• Area51 m15x
• All Powerfull m15x
• All Powerfull m17x
• All Powerfull m11x

A demonstration of the plugin by Lord_Zath form NBR (www.notebookreview.com) can be found at:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLymX4fLVtc

Download: vis_alienfx.zip (257 kb)

Please be shure to read the README file. It contains important instructions howto setup and configure the plugin! Also I want to thank Lord_Zath for helping me test the plugin and writing the README file. A thank you also goes to all the people on NBR which are taking part in the developement of this plugin.

If you have a Alienware laptop / computer that is not yet supported and you are willing to help me developing the support for it, please contact me, and I will built in the support for your model.

Lets asume you want to hook a function which easy hook which executes some hooking code before and after the original call:

 
[UnmanagedFunctionPointer(...)]
delegate bool DSomeFunc(...);
 
[DllImport("somedll.dll")]
static bool SomeFunc(...);
 
static bool SomeFunc_Hooked(...){
  some code before original call
 
  bool ret = SomeFunc(...);
 
  some code after original call
  return ret;
}
 

You will notice that the code after the original call never gets executed. This is because the DllImport gives you the already hooked function. So you are calling the hooked function from the hooked function. This is prevented by the easyhook lib, by returning the flow to the calling program. (which is a very good thing, because it would lead to a infinite loop)
To avoid this behaviour you have to get the unhooked function from the easyhook library.

 
[UnmanagedFunctionPointer(...)]
delegate bool DSomeFunc(...);
 
private DSomeFunc SomeFuncPtr;
 
static bool SomeFunc_Hooked(...){
  some code before original call
 
  bool ret = SomeFuncPtr(...);
 
  some code after original call
  return ret;
}
 

And in the run method of your injected dll right after installing the hooks.

 
...
SomeFuncPtr = LocalHook.GetProcDelegate<DSomeFunc>("somedll.dll", "SomeFunc");
...
 

Now your code after the original api call gets executed!

The second problem I encounterd was on hooking WriteFile:

 
        [UnmanagedFunctionPointer(CallingConvention.StdCall,
            CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
            SetLastError = true)]
        delegate bool DWriteFile(
            IntPtr hFile,
            byte[] lpBuffer,
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped);
 
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll",
            CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
            SetLastError = true,
            CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
        static extern bool WriteFile(
            IntPtr hFile,
            byte[] lpBuffer,
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped);
 
        static bool WriteFile_Hooked(
            IntPtr hFile,
            byte[] lpBuffer,
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped)
        {
            for(uint i=0;i<nNumberOfBytesToWrite;i++){
	      do_something_with(lpBuffer[i]);
	    }
            return WriteFile(hFile, lpBuffer, nNumberOfBytesToWrite, out lpNumberOfBytesWritten, lpOverlapped);
        }
 

On every WriteFile call I got a exception in the loop for i=1, because if the call comes from a unmanaged app the byte array has no size and therefore the size 1 is assumed.
To fix the problem one has to use the marshal class and change all the byte arrays to pointers.

 
        [UnmanagedFunctionPointer(CallingConvention.StdCall,
            CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
            SetLastError = true)]
        delegate bool DWriteFile(
            IntPtr hFile,
            IntPtr lpBuffer, //changed
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped);
 
        [DllImport("kernel32.dll",
            CharSet = CharSet.Auto,
            SetLastError = true,
            CallingConvention = CallingConvention.StdCall)]
        static extern bool WriteFile(
            IntPtr hFile,
            byte[] lpBuffer, //no need to change here because we are calling that
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped);
 
        static bool WriteFile_Hooked(
            IntPtr hFile,
            IntPtr lpBuffer, //changed
            uint nNumberOfBytesToWrite,
            out uint lpNumberOfBytesWritten,
            [In] IntPtr lpOverlapped)
        {
            byte[] bytes = new byte[nNumberOfBytesToWrite];
            for (uint i = 0; i < nNumberOfBytesToWrite; i++)
                bytes[i] = Marshal.ReadByte(lpBuffer, (int)i);
 
            for(uint i=0;i<nNumberOfBytesToWrite;i++){
	      do_something_with(bytes[i]);
	    }
            return WriteFile(hFile, bytes, nNumberOfBytesToWrite, out lpNumberOfBytesWritten, lpOverlapped);
        }
 

Now the hook works. The same works for hooking ReadFile but after calling the original function (also use tipp 1!)

For hooking I simply changed the FileMonInject example the source can be downloaded here:
C# Source

Source (Linux & Windows) + Binaries (Windows only): keysperminute.zip

Currently only the version for the Alienware Mx15x Laptop model is aviable as I lack the information for the other laptops and pc's.

Update: I managed to fix the bug which sometimes caused the AlienFX-Device to crash.

