Feature Requests

Caecus · Post by **Caecus** » Sat Aug 23, 2003 10:00 pm

Here is a culmative listing of the feature requests from the old board. I'm sure I missed some so feel free to add them. I decided importance based on a few things.

1) How soon is it needed? Something that is crucial to the early design/development of a game gets a higher importance than something that can be "tacked on" later.
2) How hard is it to add? We all know Niko is busy and has his own plans for what he is going to be adding to the engine. So features we request must also be reasonable for him to add. Things that I thought would require alot of time got slightly lower importance simply because its unreasonable to demand such things

REQUEST: 32bit Indices
IMPORTANCE: Low
COMMENT: These would be nice for prototyping without having a map partioning system built. (ie allowing you to "throw" a huge raw heightmap at the engine)

REQUEST: MD2 Size
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: I haven't had time to mess with 0.3 much at all. But I'm pretty sure the MD2 meshes are still taking up a 4-5 times more memory than necesary. I know its not an easy things to fix, because of the way the irrlicht is laid out, but I think its needed in the long run.

REQUEST: 8bit Alpha Support
IMPORTANCE: High
COMMENT: I ranked this of high importance because I feel its a crucial part of design. The use of 8bit alpha channels for texture blending on terrains is important IMO.

REQUEST: Shaders
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: A very powerful feature, but one that will most likely require a good deal of work. Thats why I put it as moderate.

REQUEST: Fog
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: Useful (if abused) effect. Hard to find a game these days that doesn't use atleast a little fog. Far better than letting the Far plane saw off you distant mountains

REQUEST: Directional Lighting
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: I tried using point lights to do some simply lighting on my outdoor enviroments, but they just didn't seem to be what I wanted. I think directional lighting would be better.

REQUEST: Projective Texturing
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: We've all seen the cool effects it can produce, some sort of easy to use Projective Texturing would be great.

REQUEST: Occulsion Culling
IMPORTANCE: Low
COMMENT: HArd to do, but definintly and great feature to have. Even if it doesn't get added until after 1.0.

REQUEST: Frustrum Checking
IMPORTANCE: Moderate
COMMENT: A way of telling whether or not a 3d Node is in a given camera frustrum. This would be helpful in networked games by limiting data sent back and forth.

REQUEST: Follow Camera
IMPORTANCE: Low
COMMENT: A simple Follow/Third Person Camera included with engine would be an easy enough addition when there is time.

REQUEST: 24bit Textures
IMPORTANCE: Low
COMMENT: Nothing urgent about this, but it certainly would be good to have a full range of options when it came to texture color depth.

niko · Post by **niko** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 8:43 am

Thanx for posting the list. Some of the features are already implemented in my version here, for example MD2 Animations by Name and Trilinear filtering. I am also doing something on the OnPost- and OnPreRender issue refactoring the whole ISceneNode class. It'll be a lot easier to use: For example there won't be the RelativeTransformationMatrix any more, instead it uses 3 vectors for storing the Relative position: translation, rotation and scale. In this way it's now easy for example to retrieve and change the current rotation.

Caecus · Post by **Caecus** » Sun Aug 24, 2003 7:37 pm

Sounds good, I'll try to update the list as new requests come in and new features are add. Just Post them here and I'll edit the original.

Raumkraut · Post by **Raumkraut** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 11:54 am

irrlicht wrote:For example there won't be the RelativeTransformationMatrix any more, instead it uses 3 vectors for storing the Relative position: translation, rotation and scale. In this way it's now easy for example to retrieve and change the current rotation.

That's some serious wootage, right there.

rogerdv · Post by **rogerdv** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 4:56 pm

What about handling camera? There will be some way to change camera position without reimplementing the whole class?
Also getting a submesh from a model by name and play animation by name for 3ds files? I dont know if md2 files can be used for commercial projects.

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 5:23 pm

You can move the camera

Code: Select all

//cameraPointer->setRelativePosition(irr::core::vector3df(Xf,Yf,Zf));
camera->setRelativePosition(irr::core::vector3df(-1.0f,10.0f,0.0f));

Features I'd like (which I think are already in the works but may as well have them documented)

Being able to find a node's pointer by it's unique ID

Code: Select all

irr::scene::ISceneNode* GetNodePointerByID(irr::u32 nodeID){
  //Psuedocode
  for (each node in scenenodes){
     if (scenenode.ID = nodeID)
      return scenenode.pointer
  }
 return 0;
};

niko · Post by **niko** » Wed Aug 27, 2003 6:07 pm

rogerdv wrote:There will be some way to change camera position without reimplementing the whole class?

As saigumi said, it is already possible. I refactored a lot of the engine, and its easier in the next release: There will be a ISceneNode::setPosition().

saigumi wrote:Being able to find a node's pointer by it's unique ID

I'll add this. But you know, the Id of the scene node need not to be unique.

Cleves · Post by **Cleves** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:04 pm

An edit box will be usful.

saigumi · Post by **saigumi** » Fri Aug 29, 2003 1:42 pm

I guess if they aren't unique then making a list of objects with that name would be cool.

Until you said that I was just returning one SceneNode in my function, now I changed it to return a list. While I'm doing it by hand myself already, it just seems like something that might be helpful as part of the base product.

[dx/x]=HUNT3R · Post by **[dx/x]=HUNT3R** » Tue Sep 02, 2003 3:35 pm

How about some FOG!!!

[dx/x]=HUNT3R · Post by **[dx/x]=HUNT3R** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 2:41 am

And some LENS FLARES!!!

Raumkraut · Post by **Raumkraut** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 8:26 am

Lens flares == billboards, n'est pas?

puh · Post by **puh** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 9:20 am

What about bump-mapping?
And monitor refresh rate setting?

[dx/x]=HUNT3R · Post by **[dx/x]=HUNT3R** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 12:07 pm

Raumkraut wrote:Lens flares == billboards, n'est pas?

Yeah we can make em with billboards but aren't lens flares usually built into an engine...?

But that bump mapping and refresh rate setting would be nice too if we could get all the possible refresh rates from the system.

Zaelsius · Post by **Zaelsius** » Wed Sep 03, 2003 3:08 pm

Nicest and more reallistic lens flares are done trough a pixel shader. I suppose a simple bill-boarded lens flares is not a big effort for someone who really needs it... I dunno if its used to be considered as a engine or game feature ¿?