Do you think Niko is wasting time for irrEdit, don't you? I think the IrrEdit isn't demand for projects using Irrlicht - Niko should upgrade irrlicht instead of developing hopeless, useless tools... There are many things which are much more usefull than irrEdit, and at last, all serious projects will propably create it's own (game system specific) map/scene editor - irrEdit is useless and it's waste of Niko's time...
More usefull things than irrEdit:
- break 7 h-ware dynamic lights limit
- good, fast, and universal model format like Ogre's one.
- more built-in shaders which improve irrlicht's appearance.
- correct bugs!
many, many more important details...
BTW: I have been switching to Ogre for two weeks: Developers of Ogre put their all (almost!) programming powers to main engine, not strange tools... If irrlicht wouldn't go correct way of dev, i and propably more programmers will switch to other, much more featured engines...
IrrEdit and friends - Big Waste of Niko's and friends' time
scenegraph editors are very important
what good would source be without hammer? what good would quake be without GTKRadiant? every good engine needs an editor.
now i know irrlicht isnt a full game engine, but it's open and extendable scenegraph encourages you to add sound, networking, physics, etc. to it. along with Irredit, it can be just as powerful as any commercial engine.
I think the only real trouble with Irredit is that it's still closed source for now. I think once it's opened up, both it, and Irrlicht's development will accelerate.
now i know irrlicht isnt a full game engine, but it's open and extendable scenegraph encourages you to add sound, networking, physics, etc. to it. along with Irredit, it can be just as powerful as any commercial engine.
I think the only real trouble with Irredit is that it's still closed source for now. I think once it's opened up, both it, and Irrlicht's development will accelerate.
My irrlicht-based projects have gone underground for now, but if you want, check out my webcomic instead! http://brokenboomerang.net
Our friend Valtras, although a bit harsh, has made some good points. Development on the engine is kind of... well, undefined. I don't know if there's any task list or anything, but I see no work done on it other than small patches being applied.
Please don't get me wrong, I 'm not trying to minimize the work done by hybrid, bitplane or any of the other members besides niko.
I 'm just not seeing where this is going.
And I 'm not the kind of guy that likes to have everything handed to him for free. I 'm an open-source developer myself too and I know how things are. So, I 'm trying to contribute back whatever I think would be interesting for most people using this engine. But even contributing is just ignored
.
In short, there are many areas that Irrlicht should improve. I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future...
I have no such expectations.
Anyway, enough ranting
.
As always, I 'm open for discussion
.
Yiannis.
PS: let me state it once again: I 'm not bashing irrlicht or the team. I 'm just sincerely stating my views.
Please don't get me wrong, I 'm not trying to minimize the work done by hybrid, bitplane or any of the other members besides niko.
I 'm just not seeing where this is going.
And I 'm not the kind of guy that likes to have everything handed to him for free. I 'm an open-source developer myself too and I know how things are. So, I 'm trying to contribute back whatever I think would be interesting for most people using this engine. But even contributing is just ignored
.In short, there are many areas that Irrlicht should improve. I just don't see it happening in the foreseeable future...
Yes, but not in expense of the main engine development...every good engine needs an editor.
I wouldn't hold my breath over it. I 've seen no indication whatsoever that irrEdit is going to be open-sourced (the same goes for irrKlang too).I think the only real trouble with Irredit is that it's still closed source for now. I think once it's opened up, both it, and Irrlicht's development will accelerate.
I have no such expectations.
Anyway, enough ranting
.As always, I 'm open for discussion
.Yiannis.
PS: let me state it once again: I 'm not bashing irrlicht or the team. I 'm just sincerely stating my views.
Valtras wrote:What's with 7-lights limit??? Have Niko exceeded it? It's the most important thing! I need many dynamic lights for lamps, fireplaces, etc...
You do realize that the dll is open source right? If you want to raise the limit on the number of lights then make the changes you need and recompile your own version of the DLL.
I must say I agree with mandrav. I'm a linux developper (yeah I changed so fast 
) and I'm always a bit wondering what irrEdit gives to the Irrlicht community when compared to releases such as the 0.4 or 1.0...
I'm not saying that the project is pointless, just listen to the commentaries on Irrlicht3d.org, nor am I saying that no work is done on Irrlicht and I perfectly understand Niko's point of view but please... make it Open Source and/or available for Linux... would be a great base for a lot of editors projects.
PS : I just looked at irrEdit 0.5 and I must admit this is great... But still, seeing it is not available on Linux and not modifiable is a bit weird when you recall that Irrlicht is under zlib/libpng license.
) and I'm always a bit wondering what irrEdit gives to the Irrlicht community when compared to releases such as the 0.4 or 1.0...I'm not saying that the project is pointless, just listen to the commentaries on Irrlicht3d.org, nor am I saying that no work is done on Irrlicht and I perfectly understand Niko's point of view but please... make it Open Source and/or available for Linux... would be a great base for a lot of editors projects.
PS : I just looked at irrEdit 0.5 and I must admit this is great... But still, seeing it is not available on Linux and not modifiable is a bit weird when you recall that Irrlicht is under zlib/libpng license.