Download:

Mx15 Version (Source & Binaries currently Windows only): alienfx-notification-mx15-edition.zip

Missing the version for your Alienware Laptop / PC? Help me creating it by executing a small program of mine which is collecting information about your alienfx device. After completion of this program you should please send me back the "results.log" file. The program does nothing evil. It simply tests all posible leds connected to a alienfx device and asks you if something has changed and what. The e-mail address to send it back to me is stated at the end of the program. You can download it here.
alienfx-leds-tester.zip

The warning at the begin of the program is just that I get no troubles with the law in the case that something goes wrong.
If your alienfx device stops working while or after using the program you need to restart your pc to fix this.

As a futher test of the engine I'm currently developing with a friend I wrote this mandelbrot explorer. I've implemented software double support inside the mandelbrot shader to avoid the early percission loss. Unfortunately I had to notice that the percission loss is due to the lack of percission during passing the arguments to the shader. Because I had yet no time to also implement pseudo doubles on the cpu, it's currently disabled.

You can download the application at: http://3d.benjamin-thaut.de/Files/mandelbrot.zip

Currently im creating a game Engine together with a friend for learning porpuses and fun. Because I read the article "Write games not engines" I decided to write a small tetris game with our engine to test the mechanics. During this process I found many flaws and bugs in the engine and fixed them. Also I had lots of ideas how to improve our engine.

The whole game logic is written in lua. Also all draw calls are made by lua. The engine collects the draw calls and executes them later. The engine setup is also done by lua. So the engine is not restricted to forward rendering or deferrend rendering. For this game deferrend rendering was used for learning porpuses. Also I implemented 2 post processing shaders. A edge detection shader and a glow shader. The input is also managed by lua, so it was very easy to write a configurable input system. Even axis of controlers can be used for binary key events because I wrote a small converter in lua.
For small games it is planed to do the logic and draw calls completely in lua. If we some day plan on doing a bigger game like an ego shooter or something like that, more of the logic moves into the C++ code to maintain good speed.

The shaders are generated out of xml files with the option to embed lua code into the xml file, to be able to generate many diferrend shaders out of the same file. In this game this feature was used for the differend qualities of the outline shader.

A huge effort was also taken to use multi threading in the engine. I wrote a task manager that collects all the taks and executes them in the right order, depending on their dependencies to other tasks. To use mutli threading in lua, we wrote data synchronzing commands for lua. Because the multi threading code just went usable recently, this game still runs single threaded because it's developement startet earlier before.

All displayed strings are indentified by a string name and saved in extern files so this game can be easly puplished in different languages. Currently the game comes with the fowolling languages: german, english and russian.

I know that in this game many things could be solved better, but it was never the aim to go for perfection. Instead this game was only developed to test and improve the engine, to learn lua and for fun.

You can download the game at: http://stuff.benjamin-thaut.de/neswaktek.zip

I've read the paper "cascade demo secretes" by Nvidia and wanted to implement a particle system entirely on the gpu myself. So I wrote this small demo. Basicly it works like this:

• Vertexbuffer1 is rendered.
• the geometry shader processes the information (recomputes particle positions, speeds, etc.)
• the result is written into vertexbuffer2 by transform feedback
• vertexbuffer2 is drawn
• the geometry shader creates out of a point a billboard with 4 vertices
• fragment shader renders the billboard with the texture on it
• vertexbuffer1 and vertexbuffer2 are swaped

Needed Extensions:

• EXT_gpu_shader4
• NV_transform_feedback
• EXT_geometry_shader

Download:

• Binaries (Windows)
• Source (Windows / Linux)

Youtube Video:

• Click here to watch

I wrote this small demo in the past year or so, don't really know any more when I started.
During this time I developed my OpenGL and C++ Skills and rewrote certain parts of my small
framwork countless Times. Finally I want to start on my first game, so I declare this demo
as finished. I know there would be still much to do and to improve but I simply don't want
to develop on this demo any more.

Currently it features
- XML shader system (from shader 2.0 to 4.0. System is captable of using geometry shaders but
I didn't use it in this demo)
- real time shadows (I used a method to improve the quality of the shadows which was developed
by Thomas "Schrompf" Schulze - www.dreamworlds.de)
- Small GUI (used for the value and camera editors)
- value and camera editor (for easily chaning parts of the demo)
- terrain rendering with smooth blending between two detail levels
- Water with "correct" reflections
- some sort of pseudo instancing for the gras. Uses new draw_instanced extension if aviable
- Frustrum culling an lots of other standard stuff

Needed Extensions:

• completely OpenGL 2.0

Download:

• Binaries (Windows)
• Source (Windows / Linux)

Youtube Video:

• Clicke here to watch

Lately disscussed with a friend about penumbra shadows. I found a paper about this theme which used a edge detection filter to achive penumbra shadows, so I wrote a edge-detection filter in rendermonkey. Basically it looks if the difference between 5 pixels, which are ordered in a cross, are to high, then it is a edge pixel.

Needed Extensions:

• none

Download:

edge-filter.rfx (RenderMonkey 1.80)

Needed Extensions:

• EXT_gpu_shader4 - only because of parallax occlusion mapping

Download:

3way-mappping.rfx (RenderMonkey 1.80)