IrrEdit and friends - Big Waste of Niko's and friends' time

[mandrav]

Apart from that i find statements like "the development of Irrlicht is somehow undefined" quite discouraging for Niko. If you are "cool programmers" then simply make it better yourself, but don't even think of telling Niko a development plan.

Very nice, noreg, you seem to have missed the point completely .

"the development of Irrlicht is somehow undefined", is not discouraging to niko, it's discouraging for all others that want to contribute code to Irrlicht.
It is discouraging for me to contribute patches that improve irrlicht and not even getting one response about them.
I have made a few patches and only a very simple one ever made it to the engine. All others are just sitting on my hard disk. And some of them were/are quite interesting for a lot of people, mind you.
What's the point for me, since niko is busy with other things, to contribute code to irrlicht so that all of you can use it, if I know it would not have a chance to be accepted for inclusion? For example, I really want to add shadow mapping support but I 'm not going to do it because I know it doesn't have a chance of being accepted as a patch.

If this situation suits you fine, it's fine with me.
I, on the other hand, am not happy with it and that's what I posted on my first post in this thread...

Yiannis.

[CuteAlien]

It is discouraging for me to contribute patches that improve irrlicht and not even getting one response about them.

Maybe you simply did not wait long enough? I remember this thread and it's something i wanted to check out when i find some time for it. So i find it rather sad that you removed it now :-(. To try out more complex patches is very time consuming and i just can't do that very often (about once every few months). And as long as i didn't check it out there was simply no reason for me to comment on this thread. Maybe other people have similar/same problems....

[Eternl Knight]

To try out more complex patches is very time consuming and i just can't do that very often (about once every few months).

This is only true if Niko himself needs to do all the testing. In general, there is more than one person able to test these things, and "release candidates" for the community to test things.

Now I can understand if this was something that Niko was releasing as a zip file on his own site. However, he has setup a set of forums for feedback (which was until recently ignored) and has the project hosted on sourceforge (a site/organisation which makes things easier for a community of developers to work together).

This is what discourages people.

--EK

[Spintz]

And Saturn, why do you throw OO buzzwords around like they are going out of style -

Ortogonal aspects are abstracted and seperated into their own classes

And you were throwing them around in that camera thread in beginners forum. I'm sorry, but I have a pet peeve with people that preach concepts and buzzwords. In my experience, the people I've worked with that were like that were great managers and PowerPoint engineers, but made for terrible programmers...

Well, in my experience ignorance doesn't make for good programmers either.

Seriously. These are not "buzzwords", these are communication tools. They allow to convey much information with little words and thus make communication more efficient.
I am not a manager, but I am not a code monkey either. Having basic software engineering abilities is a vital part of being a good programmer imho. And what is wrong with concepts? If I can't break down a system into concepts how will I be able to lay out a good design?

And I don't see how your preconceptions about what type of programmer I am warrant this kind of hostility. So instead of throwing dirt into my direction, why not answer the arguments I gave?

Just my experiences with most people. I see those buzzwords and get all queezy. I've had some terrible bosses and managers that used them constantly. Wasn't trying to throw dirt, mis-spoke I guess. Just teasing, I even had a in that post....damn!! I meant "I'm sorry" as, "I'm not making fun of you, just telling you about my experiences with people", which I tried to expound on. I admit, my post was worded correctly, with proper grammar/format( I'm a software engineer, not an english student ), but damn, lighten up a little.

Anyways, again, I won't answer your questions because this is the Irrlicht forum, not the Ogre forum. If you want to have discussions about Ogre, go to the Ogre forum.

[mandrav]

It is discouraging for me to contribute patches that improve irrlicht and not even getting one response about them.

Maybe you simply did not wait long enough? I remember this thread and it's something i wanted to check out when i find some time for it. So i find it rather sad that you removed it now . To try out more complex patches is very time consuming and i just can't do that very often (about once every few months). And as long as i didn't check it out there was simply no reason for me to comment on this thread. Maybe other people have similar/same problems....

Depends on your definition of "long enough". For me, 18 days is way more than long enough for a simple response.
Anyway, just another patch for my own pleasure, decorating my hard disk .

[Spintz]

And for fun's sake, lets analyze the two ways these "non-orthogonal" features have been discussed in this thread, and compare how easy it is to say them....

You originally said -

Ortogonal aspects are abstracted and seperated into their own classes.

Eternal Knight restated it like this -

...tends to repeat similar code/functions across multiple classes

Now, you don't need the code/functions their, you can simply say code, so it's shortened even more to

tends to repeat similar code across multiple classes

Ok, so compaing the 2 quotes, your statement has 23 syllables and 60 characters. EKs comment has 14 syllables and 45 characters. My counts my of off by one or two, doing it by hand, but EK got the point across using less typing( characters ) and faster reading( less syllables ).

So no way man, those big buzzwords don't make it easier and faster to get points across.

DISCLAIMER 1: This post is a joke. The fact that I have to place this here rather stinks, but I am. I am not directly making fun of anyone, just teasing and having fun and making light of the topic at hand.

DISCLAIMER 2: No animals were harmed in the making of this post.




Hmmmm, I think I'll make DISCLAIMER 2 my signature!!!

[CuteAlien]

To try out more complex patches is very time consuming and i just can't do that very often (about once every few months).

This is only true if Niko himself needs to do all the testing. In general, there is more than one person able to test these things, and "release candidates" for the community to test things.

In this specific case obviously no one did test it so far, so Niko (or one of the other code maintainers) would have to do it. And it was a patch that needed already a quite strong technical background to even comment on it. I don't think there are really that many people active in the forums with such qualifications _and_ the necessary time to evaluate and comment on such patches regularly. "Community" sounds like there are masses just waiting to do the dirty work. But i think it's really more of a handful people really doing that. At least it seems so, otherwise there _would_ have been comments on such a patch.

