Announcement:Aurora C++

Just a self indulgent announcement that Aurora will soon be released for C++ as well. Although for C++ it will buck the trend and offer a completely streamlined Bmax like interface with all the same features including blitz net optica.


Here's the best part, if you already bought AuroraMax, you get it for free. Like Bmax is one price for all platforms, aurora will be one price for all languages. I plan to do purebasic and db ports too and likewise, once done you'll get them for free if you've already bought Aurora.

Any suggestions are welcome, negative flames are not.

Have you slept in the last 3 weeks? :P

Anthony

Any chance of a C# wrap? I know this is possible because I've already looked at one for Ogre.

I think so Cyngus. :)

CodeGit, definitely a possiblity. I was trying just this morning to link to a dll but atm I'm using Mono which isn't compatible with the tutorials out there. So I have to re-install windows so I can run Visual C#.

I'm interested and willing to purchase this (or Aurora 3D), however I'm considering your product support status(since I dindn't see the BNetOptica "1.2" thingy)

Being a customer I felt like to know some active news in existing products, that's a fundation to attract me to buy other products as well....

Three updates havee been released for Aurora so far, fixing bugs and adding new features lik EntityGroups.
Only yesterday I added another 10 or so functions to be released in the next update.

It's Cygnus. Thats twice you've spelt it wrong :P hahaha.

This is cool BTW :)

Good, keep up the work. I want to see you pay more attention to posts and read them before hitting submit - you again have spelling mistakes / typos.

Improve your customer service and have some quotes on your site - praise from customers etc, strengthen the human side of stuff and the sociable wooing of customers.

Ok, I bought the engine. How do I get the updates? Can find anything on the official forums even after login in.

Thanks for your help

They're in the General Discussion Area in the Private License holder's 'club' thingy.

Have I validated your account yet? they're closed off to the non-members.

Hi Antony, I don't think then that you validated my email account yet.
Please do so, I would be very grateful.

C# would definitely be a great thing. I'm not the least bit interested in stone age languages like C++ :-)

but I'm aware the rewrite of the whole interfaces (or writting a full C# wrapper like Axiom) will take quite an effort and might thus not be of interest ...

I love C# so I wouldn't see as effort, more a fun break from regular programming languages. Any excuse to code in C# is a good excuse :)

Hey dreamora, d'you know how to open a dll in c#? using mono? Is there now LoadLibrary/GetProcAddress bindings?

While I'm making announcements, update 4 for the engine has just been released. It adds some cool things like true fog support, more lua bindings, a full suite of dipose functions, entity groups and more. Updated docs will be uploaded shortly.

You need to import them as COM or even worse ... (add reference)

But I would never use a 3D library that is COM in C#.
I did not switch to C# to be forced to do C++ again and you can't use them in a different way.
Native C# means a .NET assembly. For this you would need to change some parts of OGRE core itself. For example replace the current rendering drivers in OGRE through managed DirectX and Tao (.NET wrapper to OpenGL). (MDX is superior anyway, far cleaner DX Design)

You might check out Axiom to see what one would await and see as "minimum" for C# 3d engines ...
It would not be a simple thing to do Aurora for C# ... with a simple "use it through com", you won't see any sell to C#, I fear.

Axiom took months do design and implement (and it is only a OGRE wrap more or less) ... each new OGRE version again takes quite some time to get the features into it again, as you can not simply take the C++ sources, include them and thats it.

exciting news... i must admit...

--Mike

Anthony

if you managed to get a good clean OOP wrap for C# the market would be MASIVE.

That definitely ...
See T3D and GDK (the part time home of Axiom after the old team broke up)

But Dreamora there's dll import isn't there to import a dll function? I realise this is only a proceural method but I plan to do what I did in bmax, wrap it procedurally, then build a oo layer ontop of that that calls the procedural functions.


I just need MS net installed again. In fact i think I'll do that this morning.

The C++ version of aurora is up and running though, much easier to import a dll in c++.

Well, actually I mean BlitzNet, did you send any update to customers?

BTW, is your 3D Engine PureBasic 4.0 compatible?
If the answer is yes, I should buy it soon.

Not currently availiable for PureBasic but it is planned straight the C++/C# versions.

No updates for BlitzNet yet, you'll recieve it by e-mail as soon as one is finished.
---

I got dlls importing into C# so the first version will be C# now.

Here's the code I used Dreamora, no com interfaces required.

using System;
using System.Text;
using System.Runtime.InteropServices;

namespace AuroraC
{
	class Program
	{
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			
			Console.WriteLine("Hello world!");
			Console.WriteLine("hello word");
				
				
		}
	}
	
	class DLL
	{
		[DllImport("TestDll.dll", EntryPoint="sum",
				   ExactSpelling=false,CallingConvention=CallingConvention.Cdecl)]
		static extern int sum(int a,int b);
	}
	
}

How are you planning to handle MemoryManagement?

Enforcing freeing manually through functions like in C++/BM does not make fans on the "no memory handling side" ...

(C# has no procedural support btw, only OO. But perhaps I missunderstood your posting on "first procedural and than OO layer on top of it")

Ok it's working. I've now got the ogre config window opening and initializing properly in C# so it's just a case of wrapping it all and presenting it in a nice oo interface.