Irrlicht .NET complete and Cross Platform Wrapper
The kid on my avatar wrote:A painless lesson is one without any meaning
The thing is - this is not so easy (the problem with the lights) as it sounds. I hear from almost everyone: Hey, it's so easy, just use shaders or use some intelligent scene management and so on, but noone seems to be able to post some code. I work at the moment on this multiple light problem using a one pass shader solution, but this is not soo easy, if you don't know how many lights are there to render... So if anyone has already a solution, please let me know!CodeDog wrote:You do realize that the dll is open source right? If you want to raise the limit on the number of lights then make the changes you need and recompile your own version of the DLL.
on topic: I tend to agree to focus on Irrlicht itself, but I can understand Niko if he wants to do some other things but engine coding.
Regards - Xaron
I definitly do not(!) see the development of irrEdit as a waste of time. I really like the idea of an engine programmer using his own Engine in a complex project. Sure he will need some time for that, but i guess the insights you get from using a engine instead of just developing it and writing some small examples is worth that time. Only thing i find a little bit sad is that he ain't using his own GUI-System for the editor ;-). Oh - and having it OpenSource would certainly be fantastic, but that's really up to Niko :-).
As for your feature list, well, everybody has some favorite features he'd like to see in the engine. Personally i didn't miss any of those you mentioned except some bugfixes (but certainly i miss some which you didn't mention). And bugfixes get in a lot faster since hybrid got svn access.
It could be worth searching the forums for a solution to the light-limit which you seem to miss that much (ain't it an 8-lights-limit btw?). I remember having seen some threads about lightmanagers. Basicly the only general solution i could think of would be a lightmanager which is based on the distance of lights to the camera anyway. So if you miss that feature that much - it's really just a few lines to write something like that:
Put all lights in a list.
On each update sort that list basted on distance between light and camera.
Enable the 8 nearest lights and disable the rest.
As for your feature list, well, everybody has some favorite features he'd like to see in the engine. Personally i didn't miss any of those you mentioned except some bugfixes (but certainly i miss some which you didn't mention). And bugfixes get in a lot faster since hybrid got svn access.
It could be worth searching the forums for a solution to the light-limit which you seem to miss that much (ain't it an 8-lights-limit btw?). I remember having seen some threads about lightmanagers. Basicly the only general solution i could think of would be a lightmanager which is based on the distance of lights to the camera anyway. So if you miss that feature that much - it's really just a few lines to write something like that:
Put all lights in a list.
On each update sort that list basted on distance between light and camera.
Enable the 8 nearest lights and disable the rest.
I agree partly with this. IrrEdit is not a problem imho. This tool is important and it even is something that sets Irrlicht apart from the other OS 3d engines. It is also a real world application using irrlicht and as such helps to uncover bugs in irrlicht.
The part I agree with completely is about us not knowing how Irrlicht development evolves. It is a black (well, dark-gray) box. No one knows what features are planned for the future and when this future takes places.
Niko doesn't really visit this forum and if he does, he only does small-talk.
And even when community members start discussion of possible changes, we here nothing from Niko or bitplane and only vage answers from hybrid, who maybe doesn't want to decide things on his own.
There are quite a few building sites in Irrlicht, I want to know what happens with. Namely vertex format and animation system come to my mind.
A first easy step: Please activate the svn change notifcation mailing list. This step takes ~5 minutes and comes with no further maintenance costs. It amkes following svn changes much easier and it has been requested a few times already.
Also it might be worth to see how the competition handles this.
Here is Ogre's development version info page in the wiki: http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/EihortNotes
They have a changelog, where things already done are noted. Then a part with porting notes that list necessary changes to the applications using Ogre and finally the roadmap with tasks still to be done, in progress and done.
Maybe this is an idea for irrlicht too?
Xaron, while looking on this wiki-page, I see the section "Light finding changes". Maybe you could look at their code? The section on the wiki page should give you an idea about where to look for it exactly.
The part I agree with completely is about us not knowing how Irrlicht development evolves. It is a black (well, dark-gray) box. No one knows what features are planned for the future and when this future takes places.
Niko doesn't really visit this forum and if he does, he only does small-talk.
And even when community members start discussion of possible changes, we here nothing from Niko or bitplane and only vage answers from hybrid, who maybe doesn't want to decide things on his own.
There are quite a few building sites in Irrlicht, I want to know what happens with. Namely vertex format and animation system come to my mind.
A first easy step: Please activate the svn change notifcation mailing list. This step takes ~5 minutes and comes with no further maintenance costs. It amkes following svn changes much easier and it has been requested a few times already.
Also it might be worth to see how the competition handles this.
Here is Ogre's development version info page in the wiki: http://www.ogre3d.org/wiki/index.php/EihortNotes
They have a changelog, where things already done are noted. Then a part with porting notes that list necessary changes to the applications using Ogre and finally the roadmap with tasks still to be done, in progress and done.
Maybe this is an idea for irrlicht too?
