Trying to be objective

[Guest]

Hello everyone!

Just browsing the forums today, I came across some Irrlicht vs. OGRE threads. Old fight, and sometimes blind... Some of the people liked their favourite engine too much, some of them simply hated the other one, some of them tried irrlicht years ago, and some were too scared to learn something new. The lists of pros and cons reminded me of what I came across when I first used Irrlicht.

Some of you (the experienced irrlicht programmers ) watched the engine growing... You may know more than the others.. But are you just as realistic?

Here's what I mean:
- The 2D graphics example looks just fine. But when trying to load your own image, irrlicht automaticaly resizes it, because it only handles textures. No surfaces or pixel areas or something. Of course, one could resize all the images to be multiple of 2. Unfortunately, this is not the case when dynamicaly loading files on the end-user machine.

-That automatic .zip handling thing... What happens when I have more than one file with the same name in different archives? I guess that is called "undefined behaviour"!

-That model... Sydney... It's a bit... let's say... OUTDATED! ...I mean, it looks just ... like a low poly model floating all over the place.. .. Some mind blowing demos would attract a great deal of users( just my opinion)!

-I use WinME. The IrrFont Tool does not work for me. It came to a nice 1.0 and was abandoned. I know a lot of us have this problem... Wouldn't have been a lot simpler if it exported directly to .bmp?


I know most of you know this things. My problem is: are this bugs or features? Am I expecting something I shouldn't? Is this bad design?Will this ever be fixed?(Was it already and I haven't found out yet? ) This little things are what made me leave irrlicht programming for some other time.

Hope that somebody (maybe niko himself) understands what I mean and that I'm not offending anybody with my unnecesary long post...
The Newbie

PS: Is there something wrong with my ISP? This forum is the slowest I ever came across!

[SmOrliwiz]

As I see it,
you may only make suggestions but you'r not to expect anything since this is one person developing the engine, and this even for free.


And yes; This forum IS slow

[disanti]

Good to see another newbie leave!
________
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[MikeR]

The IrrFont Tool does not work for me. It came to a nice 1.0 and was abandoned. I know a lot of us have this problem... Wouldn't have been a lot simpler if it exported directly to .bmp?

Actually the irrfontool works fine. It would be nice if it exported to bmp instead of just copying to the clipboard, but it works.

As for the rest, I can't say anything about.

[Megaman]

as you can see, irrlicht is an open source 3d graphics engine. So, for example, if you are bored for bugs try to fix it! The big piece of the coding with irrlicht is flexible, and not too boring.

[cpprules]

I agree about sydney, And i like Irrlicht 'cause it has everything i need, and its simple. ( Has anyone noticed that sydney is floating around, i mean like shes made of jelly )

[buhatkj]

alright here's the deal. While the only official developer is niko, many of the features and enhancments for example added in version 0.12 WERE developed by irrlicht users, and were sent to niko to be added to the next version. While this is not quite as open as having a CVS, niko most definitely accepts input from the users. If you have a feature you want to see, implement it, and send niko a patch or .diff for it. If it works properly and is written cleanly, chances are he will include it in the next official version!

As for the sydney model, its an MD2. They just do that "swimming surface" thing. If somebody sent in a better original model for niko to use, he might use it. but for testing the md2 loading, thats what he uses.

As the other poster mentioned, the font tool works fine. If winME won't let it work, then get a real OS. Seriously, who uses winME anymore??

If you really just don't like using Irrlicht you don't have to. But to be honest I just don't get why you need to "justify" this decision. Why not just say "it's not my style" and move on, why start a bunch of drama?? I'm just tired of seeing these "irrlicht vs. ogre" threads....

[Guest]

Hi! It's me , The Newbie again

I chose this generic nickname to avoid replys like "then do it yourself!" Seems it didn't work!

If you really just don't like using Irrlicht you don't have to.

Well I'm not! I tried to use it some time ago for one of my projects (not a game, but something scientific, that explains the older OS). I didn't like the way it turned out so... I abandoned the hole thing!

