NEW: 1st November 2007 - EZRotate has been updated! Version 4 will be out in the coming days and features new commands, is easier to use and is significantly faster. Order now and you can upgrade to Version 4 free of charge the moment it is available.
The EZRotate package includes both a DarkBASIC Professional DLL and also a complete working version for the Dark Game SDK. You get both versions for the same price.
One of the most frustrating aspects about programming your killer game or application can sometimes have very little to do with actual programming. Complicated mathematics have stopped many projects dead in their tracks.
EZrotate Enhanced provides an easy to use, yet powerful command set that helps to eliminate the complicated mathematics from your projects. Finally, you can make your objects do what you want with simple commands instead of complicated math routines. Installing EZrotate into DarkBASIC Professional will give you an extra 45 commands to use that will allow you to do the following:
Some of the features of EZrotate Enhanced include:
Conversion:
Dark Basic Professional uses Euler angles natively. Lets face it, Euler angles are confusing and hard to work with directly. In addition to Euler angles, EZrotate enhanced gives you the ability to work with Matrix Mathematics and Quaternion values. The rotation information of most 3D models is stored with Matrix Mathematics and animation data is usually stored with Quaternion values. With EZrotate Enhanced you can easily use that information directly to setup your objects.
True Global Rotation:
If you have ever tried to write simple code to roll a ball around on a flat surface you will immediately know how useful this feature of EZrotate enhanced is. There is no simple way to do global rotation with Euler angles, which in turn means that there is no simple way to do global rotation in Dark Basic Professional. Until Now! This feature will allow you to rotate your object on the global X, Y or Z axis.
Local Rotation:
In addition to the True Global rotation feature, EZrotate Enhanced also has a local rotation command set. These commands work similar to the free flight (pitch, roll, turn) commands provided by Dark Basic Professional. In other words, this command set will rotate an object on its own local X, Y and Z axis. The advantage of using the local rotation command set in EZrotate enhanced is its compatibility with all other rotation features of Dark Basic Professional and EZrotate Enhanced.
Vector Rotation:
By using the global and local command sets, there are up to six axis that you can rotate your objects on (Global X, Global Y, Global Z, Local X, Local Y, Local Z). What if you want to rotate your object around an axis other than the global or local ones? Vector rotation is the answer. With vector rotation you supply the coordinate of a point. EZrotate Enhanced creates an axis from the origin of your object to the point that you supply. Your object is then rotated around that axis by the amount that you specify. This feature increases the available rotation axis from six to infinity!
Orbit Rotation:
Now that you have read about the vector rotation command set, what else could possibly be left? Orbit Rotation offers even MORE freedom and power than vector rotations! With the orbiting feature, you define the coordinates of two separate points. These two points define an axis that your object will rotate around. Because the axis that you define does not have to pass through the origin of the object, the object will not only rotate, it will MOVE around the axis. This feature is very useful for making any type of object rotate around another. It is also very useful for making objects appear to rotate around points other than its origin. For example, If you create a door in a 3d modeling application, normally you would have to make sure that the door was positioned correctly in the modeling application. With the orbiting feature of EZrotate Enhanced, it does not matter where the origin of your object is located in the 3d modeling application. You can choose any locations for the rotation axis. Therefore you can easily adjust where you want the hinges to be.
Rotate Towards:
The point object command native to Dark Basic Professional is very powerful. However, what if you do not want to instantly point at the coordinate that you specify? Instead, what if you want to gradually rotate towards the coordinate by a specified angle? As you have probably guessed, that is exactly what this feature does! You supply a coordinate and an angle value. EZrotate Enhanced will rotate your object towards that coordinate using the shortest possible route.
Turn Pitch Towards:
This feature is very similar to the rotate towards feature. The difference is that your object will not "roll" on the Z axis when rotating towards the coordinate. This is very useful for any type of turret system. This command uses the shortest path available from the X and Y axis.
Find Point From Offset:
The Find point from offset feature will convert from a coordinate system that is local to your object to the global coordinate system. In other words, if you want to know the position of a point that is always a certain distance above / below / beside / in front / behind your object according to how it is currently rotated, this feature will solve the problem. This is a great replacement for the "glue object" command native to Dark Basic Professional. It is a great way to cut down the usage and overhead of "dummy" objects to track positions.
Find Offset From Point:
This command is the polar opposite of the Find Point From Offset feature. Instead, you supply a 3D coordinate and EZrotate will determine the distance to each an objects axis relative to how it is rotated (perpendicular distance). This feature setting up things such as 3D radars very simple.
Find Axis Angles:
This command set will return the true angle of each axis of an object. Unlike Euler angles, the angles returned when using this feature are independent of rotation order. This feature is great for keeping objects rotated within certain limits. It is also very useful for creating things such as flight gauges.
Find Total Angle Between Points:
To use this feature, you supply the XYZ coordinates of three points. The first point is used as the base or origin. Now, imagine a line is drawn from the second point to the first, and another line is drawn from the third point to the first. EZrotate Enhanced will calculate the angle between those two lines. This is very usefully for things such as sight cones or generally to check if one object is within a certain angle range of another object.
Setup by Axis Angle:
You can now setup EZrotate by Axis Angle. Axis Angles are far easier to work with and imagine than Euler angles. First, you describe a heading direction (global Y angle) of your object from 0 to 360 degrees. Then you tell it the Pitch (X angle) for that heading direction which ranges from -90 to 90 degress. The Z angle is simply the amount of roll for your object in the described heading and pitch.
Turn To -or- Pitch To:
These two features are similar to each other and similar to the Turn Pitch Towards feature. The difference is that you can use them individually, which allows you to easily set up rotation limits.
Find Normal:
This feature will allow you to find a surface normal from any three 3D coordinates. A surface normal is a vector, who's length is equal to one, that is perpendicular to the surface that it is describing.
Align to Surface:
This feature will allow you to align your object to any surface. This is useful aligning your object to a matrix or terrain.
Rotate Surface To Surface:
This feature will allow you to rotate an object, relative to one of it's surfaces, towards any other surface. This feature is useful for things such as landing a ship on a landing pad. You simply tell EZrotate the landing surface of the ship, the surface of the landing pad, and an angle that you want the ship to rotate towards the landing pad.
Find Local Y angle to Point:
A confusing name, but a useful feature! This will tell you the local Y angle between an object's heading direction and any 3D coordinate. This feature is useful for creating turret systems that can sit on surfaces at any orientation.
Previous customer? If you purchased V1 of EZRotate - you can get Version 2 free of charge. Simply login to your Gamecreators account and click the Orders icon. There you will see EZRotate on the list of items you have purchased. Click the download link - this time it will download v2 of EZRotate automatically.
Click here to see the full command list for EZRotate.
| EZrotate | ||||||||||
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This DarkBASIC Professional DLL will provide vastly enhanced rotation commands.
EZrotate is distributed electronically. |
| Ultimate Expansion Pack 2008 | |||||||||||||||
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Save 30% - This pack contains 12 great DarkBASIC Professional extensions:
All items in this pack are distributed electronically. |
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