Irrlicht review process

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 7:20 am

The folks at SourceForge invent news things each day. One of the latest add-ons is a "Review system". You can find it at the main project page for Irrlicht: http://sourceforge.net/projects/irrlicht/
Just click on the thumbs sign on the right. In addition, you can also add some words describing your decision (thumb up or thumb down) if you're logged. It seems that currently only Irrlicht haters are reviewing the engine, so please consider a review to get a more biased picture of the engine.

JP · Post by JP » Thu Aug 13, 2009 7:38 am

Done!

Hopefully my review doesn't come across as a fan boy or anything and hopefully my slight attack on the previous reviewer won't count against it.

Make sure you post a meaningful review rather than just saying 'lulz irrklict iz t3h kewlz\!!1' as that would probably count against Irrlicht a lot more than staying quiet

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 8:17 am

haha JP, yea.

Reviewing...

MasterGod · Post by **MasterGod** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 6:26 pm

Done.

d3jake · Post by **d3jake** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 10:01 pm

Complete

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 10:05 pm

# Thumbs down

You have to be careful with Irrlicht. It will draw you in with its extraordinarily easy to use interface, and you'll be tempted to write a large scale project with it. I did this myself, and then about half way into writing my game, discovered that the Irrlicht engine is indeed too slow for what I was attempting to make (with 30% of the run time being wasted in the animation system, as of version 1.5). If you're going to use this engine, make sure you stress test it first to make sure it will scale for your purposes, and plan on modifying the engine as soon as you start running into problems.

Of the current three Thumbs Down two have no comment so they are unfair, but this Thumbs Down seems to be a fair assessment.

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 10:21 pm

Indeed, it is very rare to see a negative comment from which you can actually get something useful. Positives won't tell anything you don't know, but negatives like this are a good way to improve.

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 10:24 pm

and you'll be tempted to write a large scale project with it. I did this myself,

i think blaming the tools you use for your own short comings is foolish. He might be giving some advice, but he is merely pointing out that he does not know how to plan and evaluate things properly.

Thats my opinion, but hey.

Im still working on my review though, at least ill try be objective.

Strong99 · Post by **Strong99** » Thu Aug 13, 2009 11:46 pm

It sounds a bit like: look what a cool car i bought lets try to drive 120 km/h on a 80 km/h road. And say to the cops: the car was soo easy to handle, blame the company

bitplane · Post by **bitplane** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:57 am

It is fair comment; we need to add LOD support for animated meshes so that distant animated meshes are not skinned every frame.
Having said that, hacking it in would be quite a simple change to CAnimatedMeshSceneNode.cpp, LOD is already supported by the interface it's just not implemented. I guess disanti didn't come here and speak to us before deciding to ditch Irrlicht, which is his loss.

JP · Post by JP » Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:03 am

I agree that it may be a fair comment from that guy... Not had any issues with the animation stuff myself but then I've never done anything ambitious with Irrlicht and its animation... But it's the guy's own fault... He can't blame the engine.. He should have evaluated the toolset before embarking on an ambitious project... That's just a sure way to fail! Irrlicht wasn't suited to what he was trying to do (whatever that may have been) but that doesn't mean he should give it a thumbs down as it could put off other people for which Irrlicht may be the perfect choice...

But hey, we're up to 82% thumbs up now so that's swiftly turned the tide on the appearance of Irrlicht!

Nox · Post by **Nox** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:25 am

Well i guess he wanted to say: "whitout changes/tweaking irrlicht is not suitable for a bigger/current generation graphic project". Its right that irrlicht can be tuned up and changed to meet the requirements buts then irrlicht isnt anymore the "all-in-one-easy-to-use" solution it seems to be. And the problem is that changing the core is easy but in most of the cases break compatibilty with future irrlichtreleases.
Or what do you think about that point?