Irrlicht.NET questions

Discuss about anything related to the Irrlicht Engine, or read announcements about any significant features or usage changes.
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irrlicht.net fanatic

Irrlicht.NET questions

Post by irrlicht.net fanatic »

First of all, I can't tell how much I am excited about Irrlicht coming to .NET! :D
What graphics renderers will be available in Irrlicht.NET? Will it use interop to do DirectX or go with Managed DirectX (if that will be an option)? I simply cannot wait!
Thanks.
Guest

Post by Guest »

i think the renderers will stay the same..why should they change?
managed dx is just a more simple way to use dx, there are no new/other features
Guest

Post by Guest »

will irrlicht.net also work with mono?
niko
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Post by niko »

Irrlicht.NET is just an interface for .NET applications to use the original Irrlicht.DLL. So there will all renderers available. So you can use the D3D8, D3D9 and OpenGL renderer from .NET applications.
About mono: I don't think it will work with Irrlicht.NET, because it is a mixed mode win32 .dll, and as far as I've heard, mono doesn't like that.
afecelis
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Post by afecelis »

Irrlicht.net means it'll be ported to C#? or it means it will compile with VisualStudio 7-8?

If it means a Csharp version only, will it work on Sharpdevelop? (see link)
http://www.icsharpcode.net/OpenSource/SD/
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Post by niko »

No, it's just managed C++ Wrapper. It is a dll which you can use from every .NET language you want, C#, VisualBasic, whatever. And yes, should work with sharpdevelop.
Guest

Post by Guest »

niko wrote:No, it's just managed C++ Wrapper. It is a dll which you can use from every .NET language you want, C#, VisualBasic, whatever. And yes, should work with sharpdevelop.
do you think it will also work with ironpython ( http://www.ironpython.com ) once ironpython is more mature?

i think this direction of development is very interesting. there are <common language runtime> projects for the other important scripting languages too and wouldn't that mean that there won't be the need for individual python/ruby/lua/... irrlicht wrappers anymore? this would be very cool in my opinion! :)

it would be great if all this stuff could be get working in linux too!
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Post by afecelis »

Gr8! sharpdevelop is by far the best free IDE I've seen so far.

rejoice C# buffs!
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niko
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Post by niko »

IronPhyton sounds cool, but I don't know if it will work with Irrlicht, because I don't know if mono works with it.
Serapth
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Post by Serapth »

Just a quick blurb in regards to whomever is doing the .NET port/support programming ( sorry, new here so I dont know the names yet ). If you are working with Visual Studios 2k3 or .net, you might seriously want to check out the Visual Studio 2005 beta release currently available.

.NET support for C++ has just become a HELL of a lot simpler, and alot of the unsightly quasi ansi code like __gc has simply gone away. Microsoft actually did a decent job of tweaking the C++ language to work with .NET, while still being ANSI compatible. That sad, im not sure what I think of using "^" instead of "*" for managed versus unmanage pointers.

I would just hate to see you waste alot of time when the new implimentation is alot easier, and frankly better, then the earlier Visual Studio way of doing things. Two other really nice features MS have add are, the ability to put unmanaged code onto the managed heap ( and thus making it garbage collected ), and perhaps most importantly, they got rid of the double pInvoke costs, which should actually make an interop layer quite a bit quicker.

FYI, you can download a fully functional "express" version of Beta 1 C++ if your not an MSDN subscriber, or dont otherwise have access.


Cheers,
Mike
buhatkj
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garbage collection??

Post by buhatkj »

that's one thing i always liked about java, was the automatic garbage collection. If I could have that in my C++ and worry less about orphaned pointers/memory leaks that would be really awesome :-)
So, I have VC++ .NET 2003, my project is built using it, and written in a pretty much ansi c++ sort of way, (actually my structure is modelled heavily after the way irrlicht itself is put together, since my project also buils as a .dll and uses interfaces to cross the dll boundary...) - my question is, what makes a particular c++ project "managed"?? What part of the project settings or whatnot is this feature controlled/enabled by?
-Ted
My irrlicht-based projects have gone underground for now, but if you want, check out my webcomic instead! http://brokenboomerang.net
Serapth
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Post by Serapth »

Its a two part process. First you either have to specify /clr switch, or go to your projects properties page->Configuration Properties->General->Use Managed Extensions.

Secondly, for any managed C++ classes or variables you declare, you specify __gc. For example.

__gc class MyClass
{
public int myInt;
};

Now, MyClass will be a managed class.

Finally, if you want to use Managed methods and classes from the .Net framework, you need to add #using <mscorlib.dll>l. All the dotNet stuff is exposed as namespaces, such as

System::Console::WriteLine("Look at me, im managed");

If you can get your hands on 2K5, its much easier to do managed C++, and from my experiences sofar, much faster.

Cheers.

Mike
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thanks for the tip ;-)

Post by buhatkj »

thanks!! - I will have to try this out :-)
-Ted
My irrlicht-based projects have gone underground for now, but if you want, check out my webcomic instead! http://brokenboomerang.net
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