Congratulations on your new Job, Niko! (Rabcat Engine)

Duncan Mac Leod · Post by **Duncan Mac Leod** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 8:59 am

Hi Niko!

Wow - it's really amazing how you have advanced the Engine...

Is it really based on Irrlicht ??

I wish you the very best on your new Job as Lead Programmer at Rabcat Entertainment and I hope that you 'll have the time to work on the freeware part of Irrlicht as you did before

!

Keep up your excellent work!

Duncan
--
Tucan Entertainment

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:10 am

I didn't realise after reading both the main page and niko's blog that this was a job for him.

How amazing for niko to get a job as a lead programmer as a result from a free graphics engine.

I did research on tucan entertainment as well as RabCat before today I don't think I had ever heard of either one of them.

I found out that both companies seem to be major players in the gaming industry.. lol players..

Anyways I just want to say that if anyone is hiring noobs to drop me a line and Congrats to niko on his new job!

Duncan Mac Leod · Post by **Duncan Mac Leod** » Sat Sep 10, 2005 11:41 am

Midnight wrote:I did research on tucan entertainment as well as RabCat before today I don't think I had ever heard of either one of them.

Hi Midnight!

Research on 'Tucan Entertainment'

?

We are a (very) small Team located in Germany (Cologne, Heidelberg and Coburg) and are about going 'commercial' but have a (very) long road ahead...

At the moment all Team-Members have their daytime jobs NOT in the gaming industry, but working at night and at weekends on our upcoming RPG Game-Engine and Toolset. We use a modified version of Irrlicht for our Game.

Originally we have planned our RPG Series on Bioware's NeverwinterNight Aurora Engine, but the License does not allow commercial publishing. So we have stopped developing part 1 (in development since October 2002) of our Series and have started the development of our own Game-Engine and Toolset (based on our own intellectual property) since September 2004.

We started using the Crystal Space Engine, but we were not happy with the handling. So we switched over to use Irrlicht in May 2005. As we are in the beginning stages of development our homepage lacks details about our work and most of its parts are only accessible by Team-Members, so I hope that 'little' info helps your research

...

Duncan
--
Tucan Entertainment

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 1:16 am

Hopefully, if you're using Irrlicht for a commercial project, there should be a lot of bug fixes and enhancements coming back to the project?

niko · Post by **niko** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 3:19 pm

Duncan Mac Leod wrote:Congratulations on your new Job, Niko!

Thanks, but I quit my job at RABCAT several month ago, after working there for more than one year.

Duncan Mac Leod wrote:Wow - it's really amazing how you have advanced the Engine...
Is it really based on Irrlicht ??

Yes, it is. And it is not that much advanced than Irrlicht 0.12. In fact, RABCAT engine is based on Irrlicht 0.6. Most just looks good because of the graphics used. You can really do a lot with Irrlicht as it is. RABCAT engine is a primarily an advanced game engine.

etcaptor · Post by **etcaptor** » Mon Sep 12, 2005 5:25 pm

I saw that there are internal physics and ragdoll in RABCAT. Is these features based on extended Irrlicht collision response animator? Also Is animation blending based on .x or cal3d?

Quall · Post by **Quall** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:54 am

I wish people voted for a game engine instead of a gfx engine lol.

Seriously though, there are a lot of people looking for better collisions and physics. I wish somebody with the skills could made a nice wrapper for irrlicht.

I hope the author of Gangsta wrapper gets arround to an irr port.

Midnight · Post by **Midnight** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 2:14 am

Quall wrote:I wish people voted for a game engine instead of a gfx engine lol.

Why?

It's not really "that" difficult to turn Irrlicht into a game engine there are several examples around the forums of physics and sound...

I intend eventually to form a game engine using Irrlicht but would never expect Irrlicht to stray from it's original design...

A big reason is that it's useful as a GFX engine there is no reason to have sound and physics and all that garbage for creating tools...

GFX engine = good tools
GFX engine + sound and stuff = game engine = game
end result = extra work for better quality

alternative
Game engine = overcoded tools
Game engine = Game
end result = Bad Game Created with Bad Tools on a nice game engine

Obviously this isn't very scientific but gives you a slight understanding of the purpose that Irrlicht will never be a full Game engine stop being so lazy.

Besides given enough time the community will weld all the gaps layer after layer after layer... any idea how many GUI tools exist for Irrlicht? I know

Any Idea which is the best supported and feature rich?? I know.. and soon will others.

Fred · Post by **Fred** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:41 am

"alternative
Game engine = overcoded tools
Game engine = Game
end result = Bad Game Created with Bad Tools on a nice game engine
"

I have no idea what you're on about here.

etcaptor · Post by **etcaptor** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 1:13 pm

Quall wrote:I wish people voted for a game engine instead of a gfx engine lol.

Seriously though, there are a lot of people looking for better collisions and physics. I wish somebody with the skills could made a nice wrapper for irrlicht.

I hope the author of Gangsta wrapper gets arround to an irr port.

Ragdoll, physics, 3d sound, animaion blending, facial animations, 3d sound - very good stuffs, necessary for any modern game.
Why wrapper - only extension.

I don't believe that Niko will extend Irrlicht with these great features, because maybe he don't want any internal competition with his current job

But I hope too that I'm wrong and Niko will include some of these stufs in Irrlicht.

I saw video of RABCAT demo, and can say that it's amazing. AI pathfinding too!

Masdus · Post by **Masdus** » Tue Sep 13, 2005 11:48 pm

I don't think Niko will code these elements into Irrlicht becuase they are just too specific. It supposed to be a generic graphics engine. Eventually the engine will have all the tools for users to add features like this if they need them, but to add them all to the engine would just create DLL bloat.

Just look at things like the GUI and terrain in irrlicht. The GUI is create for quick mock up of an application or game, which is what i believe it is for. But it is seriously limited, making it good for prototyping, but in my opinion it would be best to replace it with another package in the final project.

Should Niko spend his time coding a perfect GUI system, of course not, its not a quick or simple thing to do. Look at the development time put into packages like Crazy Eddies GUI or WxWidgets. A similiar argument could be made for terrain.

Its great that these features exist as an example of what irrlicht is capable of, but one man would never have the spare time to implement all these features as well as develope and maintain a graphics engine.

Really i wish people would stop expecting Niko to turn this project into a game engine. If thats what you want then help Midnight and start a game engine project using Irrlicht for graphics.

pfo · Post by **pfo** » Wed Sep 14, 2005 8:13 pm

I agree w/ people who say Irrlicht should stay graphics-only. At first, not having physics and sound was really unappealing, but Irrlicht does do graphics well, very well I might add. Since I've integrated with Newton, not having physics is not a problem anymore. In fact, compared to Newton (or any of the physics APIs for that matter) the triangle selection and collisionscene node seem like dinky little classes, although they do still have their limited uses.

Irrlicht Engine

Congratulations on your new Job, Niko! (Rabcat Engine)

Congratulations on your new Job, Niko! (Rabcat Engine)

Re: Congratulations on your new Job, Niko! (Rabcat Engine)