[Spintz]

Yeah, seriously, why would you remove a patch that has some goodness for the community?

Look at IrrSpintz. I post updates about new version( even recently posted news about a BETA release for an up and coming version )....AN NO ONE REPLIES!! DAMN IT! I'm going to delete IrrSpintz from everywhere! No way man. I do it for myself and the few that are already on the forums over there for IrrSpintz trying to make the engine better and suit their needs.

Hell, even look at the forums for IrrSpintz, 31 registered users( and 2 of them are me ) and the forums been up since Feb 22 2006. That's nearly 8 months, with only 29 other users interested( and only 2 that post at all anymore ). If no one else uses it, oh well. Hopefully some people are making use of it, and are just not saying anything because they are happy. Whatever, I'm happy, making my games, having my fun, so I don't mind. The more there, the better, I'll help them all out and do what I can do implement features everyone is asking about.

Anyways, I've typed too much in this thread. You get the point now, hopefully.

[Saturn]

Spintz, Ok, glad that's resolved.

Anyway. To clarify my standpoint in this discussion: Valtras' attitude is neither constructive nor otherwise helpful. But at least it lead to this discussion, which I am thankful we have. Though I am missing a few people here.

Spintz, bashing Ogre won't make Irrlicht any better. So if you don't want to discuss the engine design, fine by me. But then don't start it. I get the uncontrolable urge to defend the defenseless (in the Irrlicht forum at least)

CuteAlien, if this is the reason, then this could have been stated in a comment too. Though I agree, that one really doesn't have to withdraw the patch.

[zenaku]

Yeah, seriously, why would you remove a patch that has some goodness for the community?

Look at IrrSpintz. I post updates about new version( even recently posted news about a BETA release for an up and coming version )....AN NO ONE REPLIES!! DAMN IT! I'm going to delete IrrSpintz from everywhere! No way man. I do it for myself and the few that are already on the forums over there for IrrSpintz trying to make the engine better and suit their needs.

Hell, even look at the forums for IrrSpintz, 31 registered users( and 2 of them are me ) and the forums been up since Feb 22 2006. That's nearly 8 months, with only 29 other users interested( and only 2 that post at all anymore ). If no one else uses it, oh well. Hopefully some people are making use of it, and are just not saying anything because they are happy. Whatever, I'm happy, making my games, having my fun, so I don't mind. The more there, the better, I'll help them all out and do what I can do implement features everyone is asking about.

Anyways, I've typed too much in this thread. You get the point now, hopefully.

I've always thought you've made good changes to Irrlicht but I never used irrSpintz because I thought your changes would get rolled back into the mainline irrlicht someday.

Since that's not really happening, maybe you should break away from Irrlicht more and maybe give irrSpintz a new name? Just some thoughts. When joe random internet user goes looking for a new 3d engine to play with, Irrlicht, irrKlang, irrEdit, irrSpintz all look like part of the same thing when really irrSpintz is a different engine.

[zenaku]

About irrKlang, irrEdit, irrXML being a big waste, etc... I hate to say it but I kind of agree. What's next, irrPhysics? irrOffice?!? I dunno irrEdit is useful, but irrKlang? irrXML? There are other much more mature libraries with more focus and developers working on them. I love irrlicht, but some of this stuff is kind of iffy

[mandrav]

Well, the specific patch has been improved since the first time I posted about it (basically added a stencil buffer for the FBO), so allow me to clean my irrlicht working copy and re-export the patch. I will post it in the original thread, probably some time today.

That was kinda funny though: removing the patch suddenly picked the interest .


EDIT: and just to get things straight, I was not expecting comments from the community (which are always needed anyway), but comments from the devs. Like "this sucks" or "needs this or that and then we 'll commit it".
The point of posting patches here, besides helping someone having the problems the patch is trying to solve, is that it eventually gets accepted in svn. It's a problem for me (and I guess anyone else making patches) to keep my patches locally and having to re-apply/adjust them each time irrlicht changes in the same areas...

[CuteAlien]

About irrKlang, irrEdit, irrXML being a big waste, etc... I hate to say it but I kind of agree. What's next, irrPhysics? irrOffice?!? ;) I dunno irrEdit is useful, but irrKlang? irrXML? There are other much more mature libraries with more focus and developers working on them. I love irrlicht, but some of this stuff is kind of iffy :roll:

Actually i havn't found a good library yet which has a zlib or bsd alike license for sound. Still i know what you mean - i also wondered for example why he did irrXML instead of just using or modifying for example tinyXML. Still for some reason Niko seems to be able to just push out all those libraries in his sparetime and they all seem to work. So why complain? And i'm definitly expecting irrPhysics and irrNet to be available some day ;-)

[Eternl Knight]

irrNet, maybe. If Niko decides on developing his own irrPhysics, it will be the point of absolute absurdity. There are several free (i.e. ZLIb/BSD licensed) physcis engines that can be used in Irrlicht written by people with degrees in Math/Physics. Re-implementing what they have done (without the background they have) is a major waste of time.

--EK

[omaremad]

Ok i belive irrlicht dev has stopped... nothing but fixes for bug fixes nowadays, thats why im stuck witha custom ver .14.

things that need to be fixed are..... hmmmm actually irrlicht is fine.
What i really hate about irrlicht is that it uses ancient and slow extensions, niko seems to want compatibilty but these old extensions are ugly and slow.

I had to replace a couple my self.

Also what is annoying is that irrlichts animation system is ... very bad. so i just use the cal3d patch.

as for shader, ogre offer tons out of the box but whats the fun in genric shaders .