Get the AMP II Demo off Worthplaying (27mb)

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Get the AMP II Demo off the official web site (27mb)

4D Rulers and Slam Software have joined forces to bring you the AMP II Game Design System. We are now offering introductory pricing on the AMP2 game design system.

The Amp II Game Design System is co-developed by Slam Software and 4D Rulers. We used its successor, Amp to develop our first person shooter Gore. Amp includes a rendering engine, the Wire Multiplayer Net Engine, editing package, and game code support library, all designed for use under Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows NT, Windows 2000 or Windows XP.
Amp provides fast scene rendering with per pixel lighting, normal mapping, specular highlighting and stencil shadowing, all advanced hardware rendering pixel shaders used to create stunning real time graphics that were previously only possible with pre-rendered movies. It also features an advanced skeletal character animation system that provides exceptionally smooth animation and the ability to dynamically combine and play more than one animation simultaneously (for example, the mixing of different upper and lower body animations). Also, Amp supports dynamic polygons in the character mesh that can be used to give it an elastic appearance at the joints.
The Amp Editing package provides the tools for building and viewing levels. The level editor is integrated with the engine for WYSIWYG editing. (What You See Is What You get) All of this is condensed into one comprehensive program, although some stand-alone utilities and 3D Studio Max plugins are provided for increased flexibility.
The Amp Code Base provides support for loading, displaying, and manipulating the data files produced by the editor. It also contains built-in animation and event management, collision detection, and physics modeling.

COMPONENTS/FEATURES

• Real-time 3D corridor renderer. The Six degrees of freedom allows the user to create full 3D environments, like first and third person shooters, 3D architectural walkthroughs, virtually any 3D simulation.
• Per Pixel Lighting. The engine uses per pixel dynamic lighting, not preprocessed low resolution shade maps such as the Quake series engines or Unreal engine. This next generation lighting allows for bump mapping, specular lighting and stencil shadowing. Characters and the environments are now rendered and cast shadows the in the same pipeline, so characters, map objects and level geometry are all treated the same and are rendered in the most realistic methods possible using the latest hardware.
• Bump mapping. Bump maps will give the appearance of real depth in a surface, allowing for fine detail like fingernails, wrinkles, beard stubble, rivets, weapon details, carpet, anything you can imagine under a few inches in real world depth can be simulated correctly with a bump map. Bump mapping helps eliminate texture tiling also, and time can be saved because world textures no longer need fake shadows and lighting painted into them, just color is needed in texture maps now.
• Specular lighting. By using a texture, you can control exactly how shiny each pixel of a surface is. Chrome, and shiny metals have never before looked so realistic in any game engine.
• Stencil Shadowing. Realistic stencil shadowing allows shadows to cast off of characters and the world itself. These shadows cast onto other surfaces and wrap around up a wall, or onto mutliple surfaces, just like real shadows work. Other engines try to fake shadows with projection blobs on characters and by using shade maps which are a big waste of texture memory. Don't settle for anything less than real time stencil shadowing in your game.
• Projection Textures. By using a texture in conjunction with a light source, you can create very detailed soft shadow effects like mini blinds, or make custom shaped lights by filtering them through an image.
• Fog Flares. Nearly any shape of lense flares are now possible, so volumetric lights, spot lights, rectangular glows, etc can all be created for the ultimate lens flare effects.
• Texturing. AMP II allows up to 1024x1024 32 bit textures. It supports TGA, PNG, BMP, and DMT file formats.
• Texture Memory Management System. The engine has texture compression and scalable texture depth to lower texture memory requirements.
• Shader System. Create "shader effects" which manipulates a texture for fantastic surface effects. Panning, scaling, glowing, pulsing, rotating, flickering, animated, and other effects are all possible. These are useful for panning text or static on a computer screen, light bulbs flickering on and off, pulsing glowing surfaces like lava, practically anything you can imagine. Used in conjuntion with lighting effects can produce stunning visuals.
• 3D character renderer with skeletal animation system. Skeletal animation system allows for the most realistic animations possible. Use 3D Studio Max's standard animation system, Bones, Character Studio or motion capture to bring characters and animated objects to life. The engine also has a velocity setting to slow your characters' walk down to match his current speed, so you can tweak how fast a player moves without redoing run and walk animations. Also polygons can be assigned to multiple bones which gives a nice elastic appearance at the joints.
• Realistic light sourcing with shadows. Every light in AMP II is dynamic, meaning there are no pre-calcuated lights. This makes it possible to destroy lights, move lights, apply shaders to lights, etc, at no extra rendering expense. Per pixel lighting allows users to control the lighting of their surfaces at a per pixel level and also allows using smoothing groups and normal maps. This allows for soft round lit surfaces, or hard edges on corners, or anywhere in between just like smoothing groups work in 3D rendering packages such as 3D Studio Max. Colored lights are allowed as well.
• Particle system. An advanced particle system allows creation of sparks, smoke, dust, muzzleflashes, flamethrower effects, weapon effects, etc.
• Portal Rendering. Portal rendering allows for viewing of levels almost instantly versus older BSP engines which sometimes took hours or even days of preprocessing times. It is also much easier to work with and more efficient than BSP rendering engines. Simply make a 90 degree turn in a corridor, and it perfectly cuts off what isn't visable.
• OpenGL based rendering.
• Includes Wire (tm) networking library which powered the ultra smooth net play for Gore –Ultimate Soldier. (tm)