Xaron, while looking on this wiki-page, I see the section "Light finding changes". Maybe you could look at their code? The section on the wiki page should give you an idea about where to look for it exactly.
I think irredit is really useful. I use it to great extend and shaves off a lot of development time for me. I think it also paves the way to new features that extend irrlicht in the future.
but that is just my 2 cents. But don't forget, irrlicht is still something that niko does out of hobby, so he should do what he likes to do. He also stated that he needed the editor himself(correct me if im wrong about this ), so he is just kind enough to share it with us!
Gr.
but that is just my 2 cents. But don't forget, irrlicht is still something that niko does out of hobby, so he should do what he likes to do. He also stated that he needed the editor himself(correct me if im wrong about this
), so he is just kind enough to share it with us!Gr.
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monkeycracks
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Eternl Knight
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OK, while I agree with some of the sentiments being expressed here, let me clarify before I get blacklisted...
First up, IrrEdit is not the problem. Hell, it is not even A problem. It is a useful project developed with the Irrlicht engine. It may not be useful to all of us, but it is useful.
The issue, as I see it, is that the official Irrlicht only does as much as Niko wants it to and no more. There are patches/forks out there that are almost a requirement for an engine in today's day & age, but because Niko does not need them - they are not merged into Irrlicht.
The situation is better now that bitplane & hybrid are working on things, but it is still FAR from perfect. Hybrid seems to be the main man as far as patches go (fromo what I can tell), but only really works on bugs with the current feature set. This is great, but it just makes Irrlicht more stable as it is whereas I think alot of us want Irrlicht to move forward.
The last "leap forward" I can see was the new software renderer. While this is great for some of us (I, for one, make use of it), it is not moving the engine into areas others want to take advantage of.
Now, this is Niko's engine and website. As such he is allowed to do things his way. However, this forces those that want to add more to the engine (such as Spintz & myself) to fork the development. Which is a shame as Irrlicht is a great foundation...
And for the record, while I am not going to dis IrrEdit or Niko for creating it... it is not moving Irrlicht forward. If it were open-source, then yes it would be adding to the Irrlicht development foundations. However, as the situation now stands, it would be like sayinig that new modelling techniques in Maya or 3D Studio MAX are moving the Pixar Renderman package forward. IrrEdit helps with USING Irrlicht, but Irrlicht itself is pretty much staying stationary.
--EK
First up, IrrEdit is not the problem. Hell, it is not even A problem. It is a useful project developed with the Irrlicht engine. It may not be useful to all of us, but it is useful.
The issue, as I see it, is that the official Irrlicht only does as much as Niko wants it to and no more. There are patches/forks out there that are almost a requirement for an engine in today's day & age, but because Niko does not need them - they are not merged into Irrlicht.
The situation is better now that bitplane & hybrid are working on things, but it is still FAR from perfect. Hybrid seems to be the main man as far as patches go (fromo what I can tell), but only really works on bugs with the current feature set. This is great, but it just makes Irrlicht more stable as it is whereas I think alot of us want Irrlicht to move forward.
The last "leap forward" I can see was the new software renderer. While this is great for some of us (I, for one, make use of it), it is not moving the engine into areas others want to take advantage of.
Now, this is Niko's engine and website. As such he is allowed to do things his way. However, this forces those that want to add more to the engine (such as Spintz & myself) to fork the development. Which is a shame as Irrlicht is a great foundation...
And for the record, while I am not going to dis IrrEdit or Niko for creating it... it is not moving Irrlicht forward. If it were open-source, then yes it would be adding to the Irrlicht development foundations. However, as the situation now stands, it would be like sayinig that new modelling techniques in Maya or 3D Studio MAX are moving the Pixar Renderman package forward. IrrEdit helps with USING Irrlicht, but Irrlicht itself is pretty much staying stationary.
--EK
Outstanding patches are a bigger problem than missing features. It's usually no good idea in any project, to add new features while there are still a lot of known bugs. I'd prefer it if the features which are already in would be improved (like for example shadows, which are still causing lots of problems) before the next features are added. Everything else is just nice for marketing - but not for programming.Eternl Knight wrote: Hybrid seems to be the main man as far as patches go (fromo what I can tell), but only really works on bugs with the current feature set. This is great, but it just makes Irrlicht more stable as it is whereas I think alot of us want Irrlicht to move forward.
Niko writes he doesn't want to open the source yet mainly because the application is in such an early state and because it's a lot of work to opensource a project and that he will maybe opensource it later on. So there's a good chance this editor will improve irrlicht by adding a nice tool. Also, i guess there will be improvements to the engine if Niko does a large projekt with it. For example we got a lot of serialization code when he started with the editor and this is the sort of features you really need when developing applications, but which you can ignore if you just work for a nice-looking featurelist.Eternl Knight wrote: And for the record, while I am not going to dis IrrEdit or Niko for creating it... it is not moving Irrlicht forward. If it were open-source, then yes it would be adding to the Irrlicht development foundations.
IrrEdit rocks!
I love Irredit. I think it is now a great "plus" for using Irrlicht. And I think the irr format is great, too! Thanks Niko for version .5. I am going to download it right now...
