Irrlicht Engine

kingdutch wrote:Wow a long post, very nice writing though. I'm currently 14 with about 6 years of programming behind my belt (You know "Hello world" and then trying to get a user to talk back to you ^^ slowly progressing from there)

I've been looking at doing graphics programming (2D or 3D) for a while and I've found Irrlicht somewhere last week so I'll probably not be a good candidate for you yet.

You've certainly struck a chord with me because you made me consider going into advanced networks programming ^^ (Since I'll need that for the game I'm working to into tiny mouse steps (First get that camera moving around your black box before you draw something pretty and colide with it ))

Sounds like you're already well on your way, I wish you and your team the best of luck and maybe if you aren't finished in 2-3 years I'll be able to help you a bit?

Good luck,
Kingdutch

{ I would expect to be near completion in approx 90 days}
{as I am doing all the conversion of materials into the "irr" format for scenes [and almost never sleep ] this won't take long}

{then comes adding support for our 2003 R2 server and multi player
positioning data exchanges

and then finally customizing the HUD and a few other main game features

looking for demo of level 1 chapter 1 in 90 days}

So far in about 1 week:

I finished porting over level 1 zones
1.1 1.2 1.3 and 1.4

total meshes 4096 xml file size 14.2 MB (14,971,305 bytes)

I took my base texture and rendered it in 3DS with light maps and bumps
and then collapsed the rendering to a single 1024x1024 png

the result are amazing rendered as solid with 1 material and 1 texture file
I actually see the floor rise up in places as I rotate the camera

altho my poor little XP 2400+ proc is varing from 65% to 100 % load
as I run this heavy zone load my rendering speed is 597 fps
whether I use the PCI FX5200 or the AGP 4x FX5200

I have the results I was looking for in an engine
we will have awesome rendering speed option all the way down to
PCI and AGP MX-440 cards and still have awesome speed
for GL 2.0 effects for anyone in Geforce 6 or higher

this base map is an awesome starter for anyone looking to build a dungeon/maze type zone
its 64x64 cells of 12 meters by 12 meters
basically each cells is 6x wider or longer than a very tall human at 2m

the total area is 589,824 sq meters
z axis Blue arrow is N/S direction
x axis Red arrow is E/W direction
y axis Yellow arrow is Up/Down or elevation direction

working on a rotating skybox script to allow moon and sun (or plurals)
to move based on game/server times

I will be copying this base xml file and storing it on my network server
anyone who wants this base xml with 3DS mesh and texture mapped
and dark night-time skybox file included
should email me at ryjak@davox.net
using my forum email may get the email lost in junk deletions
so use my trinary email address so I notice it incoming from the davox email server.

Mapped floor is 1.2 0000 thru 001F --- 1.1 0000 thru 001F top row
Mapped floor is 1.3 1F00 thru 1F1F --- 1.4 1F00 thru 1F1F bottom row

4 quads of 32x32 using hexadecimal notation
this provides easy access in edit pane to position unique floor tiles or add walls or fixtures etc with fast access to exactly the right spot in dungeon or maze

the edit grid extends to 1000 meters allowing for adding wrap terrain
to make sky box and horizon look even more real or extending the
scene to outdoors with a limited view of the next zone.

I still have to finish 14 pieces of background music and a few more effects
for the 3d sound effects so I guess I should end this post and get back to work