Now, I know it's rude to point my finger, but YOU're the comunity... I just thought someone would be interested in an outside point of view! As long as the common feeling is "Irrlicht rocks! Why?! 'Couse it's cool! " we're not getting anywhere! There is a bug report section, as I saw, and there are requests there too... That's good! But MY VERY PERSONAL opinion is that there are features bad designed that could use some improvements...And people should at least argue about it! That's constructive!
(That is, if Niko doesn't mind...)

BTW, did you know there are 1124 users who never posted anything?(And you wonder why it's soooo slow! ) 1094 users who posted 1 to 10 messages (probably mostly questions...), which gives us about 443 active users... (well , when browsing the forum you could swear they're 20 or so ).......

Hmm... sorry for that... I like facts!

Ok, I'll fix the IrrFontTool 'couse THAT'S A GOOD TOOL! Actually, I believe someone else already fixed it, but unfortunately that's not in the SDK.

And this is definetely NOT a "irrlicht vs. OGRE" thread! I never used ogre and I don't plan to! I'll just stick to standard OpenGL for a while

[LM]

Something you are not seeming to bear in mind is that Irrlicht is still VERY young.
Looking at the development picture thus far, Irrlicht does indeed "rock."

Am I expecting something I shouldn't?

Apparently so.
Thankfully, many of us have not simply looked at Irrlicht and said

This little things are what made me leave irrlicht programming for some other time.

Thankfully, many of us realised that:
1. these are little things, which can and will be improved upon, many of which can be worked around if you are keen on programming and don't mind searching
2. Irrlicht still rocks - the existing features so far put Irrlicht ahead in many ways, for certain people with certain intentions, uses and approaches.

I say either:
1. welcome aboard! there's a great community, no matter how big, willing to help eachother out, where you can learn the engine *while* its being developed, help to contribute to the engine, etc. etc.
or
2. come back later after everything is implemented and then start to learn how it works

Either way, you have to realise this is not a final, major release of "HEY WORLD...THIS IS IRRLICHT"
It is indeed in development.
Join us or...leave.

[cpprules]

Something you are not seeming to bear in mind is that Irrlicht is still VERY young.
Looking at the development picture thus far, Irrlicht does indeed "rock."

Am I expecting something I shouldn't?

Apparently so.
Thankfully, many of us have not simply looked at Irrlicht and said

This little things are what made me leave irrlicht programming for some other time.

Thankfully, many of us realised that:
1. these are little things, which can and will be improved upon, many of which can be worked around if you are keen on programming and don't mind searching
2. Irrlicht still rocks - the existing features so far put Irrlicht ahead in many ways, for certain people with certain intentions, uses and approaches.

I say either:
1. welcome aboard! there's a great community, no matter how big, willing to help eachother out, where you can learn the engine *while* its being developed, help to contribute to the engine, etc. etc.
or
2. come back later after everything is implemented and then start to learn how it works

Either way, you have to realise this is not a final, major release of "HEY WORLD...THIS IS IRRLICHT"
It is indeed in development.
Join us or...leave.

agree

[Reiyn]

I don't think you can justify being too critical of a one-man project that is free.

There are many fixes for issues out there, just have to have the motivation to look for them.... There ARE some bugs that aren't fixed, but I can't complain because I sure as heck can't do what Niko and some others are able to, so I can't fix them myself.

And as for forum membership and latency - it's a treasure just to have the forum, and have it's search unrestricted unlike some forums (fmod)
Having even visitors sign up is a sign of respect and appreciation to take the time, and show an interest. In my opinion, anyways, having hosted a couple forums for online guild communities.

The point about Sydney is kind of moot. The graphic capabilities aren't decided by the engine but by the artist. =)

[EDIT:] I do like your suggestion about advertising, and the comment about the community providing the material. Niko's said before he's no artist hehehe.


Gotta' view Irrlicht from a perspective that takes into consideration the production team and the better parts of the community (instead of singling out the negatives)... and I think anyone would appreciate it for what it is...
which yes, is pretty darn impressive ; )

Go for the alternatives, if you want - but surely you can still respect this project's advancements and potential. Even if deemed inferior it's still a marvel of hard-work.

-Reiyn