DevMaster.net !!

www.devmaster.net

Looks like a GREAT site. Lots of new stuff being released recently. Can't someone make a wrapper for Horde3D or sumptin'. :)

I could, but I won't. Quite aside from the fact that all my work time is being focused on my game at present, it would be a good waste of my time anyway. Most people will reject it because they have a preconceived notion that non-native 3d engines are inferior. ( Which is odd, since even Max3D or whatever it ends up being called will be non-native. Anyway, I digress... )

And those that do use it will get bored, hit a hard patch or just generally lose interest half way ( if that ) through making something and wander off to find something else shiny and sparkly for them to not finish a game in.

It's not hard to wrap a 3d engine with a clean c++ interface, and the webpage says that Horde3D even has a plain-C interface for simple integration with other languages, in which case it'll be even easier. I knew nothing at all about wrapping an engine before I wrapped TV, and that didn't take too long. So if you want it that badly, you can wrap it. There's plenty of help on the BMax forum if you get stuck, from people like myself who've wrapped other engines, and from multi-lingual coders in general.

I'm just trying to get the 3D revolution started man.

Great. Well get started and if you get stuck wrapping it, post in one of the BMax forums and I'll help if and when I can.

What's your opinion on the Horde3D engine? Is it even worth wrapping?

The devil is always in the detail. You never *truly* know if an engine is exactly what you want until you're buried in a project. Sad, but true. Even with TrueVision3D, I've had a few scares where I thought what I needed to do might not be possible, only to find an obscure function hidden away in a rarely-used class which enables me to do exactly what I needed.

However, from the feature list and a quick skim of the docs, Horde is Windows only, but has apparently been engineered with cross-platform support in mind. It has good animation support including blending, mixing and morphing. It has native XML formats for materials and shaders, and binary formats for images and animations. It supports Collada, so your art path is unlikely to be too much of a hassle, and as well as a fairly generous license, it has clean API which even ( apparently, I didn't find it ) has a plain-C interface for use with languages like BlitzMax which can't work with C++ classes. ( In other words, it should be a lot less work to wrap it than it was for me to wrap TV3D. )

So yeah, as much as you can ever tell from a website and some docs, it looks nice. Assuming that you have a project in mind which suits the engine. ( EG: It seems particularly optimized for rendering lots of animated models. I would assume that anyone wanting to use it would intend to take advantage of that. )

Hmm...I took a look at the tutorial for a setting up a simple scene and it's a bit daunting. Erm...

What about OpenSceneGraph?

Ugh...I just downloaded GameStudio A7...SEE HOW BAD THIS IS GETTING?

jst wait on bmax3d or grab gabes wrapper + a tv3d license... actually dont listen to me, i never finish anything..i jst start the same projects over and over again :p... and take giant breaks :p

Nice specs there Defoc8 :)

Chroma: There's enough brains in this community to create a max3d engine, but no coordination. It'd need a GOOD manager/technical director.

See it? I believe I predicted it.


Come to think of it, I believe it was your advice on working around BMax's inability to work with c++ classes which led to me writing the wrapper in the first place. I guess I'm going to owe you a beer or three when I've finished a game with it.

heh - cheers tom ;)

From that site: "We currently have 279 engines in our database."

279 graphics/3d engines?! Blimey.

Is everyone and their neighbor writing engines these days?

ShiVa kicking ass....really good stuff..

@AngelDaniel

A lot of the stuff isn't working properly, more or less discontinued or out of your budget. If you take a closer look then you'll see that there are only a few solutions which really work out well for most of the people. But it's an interesting site for browsing through and learning what's all around in the world. Could be a good ressource for a 3d engine quiz! :O)

A good resource for ideas for making another one ;-D

What are the top 5 engines on that website?

Getting rated as a top whatever engine is just up to how many people are commenting to an engine if i remember correctly, so don't take this too serious.

But did you think it would be that quick?