wouldnt recommend to use it on production, mostly because it is easy to hack, but it is handy to connect users in a website between them.
It is the one I use in my sharedcanvas web application.
Some weeks ago I was invited to give a talk at the QIDV (a local informal event for game developers) with my friend Miguel about the game we did for the Global Gamejam 2015.
The talk is in spanish and the audio is not very good (and my diction doesnt help). It gives more insights about our working process besides the info I alwady wrote in this post.
Today I stumbled uppon this great post from Adrian Courrèges where he explains in detail all the steps in rendering one single frame in Deux Ex: Human Revolution, very informative with progress images.
One of those very inspiring talks from a person who created my youth favourite piece of art, where he recalls his life and make you think about your choices.
Lately I’ve been cleaning up some old projects that had lot of potential but I never had time to share appropiately to the community.
The first one is called Rendeer.js, it is my own 3D graphics engine for the web. It uses WebGL through my own low-level library litegl.js and it is meant to be easy to use and very dynamic. Right now I’ve been using it for the 3D game of the Barcelona World Race and I’m very happy with the results. Here is one screenshot:
Another interesting project I uploaded was Collada.js, a Collada format parser that can work inside a webworker. It can extract meshes, skinning, animation and scene info.
I also have been improving a lot my old libraries like litegl.js (my low-level wrapper of WebGL which makes working with WebGL very easy), litescene.js (my not so easy 3D Graphics engine meant to be used with my own editor) and litegraph.js (my visual programming system), all of them are becoming very mature and ready for production. And I want to finish documenting litegui.js
Sometimes working with WebGL I miss having the freedom to use regular Canvas2D calls, the only solution in most cases is to create a secondary Canvas and upload it to the GPU in every frame, something that could be costly when the viewport is very big. For those situations I have created a library that adds most of the Canvas2D functions to a WebGL context, even some that where a little bit tricky to emulate (lineWidth…).
The performance is more or less the same as using the regular Canvas, the quality though is a little bit worse, but it opens the door to combine some of my existing libraries with WebGL capabilities.
For a long time I wanted to try some 3D physics on the web. For that purpose there are two libraries around, Cannon.js which is written in JS from scratch, and Ammo.js which is a port of Bullet made using emscripten. I’ve been playing around with both of them, the performance of cannon could be improved (too much garbage generated in memory) and the interface of ammo is horrible (as all emscripten ports).
Play around with this demo, the controls are very hard and it is easy to start spinning uncontrollably, but Im pleased with the movement.
My name is Javi Agenjo (@tamat), born in 1980 at Barcelona, Spain.
If you need anything contact me at javi.agenjo@gmail.com
Computer Engineer working in 3D Graphics since 2005.
Interested in videogames development and interactive applications, focused on using the 3D Hardware to create new ways of interaction.
I teach at the University Pompeu Fabra at Barcelona courses related to programming, graphics and games development.
I love to code, specially in Javascript, but I've got plenty experience in C++ and Actionscript.
Lately I've been coding in WebGL, trying to mix my knowledge in web development with 3D graphics.
I'm always happy to receive mails about anything related to graphics.
April 22nd, 2015