Anyone interested in beta-testing? I'm only looking for one, two people tops, but just someone to test what I'm doing and make sure there's no mistakes. Classic beta testing duties :)

Would be interested as I've been looking for a C# 3D library that makes use of some actual technologies for quite some time now.
Have been using Axiom before until the team behind it broke up. (used TV3D 6.2 as well but never liked its design especially when using it with C#)

I'm really happy you chose to go the C# route. :)

If a OO layer is built on top of the procedural functions I suppose the OO-classes takes care of creating and disposing resources by calling the corresponding function.

Like this..., some kind of VB pseudocode :)

Class Entity
  private _ent As EntityPtr
  
  //Constructor
  Method New(Name As String,Mesh As String)
    _ent = ProceduralEngine.CreateEntity(Name,Mesh)
  End Method

  //Desctructor
  Method Delete()
    ProceduralEngine.DestroyEntity(_ent)
  End Method

End Class

Well, something like that anyway...

dont forget the ogreDotNet swig wrapper
http://www.ogre3d.org/phpBB2addons

Missed your post dream 'till sweenie replied, but yeah basically what he said. In bmax there are dispose functions that free resources created, and the dispose function is called manually by the free method and automatically when the class goes out of scope (I.e when the delete method is called automagically by the garbage collector.)

I expect I'll follow the same path in C#.

Vectrex, too much hassle that. Firstly you have to use swig(or something) to construct interface files, then you have to build them. Aurora C will be a single dll that you include in your product and violva, you have access to the entire engine.
We were toying with the idea of usingi C# and OgreNet before we went the bmax route but it just seemed like too much hard work. This way I can wrap as many C++ side libraries as required cos it's all being exposed through my ogremax.dll

Making good progress on the C# front,
here's a C# sample app to salivate over.

	class Program
	{
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			Display dis = new Display();
	
			Camera vcam = new Camera();
		
			Entity terrain = SceneManager.CreateEntity("terrain.mesh");
		
			vcam.Position(0,40,40);
		
			vcam.LookAt(0,0,0);
		
			while( true )
			{
			DLL.Render3D();
			}
			Console.WriteLine("Called 3D Render.");
		}
	}

As you can see, usage is pratically identical to the bmax engine so it's going to be the first C# engine that doesn't require a degree in rocket chemistry to understand. (Prove me wrong :))

*salivates*

Dude..... O.O

Only us stoners are allowed to say Dude to express something. Stop taking our words!

I have always said "Dude". Ask Evak. Ask my bro.

Wait.. My bro's a stoner... There's something not quite right with me :P

Yeah there is, you're *not* a stoner. :)

Back on topic, I'll be releasing a beta to bmax owners of the engine tonight on the forums for C#. Like the bmax version you get the full CS C# source code too.

Sounds cool, might gave to dig out that C# IDE you said was so good with visual studio.

Wish I was using it now, stuck using some ide called X-Develope by OmniCore Studios of all people. It's very slow.

So far I've wrapped the pivots,entity,camera and light classes of the engine so if it wasn't for ode we could code our game in C# :)

Assumed something like the destructor freeing behavior :-)

Looks quite good so far :-)

I use VB.Net and have been playing with MDX. I really like it. I would be interested in using Aurora on the VB side.

Also, you can download the VS 2005 Express Editions for free. Worth checking out.

ants problem is he only has 256mb of ram and XP Pro on a 800mhz PC. MS IDE's need a lot of ram it seems.

It's worse than that, I have 128mb :)

on that, i would not even consider .net

the gc can't work on usefull performance ...

How Much of Aurora is Sweenies engine repackaged?



Timmy to Sweenie On release of Orgerad.

None.

Anthony

Did you ever release a beta of the C# library to licensed users (as you stated you would do in an earlier post)??

I'm still very keen on using Aurora with C#. :)

Thanks @ Cygnust

Lol. Note to self: Change name to something people can spell. :-)

lol

No John I didn't. Anyway Jim, I've just re-installed windows Xp so I can now install VC#2005 again Bob.
So in conclusion tim, I'm just about to do it Joe.

Anthony, please, stop to change your pseudo every day !!!

He's changed it 3 times today.

Fred

Okay....waiting

Said CyngusTheDrunkenInbreed. ;)

Well, I am drunk. I definitely don't share your inbredness though.

Just because my father is my nephew and my mother is my sister doesn't mean I'm inbred.

Ant..: Check your mail :)

Would do but my mail server is playing up. Sorry if you just ordered will have to wait until bt resolve the networking issue there having before I can send. :)

Waiting.. *Pause music* Waiting.. ZZzzzZzzz :)

Patience Grasshopper :)

If my mail server isn't fixed by the next time I ckob online i'll grab my ftp settings off him again(new install so lost 'em) and host it for you to download yourself.

Yeah, now if only programming languages for console ports would be that easy... As a matter of fact, I'm not too sure what language from the C family that the HAM SDK uses for the GBA (could be C++, but I'm not too sure...)

Yours looks great for a PC language, tho.

May want to spell-check your sig: 'industary' is not a word.