Irrlicht Engine

austcro: I'm personally not savy enough yet to know if we could just do both and release a version in 1.1 AND 2.0. Are they really that different? I would imagine after something is working in 1.1 it would be easy enough just to gear it for 2.0 also or the other way around. (Give or take a feature or two) Anyhow I'm starting from scratch right now since austcro doesn't have CVS up yet so I can at least get to know the basic internal workings of the engine better. Let me know if this is possible.

Yes I've switched to Visual C# and everything runs great with it so until SharpDevelop 2.0 is outta its beta phase I'll stick with VCS. There are some features in #Dev that I like so I might consider going back then.

the_bob: I like the way that looks

As to companies not upgrading... sheesh. We should probably just use cobol(or worse if possible) and code on paper so the typists can copy it onto punch cards for the big shiny boxes which need to be dusted 6 times per day. But then again, if output only needs to be one debugged line a day, it's not all bad..

Or maybe we should just all switch to intercal and say goodbye to any sanity.

I really should say something sane now, though I still feel like ranting, so I'll try to hold back.

The C++ boys are racing ahead, .net is playing catch up, and needs to overtake in every field to win - and they have numbers. Luckily .net has a few advantages of it's own.

DX: Stick to the new 2.0 assembly - it is cleaner and much easier to use, especially for new projects. (I've not checked the irrlicht source, but converting any COM interfaces they might still be using to .net 2.0 will probably be a nightmare)

Development: Stick to .net 2.0 - the .csproj is compatable with visual studio 2005 and the express versions... keep solutions in express, everyone has access to that and it seems unlikly that everyone has the full version.

I do not want to see this project fail or put anyone off - but today I'd be happier with custom objects/nodes, better animation and the like with the existing wrapper. Tommorow on the other hand is another thing altogether and I probably wouldn't mind helping out a little on something that doesn't involve screaming at multiple layers of C++ code.

the_bob

I have it on good authority that the_bob is excellent with this sort of thing

That looks great. I guess I was right.

valnarus: You are correct in your assessment. Generics will allow us to get rid of all the typesafe collections I have already implemented. And speed it right up. And structs, well we can just convert them to classes and get rid of any static properties just to name a few. I'll put some time into getting the engine into CVS. I haven't dealt with sf before so this is a learning experience for me.

Braneloc: Tell me about. As it was I had to fight to get VS2003 and some decent third party controls. Apparently, the standard controls that come with VS2003 are adequate And Viva La VB6. (WTF). Geez.
I'm quite happy to continue with .NET 1.1, however, I think it would be a good idea if I stuck the code I have on CVS and the development continue with .NET 2.0. It should give the .NET 2.0 version a significant head start

As far as I'm concerned, I will stop with the opengl driver. If there is sufficient demand, then other drivers can be added later. I just don't want to preclude .NET 1.1 as there still a siginificant number of people using it.

I will definitely spend some time this weekend and expedite this.

Steve

Alright Braneloc, I'll drop the starting from scratch idea and see what I can do with the custom nodes in the wrapper. I toyed with it a little already and haven't gotten it to work but I DID make it so a class could inherit the ISceneNode class so I'm assuming that's some kinda progress.

FYI: Subversion is supposed to be available to everyone on SourceForge sometime in February. I haven't notice any official anouncement that it's live yet. They might still be doing some beta testing on that.

Personally, I'd prefer to see Subversion as the source control system for the project, but I'm just throwing that out for comment.

I did find a basic SourceForge guide and the official documentation, though I haven't had much time to look at them closely yet.

Soon as austcro adds us to the project we can start getting the project site up and usable at least.

Braneloc: I have a few ideas for the Custom Scene Node I'm gonna try today.

Sweet

Once custom objects are up and running, things can get a lot more interesting

Valnarus wrote:Soon as austcro adds us to the project we can start getting the project site up and usable at least.

Got that. Doing it now. I'm also on now to finish off and upload. Stay posted.

Just when I needed to do something sourceforge goes down. I'll try again tomorrow.

the_bob, valnarus, and braneloc. If sf hasn't emailed you to tell you about this, you're set to go with developer access.

Lousy website literally thrown together for your laughter.
Hey, it only took 5 mins, and I ran out of time for now.

Braneloc wrote:Documentation is key with this kind of stuff - don't fall into the traps others do. Don't forget what happened to Axiom.

...also, keep the CVS active, and good luck !!

Yeh, I hear you on this. Unfortunately doco is the most tedious part of this. I've already spent a significant amount of time documenting the code that I've written and it was holding me up. So my strategy is to just copy and paste Niko's comments and make another pass when the engine is ready to go.

I think the user doco will be the biggest part of this project and I will be spending quite a bit of time doing what I can in this department.

As for the website, I think it is a start. I had a look at phpBB today while I was taking a break. It seems to be working for Niko so I am leaning towards getting that up on sf asap.

Hey austcro, Mr Project Admin...

Got as far as possible without you, now you need to set up the databases for wiki/forum... can't do it without admin, and it looks like a manual setup too... You are gonna have sooo much fun messing about...

Did make it easy for you though.. all the software is more or less ready to go.

Braneloc, good to hear from you. I was just thinking however morbid it may sound, it could be very possible that I die tomorrow, or even become incapacitated in some way. So just in case, I've added you to the admin list. Wouldn't it be bad if nobody couldn't get into sf and apply updates. Welcome partner.

Just to kill two birds with one stone, I have spent a significant amount of time going over the code, and then over it all again and I realised that some of the abstractions that Niko put in place aren't really that necessary from a .NET point of view. Before putting this all on CVS, I'm gonna send you guys a copy and get you to review it all first. Four heads are definitely better than one.

You mean we actually get to see the code we're gonna help develop? <chuckle> That sounds like a good idea austcro. Let's get this show on the road.