Irrlicht Engine

Just force landscape orientation of your main view controller

I have successfully coded a game for windows, mac, iphone/ipad and android using the same c++ code base and irrlicht as a base engine (but with a lot of modifications). So it is possible, but requires some time.

Threads are the best way to separate window message handling from the game loop. There are two possible solutions:
1. Create window in the "main" thread, create video driver in the "game" thread.
In this case the "while (device->run()) {...}" block internals must be replaced by some "game entry ...

My opinion is just to add thread-related classes. And user (game programmer) have to decide to use or not to use them.
I can't say that irrlicht requires direct threads inside. Where that threads can be used? I can't see. (I don't take into account the possibility of "for"-like cycles ...

Threading support requires more complicated logic. The first question everyone has to answer is "For what do I need threading?", the second - "How others do the same?".

In general game engine definitely must support threading. At least e.g. CThread class with 'virtual int Run(void* param) = 0 ...

It is possible to load textures in the different thread with opengl (you have to setup two shared contexts) as well as with directx (just specify multithreaded flag while creating the device).
But in case of dx it can affect game performance.
There are several "cheap" tricks that can make loading ...

One suggestion: it would be better to minimize the additional info in the xml file. <entry id="My string">My string</entry>, <s id="My string">My string</s> could be enough.

Integrating string table with irrlicht's text node can really save a lot of time.
Don't write any possibly localizable text ...

It makes life much easier if artist can make checkout of fully workable current game version from svn(mercurial?), replace some art or look at the game state and can't touch the code folders at the same time
Seems that acl extension can help, but how to modify for using with windows?

Good work! Dictionary class is VERY useful in the game development process. This is "must have" class for every game developer.

Does anybody know how to manage per folder access in mercurial? E.g. there are two groups: artists and programmers, and artists are not allowed to read code. Is it possible via hooks, system file permissions or subrepos?

I'm using clipping planes or scissors rect.
If device supports 4 clipping planes, you can emulate rectangular viewport. Scissors are not implemented in the engine, and not sure if it is supported by dx8 (opengl and dx9 support), but they are really helpful with opengles.

Thanks.
SAX approach is the fastest, but DOM is the simplest for use.

Really good work, very useful!

Write the game using c++ and use java layer only for handling system related operations (input, sensors, io, ...)

ellis2323 wrote:I suppose that i will use swig to generate java stub to pilot Irrlicht API.

JNI calls can possibly kill performance at all.