Irrlicht.NET

$> Ba$h · Post by **$> Ba$h** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 1:53 pm

i need irrlicht.net. how to get it ?

warui · Post by **warui** » Mon Jun 14, 2004 5:16 pm

You can't get it now. It will be avaiable in the version 7.0 when it will be released.

$> Ba$h · Post by **$> Ba$h** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:05 pm

and when is the release ?

warui · Post by **warui** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 1:25 pm

"When it's done" (c) Duke Nukem Forever DevTeam

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Tue Jun 15, 2004 7:43 pm

It's not really an issue for me since I use GNU tools, but what exactly is .NET? I've never really seen anything that explains it

bal · Post by **bal** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:46 am

.NET is the Microsoft program environment. It includes several languages (ASP.NET, VB.NET, C#.NET, C++.NET, ...) which will run on every pc with the .NET Framework installed.
Because I only know VB.NET atm, I'm also waiting for the release to be able to use this nice engine

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 4:21 pm

Ok, but what is its point. Not to be hostile to .NET, but I'm just wondering what advantages (if any) it gives over the way languages are normally compiled.

bal · Post by **bal** » Fri Jun 18, 2004 5:22 pm

* Registered :p

Hmm, I would like a .NET version because it's the only language I know atm (VB is also a lot easier than C++ which is the biggest advantage for ME)

And the point, guess what, it's MS :p.

Btw, someone knows when the release of version 0.7 is planned?

Tyn · Post by **Tyn** » Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:23 pm

Electron wrote:Ok, but what is its point. Not to be hostile to .NET, but I'm just wondering what advantages (if any) it gives over the way languages are normally compiled.

I've been pondering on this question myself, when I realised that I didn't know enough about .Net to know. So I went to gamedev.net for some answers.

Didn't find much on .Net, but I did find a long post on C# which interested me. I've summed up some of the points I find most interesting:

* C# does, in fact, support memory management in a very simular way to the Pointer's in C++. It makes you put them in unsafe declarations ( presumably to make you feel guilty for using them )

* A few people there believe that C# will not replace C++, but will in fact encrouch on mainly Java and BASIC ground and almost be a go-between for Java/Basic type languages and C++.

* Many people there seem to believe that C# lends itself far more towards application development than game programming due to the speed of development over C++ whilst being a little slower, yet still faster than Java or Basic.

Not saying I believe those points but it interests me none the less. Does anyone else know anything about C# to add to that?

Barumonk · Post by **Barumonk** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 2:46 am

J# (Java) is also included in .NET. Aside from what was said, .NET has automated garbage object collection, which is nice is you know how to use it, but if you don't it can really screw with your app if your going for speed. The garbage collection needs to be queried in the garbage collector manually during the load times, or else it could do an auto-cleanup in the middle of gameplay and force a good sized lag spike.

surfordie6 · Post by **surfordie6** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:28 am

Ok, since I've been studying the basics of .NET to try to get up to speed as a job-seeker

, here is what I found out.

.NET is Microsoft's solution for distributed application development. It is supposed to replace COM and DCOM. You would use .NET to create web services and programs that interact with web sites and web services, such as retrieving weather, getting stocks, talking to other programs. Think about Ebay, Amazon, PayPal, these are excellent examples of web services that can benefit from .NET. Sure you can use .NET to also make regular desktop applications, but that defeats the purpose. .NET allows you to program the app in any language you want VB, VC++, C#, maybe even Java one day, so long as its built upon the .NET framework.

While Java lets you make a program run on any operating system, .NET lets you make a program using any programming language that can talk to other programs made in a different programming language.

So how does this relate to game programming? Well, if you plan on making a game that talks to web services or other programs over the Internet, then .NET might be a cool idea. But for most games, you don't want to overhead and don't need that kind of "distributed" development. Usually regular old TCP/IP will do for games.

I don't really see what Irrlicht .NET would give, but who knows?

Barumonk · Post by **Barumonk** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:34 am

*cough* J# is Java.NET. J# was introduced with Visual Studio 2003. There will actually be a nice benefit once the Mono project ( http://www.go-mono.com/ ) and/or DotGNU ( http://www.dotgnu.org ) is finished. I haven't really looked at DotGNU, but Mono is being made to the .NET framework specifications, and when its done .NET projects can simply be compiled with the Mono framework and it can work in both Windows and Linux (and possibly other OS') without any change in the source.

Of course C/C++ will always reign supreme, as someone stated before, C is simply faster because it runs unchecked, it just does what you tell it to do reguardless of if its "safe" or not, which means it will always have the advantage over the newer C-based languages atleast in terms of both speed and power.

Tyn · Post by **Tyn** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:23 pm

Also, I think it means that a library can be converted to .Net's managed code format so that people can program in multiple languages, like Java and ASP ( two examples off the top of my head ) using the same library. This is from what I have seen on a few webpages, I don't know it to be fact.

Tyn · Post by **Tyn** » Mon Jun 21, 2004 4:26 pm

Also, I think it means that a library can be converted to .Net's managed code format so that people can program in multiple languages, like Java and ASP ( two examples off the top of my head ) using the same library. This is from what I have seen on a few webpages, I don't know it to be fact.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu Jun 24, 2004 8:41 am

Nothing beats hard-coded assembly for speed and power... doesn't mean I want to write my software in ASM