Irrlicht Engine

Recently I'd viewed a website built by a member of the Irrlicht community - Acki.
http://abusoft.g0dsoft.com

There are a lot of new functions in the IrrExtensions which are very useful.
I wondering why it was not been added into the Irrlicht engine.
IMO it's unnecessary to download many add-ons just to get more functions for our games/projects. And since IrrExtensions is a part of Irrlicht...

It's so disappointing when you asks "hey do irrlicht support multi-animation? or texture decal? or...." and the answer is "NO, you have to download the blablablabla and blablablabla, which are the add-ons of irrlicht to get the results you want".

Sorry I don't know how to express myself using the right words...
Just my 2 cents though...

The general reasons for most extensions are that they are ad-hoc solutions which do not fit into the Irrlicht architecture. They were simply added somewhere in the class tree without properly providing the necessary interfaces. Moreover, mayn of them lack the required coding style. In the special case of Acki there is even no code that can be reviewed since no one ever provided diff files or other usable code fragments. I cannot and will never run Windows apps which alter my source code.
But you may start a thread for some extension to be included. Simply provide the necessary code changes and expect some discussion to justify why this extension should be added to Irrlicht. But there are no general exceptions of which code cannot become part of Irrlicht (if the copyright is clear).

Because it suddenly comes to my mind: Code should run on all platforms and drivers, at least this will increase probabilities for inclusion.

hybrid wrote:Because it suddenly comes to my mind: Code should run on all platforms and drivers, at least this will increase probabilities for inclusion.

does this mean if someone write something that might be very usefull,
must be for all platforms and drivers, othervise it will be ignored?

hybrid wrote:They were simply added somewhere in the class tree without properly providing the necessary interfaces.
Moreover, mayn of them lack the required coding style

whats wrong with adding/rewriting to fit with irrlicht style?

You hate(hard word, cant find better one) windows like spintz hates linux.

No, it won't be ignored, otherwise GLSL and HLSL wouldn't be in. But if someone makes a scene node which requires some driver specific things it would be better to either provide the basic implementations for all drivers first (this usually includes only the hardware drivers...) and then post a more general solution. So there (hopefully) won't ever be a scene node which has to be disabled for some platform. A good example that I just thought of is the video texture scene node. Having just a win32-API implementation is not suitable for inclusion in Irrlicht. So it would require either an implementation with a cross-platform library, or at least functionally compatible versions for the operating systems supported by Irrlicht.

I have rewritten a lot of code already, but I think it's simply good style to provide code which is properly written. And coding style as well as proper architecture are pretty important in this respect. I simply don't have fun with restructuring other peoples code. It's their job in the first round. I'll do the finalization later on.

No, I don't hate Windows. I simply don't accept discontinuation of a platform or driver just because it's harder to write portable code. And this will sometimes require to write much more code and tkae much more time. But that's ok for me, cross-platform and cross-driver support is a major feature of Irrlicht.

belfegor wrote:You hate(hard word, cant find better one) windows like spintz hates linux.

I think hate is too kind of a word for my feelings on Linux. Maybe, despise, detest, loathe. Hmmm, this one's good from dictionary.com ---- "view with horror"!

Why you hate linux? Personally I think that both OS has its own advantage and disadvantage. Obviously I'm neutral lol.

LINUX UBUNTU BERYL
WINDOWS VISTA AERO VS LINUX UBUNTU BERYL
[Beryl,Looking Glass,Windows Vmware all in one]

Virion wrote:Why you hate linux? Personally I think that both OS has its own advantage and disadvantage. Obviously I'm neutral lol.

I agree, they both have their advantages. 3D is not an advantage of Linux. This is a 3D community. So in regards to 3D, I "view with horror" Linux.

" [IRRspintz] Irrlicht with different development priorities. "

Just curious, what are those different priorities? I couldn't find a rationale for irrspintz on your site.

A lot of you aren't paying attention to the current development of irrlicht.

it has been thoroughly serialized and GUI factories allow you to make GUI plugin like custom factories.

when you request something from the engine the code is helpful but not necessary.. if you want something included get with the concept of what irrlicht is.

it has been said time and time again that irrlicht is a rendering engine not a gaming engine and probably never will be. it is an open source library for rendering. more or less for coding convenience not everyone in the world has time to build an irrlicht of their own.

Irrlicht has lots of great features but does not yet take full advantage of hardware. If you were making the next cutting-edge FPS game you'd come across the limits and have to do something about them. Handily, the Irrlicht license allows you to alter the source to your needs without being forced to release your code. Plus, if you can make that kind of game I'm sure you're capable of modifying base Irrlicht to suit your requirements (or just start with IrrSpintz as your base).

I have already implemented in my version of irrlicht stuff that are useful
for me (from irrspintz, acki ext., vitek's 5 mouse button code, and other
stuff that i have found on the forums) i am a bit afraid that i might somwhere
make bugs with implementing others stuff(it works fine now but when it gonna breaks?).
It will be good, and i will be feel confidient if it was done by expirienced
(irrlicht team) ppl.

i know, my english sucks .

btw.irrspintz have coolest feature.thanks spintz.

I wrote:thanks

this word is weak for what i want to say.

FYI, some features such as the almost rudementary "have terrain image the right fricken way round" patch or the "hundred and one times asked question about controlling bones by code patch" have no platform or API dependancies. Also Acko sticks a little "IrrExtensions" comment besides the new functions he generates.