EDITING PACKAGE

• Level Editor for creating world geometry. Comes with standard primitive brush tools, a powerful draw mode where you simply draw your rooms out, and a lofter for creating pipes, trim, any lofted shape you desire. Draw mode can be used to place waypoints, light sources, or any entity types.
• Not limited to convex brushes, concave brushes are allowed.
• Powerful CSG construction - move doorways, windows, rooms after they've been placed.
• Hierarchial model / animation editing.
• 3D Studio Max 5 plugin. Create models, map objects, animations, bump maps, normal maps, even complex brushes can be imported into the editor using this plugin. One click and your model is in the engine ready to go.
• ASE model Importer. Open or Import .ASE files for those who want to use packages other than 3D Studio Max to create models.
• Text editor. Built in text editor allows you to edit your scripts from within the level editing packages for quick code changes.
• debug log window for easy debugging of problems.
• Map object support. Streamline and speed your production by creating lots of pre-built map objects. Use the hierarchial
• Display Filters. Use display filters to only display what you want to see. Any type of brush or entity can be hidden or even disabled so it doesn't show up in the editor or the game. Hide that pesky attic so you can work on the main floor without visual obstructions. Disable an old portion of your map to try a new portion out.

LICENSING OPTIONS

• $200 Personal license. Limited to use on one computer system by one person. Games made with this license can be distributed through our upcoming shareware plan, released for free on the internet, submitted to publishers, used for non profit purposes. They cannot be sold, marketed or published without a professional license unless you opt to use our upcoming shareware plan. Comes with forum access for support.
• $300.00 Group license. Same as the personal license, but allows additional licenses to be purchased at $100.00 per license so a team can work on the game. Games made with this license can be distributed through our upcoming shareware plan, released for free on the internet, submitted to publishers, used for non profit purposes. They cannot be sold, marketed or published without a professional license unless you opt to use our upcoming shareware plan. Comes with forum access for support.
• $2000.00 Professional license. Limited to use on one computer system by one person. Customer can sell, market or distribute or publish their game. Comes with forum access and 30 days of email support.
• $3,000.00 Professional Group license. Same as the professinal license, but allows additional licenses to be purchased at $1000.00 per license so a team can work on the project. Comes with forum access and 30 days of email support.
• $40,000.00 professional source. Full engine and tool source code allows serious developers to modify anything they wish, rendering code, networking, tools, etc.
• Email support $500.00 per year. Will answer emailed questions within 1-2 working business days.
• All licensing options come with the full featured tool kit, demo art and level resources, examples, tutorials, private user forum access, full documentation and more! Everything you need (besides art programs) to create professional quality games is included! Other game engines of this quality can cost up to $1,000,000.00 to license and a royalty fee must be paid as well.