Homebrew coder be2003 has just announced the recent release of the PSP port of Yeti3D. In case you guys are wondering what this application is, Yeti3D is a 3D engine originally built by Derek Evans for the Game Boy Advance back in 2003.

Be2003 notes is that this version isn't dependent on SDL - it's a pure PSP port. Here's a glimpse of the engine's technical notes (for the sake of the curious devs):

• The current viewport is 120x80 pixels, 15bit.
• All textures are 64x64 8bit.
• Textures are converted to 15bit via a pre-calculated lighting LUT.
• Polygons can be any convex shape. Only squares are currently used.
• Each vertex is described as X, Y, Z, U, V and brightness.
• The renderer uses 24:8 fixed point maths.
• Polygons are clipped in 3D space using 45 degree planes. Distance to plane  calculations therefore use only additions and subtractions.
• Polygon edges are clipped using one divide and 6 multiplies.
• 4 clipping planes are used. No front plane is required. No back plane is used.
• No per-span clipping is used. Fixed point errors are hidden offscreen.
  

Full technical notes, installation/usage details, and contact addresses are available in the file README - we strongly advise would-be users to check those out before using this application. There's also the matter of the bundled GNU license, which guys here will need to read as well.

Download: be2003's Yeti3d PSP Port

As part of our Summer Coding Competition, Cools has released his new hombrew game - Drag Mini. Drag Mini is another Lua game that involves racing, something of which I've seen a lot of so far. This game however is not a traditional race-around the track – it’s a drag simulator/game.

Drag Mini is a very realistic drag game (in terms of car physics) with an AI opponent to defeat. Now, I couldn't beat the dreaded AI once - probably explaining that I don't like manual shifting in games. However, this game is still in its "alpha" stages, so the game does not run as smooth as some may expect. Cools had this to say about his game in the readme -

This is just an "alpha" of my upcommming game Drag. I was planning to get Drag in for the compitition, but was held up in other thing...(vacation!). This is the engine of the game, with some cars put in. It's all based on real car physics, so its almost as real as it can get. It uses sysext, by be2003, which is included in the 1.5 zip (modules cant be loaded on 2.xx). Major thanks to Bryan Spence for letting me use his car graphics (there will be more cars in the final!).

All of the entries for this competition will be released and a post detailing the voting procedure will be up soon. Good luck in the competition and a great job on the game!

Download: [Drag Mini]

be2003 has just released Lua-Adhoc lrx module. This library will allow all Lua coders to have ad-hoc functionality in their games. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Here's what the author had to say:"Well this is my second lua library and it is fully featured with two functions. There is alot more todo but this is a start."

The author also lets us in on other must-note stuff about this app:

This is the first build and with only 3 functions it has an ugly hack:
Added Adhoc.init(id) initializes the adhoc, id is a 9 character string containing your very own game productid, you can make it up for your game, just remember it.
Added Adhoc.term() terminates the adhoc"

Although it still isn't fully-featured, it's definitely a good start. Now quick...get cracking with some good multi-player games!

Download: [Lua-Adhoc lrx module v0.1]