Irrlicht 2.0 - What's in store for the future!

[devsh]

I would agree to C++x11, but only on the condition that you implement atomic reference counting and rework the API-doc into clearly indicating the thread-safeness of each class and function/method.

[Marthog]

I would agree to C++x11, but only on the condition that you implement atomic reference counting and rework the API-doc into clearly indicating the thread-safeness of each class and function/method.

I completely dislike irrlichts way of doing reference counting because managing the object's lifetime should not be part of the object itself.
std::shared_ptr performs threadsafe counting if many owning references are needed, supports safe weak pointers without having the programmer to care for everything and it still allows the usage of Objects on the stack and with unique_ptr.

I completely agree on a better support for threads. Maybe Irrlicht should even have something like future objects which can be used for synchronously loading files and only wait for them when they are needed.

[ralian]

If I might make a proposal, I hate the built in font with the engine. It's just not usable. I know
it's not meant to be used really, but we might as well put a nice 10pt font in that is readable
if we're going to put any font in.

[CuteAlien]

Hm, I don't even know what kind of font the current one is. But definitely a good idea :-)

[ralian]

I don't even know what kind of font the current one is

6px. That's what kind

I mean, it makes sense to keep the size down. It's barely readable though.

[CuteAlien]

Yeah, I noticed. On small devices (Hi-res Android mobile phones ... ) it's pretty much unreadable.

[devsh]

we have a texture generator which works with the freetype lib or something like that

[CuteAlien]

I also work with freetype, but this is about the font which is compiled into the engine.

[devsh]

we generate textures for different fonts and font sizes so we just pick a font from a font file and use it

(tbh you could optimize by generating power of 2 multiples as one texture with mip maps i.e. {1,2,4,8,16,32},{3,6,12},{5,10,40},{7,14,28},{9,18},{11,22},etc.)

[lschuetze]

I followed the project some time now and I think a move from Sourceforge to Github will support the team enormous on communicating. You can reference issues directly from within commits. You can make easy pull requests which will help you get patches applied (I don't understand how people can just post some source code and say its a fix for XY without proper version control).

On the C++ side I would prefer modern C++ (C++11 thought).
Maybe the software rendering could be dropped. DirectX 8 support could be also dropped since Windows XP is EOL.

If you are looking for good math library Google released MathFu (http://google.github.io/mathfu/) a while ago.

[CuteAlien]

Font licenses are worse to read than software licenses :-( I just tried for an hour to find a font we can use in Irrlicht, but failed. It must be compatible to use as source-file in a zlib header as well as a image file (or ttf). If ttf then it must be legal to create an image file from it. It must be allowed to modify the font (as the header is to be used with software under zlib license). It must *not* have an attribution clause (incompatible with zlib license). So SIL also doesn't work as far as I understand it (which is pretty much impossible without being a lawyer) and neither CC-A. And can't use public domain (that doesn't exist in most european countries). It must be allowed to be used in a commercial environment. It must be allowed to be used in proprietary applications.

I suspect a CC0 license would work - but I found no remotely sane font licensed under that.
I think I start to understand why the current one looks like it was pixeled together by someone - probably just that happened to have _some_ font we can use.

Anyone having a solution is welcome to tell me. Or maybe you can design a font and release it under a license which works for us. Size > 6 was the main wish :-) Supporting at least all ANSI characters would be cool.

[thanhle]

I think SDL has freetype font. It has the same license to Irrlicht.

Regards,
thanh

[ent1ty]

Have you tried http://openfontlibrary.org/? There are many fonts with various licenses, but I can't say if there are any that will fit your specific requirements.

[CuteAlien]

@ent1ty: Yeah, I spend some time there.

I'm pretty sure the following won't work: OFL (SIL Open Font License) - seems to be more like gpl (and so complicated that it should be outlawed). All GPL licenses are incompatible with zlib anyway. MIT has an attribution clause. So do the CC-BY's and Bitstream Vera License. Public Domain is what I want but stupid european countries (like germany) don't have that. Freeware means nothing without further explanation (which was missing).

Apache 2.0 and GUST Font License might work. I'm missing the legal background to really tell... anyone here a lawyer?

[hendu]

I usually ship Apache-licensed fonts (from Android) with my games, but the license does require shipping the license text itself, which again would not work for irr.