mark's new worklog

whoops.. I'm late to the show!

..nope..:) Im still waiting features list ;)

Hmmm, hmmm, ...

Okay nothing has been seen yet, so this is speculation but

Same approach as Leadwerks makes the engine less attractive for casual games if it's gonna be released within the next time. I understand this decision from a one man show but it's just not good for the users. How do these fallbacks look like? I mean there are fallbacks and fallbacks, the first option tries to do the best it can providing a similar look, the second one just catches your calls in a safe way and says sorry not available. As for a comparison Unity invested a huge amount of time optimizing the engine also for low range hardware, providing workarounds and driverbugs. The reality is just not SM3/SM4 ready yet.

The second thing which doesn't sound good in my opinion is that Mark is gonna work on a game. Who is enhancing Max3D then? Again, i can fully understand this from his point of view that you need a change and you always should try to do what pleases you in life but as it sounded Max3D will be released soon and 2009 is already around the corner, now if i look back how long it took until BlitzMax was in a reliable state after the initial release i don't know who will do this work then. When working on a game you for sure also will stumble about this and that but there is a difference to providing full support for an engine.

Hmmm...

Anyway merry christmas from me too.

The Max3D will be supported by the whole Blitz community.
Marksibly provides the foundation for us to build up.

How many people here do have the knowledge of how a modern 3d engine is written and how to enhance it, fix bugs, write driverworkarounds, implement 3d concepts? How are they coordinated? I mean writing shaders for instance is a little bit different than coding some general stuff in BlitzMax.

Let the moaning and complaining begin :/

You know the difference between a discussion and moaning/complaining?

Mark. By working on a game, he will be dealing with Max3D first-hand and will be able to make tweaks or find bugs much easier than just relying on the users to do it for him. Since Mark will be depending on Max3D for his game(s), Mark will likely provide more frequent updates and improvements since it will directly affect his own work.

You will have the code, you can tailor it as you wish. Based on the improvements made by the community to miniB3D, I imagine Max3D will have a long future. Afterall, it is open source. It will be here for a long, long time.

As i already said you for sure will stumble about certain issues whilst using it in a practical way but i doubt that this is the most effective way because a) how much time is split on the game development and how much on improvements and b) fixes for a specific game not automatically encounter/fix issues for a generalised 3d engine.

How will the updates be released, is this a 100% SVN thing then?

There is quite a difference between something like miniB3D and a full blown 3d engine.

What's important to me personally is that i prefer paying people for their work on a 3d engine instead of having to track down code on my own because i simply don't have the time for it.

Mark already said it would be SVN, which is good since most of the whiners seem to struggle with SVN.

Luckily the choice is Mark's, not yours. Unfortunately, Mark's only reward will be people griping and putting his decisions down no matter what he does.

The amount of disrespect shown to Mark and BRL on their own forums is amazing and extremely sad.

I don't know what you actually mean but anyway i hope that there will also be normal updates because in my opinion a product like BlitzMax doesn't fit well together with modules only distributed via SVN.

[quote]a product like BlitzMax doesn't fit well together with modules only distributed via SVN. [/quotes]
Works for me. And I haven't heard anyone else complaining? :-)

Doesn't matter if it is in SVN or not, really. I prefer to work with SVN versions of open source libraries, as it means I always have the "latest and greatest" source.
I imagine that an occasional "stable release" would appear from time to time for folks that like those.

Perhaps you should stick to pay-for products, seeing as open-source is such a time waster.

Maybe because those who aren't interested in installing SVN just don't show up at all?

Open source is wonderful and the software world is full of it but it for sure takes more time and it needs to be organized in a reasonable way. Firefox doesn't work just because it's built on open source, it works because there is a driving organized force and money behind.

If you can't figure out how to use SVN, I don't see how Max3D will be a benefit to you as it will be more complex than SVN. SVN is one of the main standards for code and file distribution.

Hmm, it seems that you didn't get my point.

you dont have a valid point, mark decided to open source Max3D and that is like BIG news and you bitch about SVN, you should be ashamed of your self friend :P

Hey, i stated my opinion you somehow stated yours.

you can never please all of the people, i guess you will be one of those that will be left unpleased this time arround :P

I wonder how many people will be pleased with this and how many won't.

As Mark stated in his worklog, he is more interested in making new games, instead of keeping up different hardware issues.
There are many talented people in Blitz community.
Let's see what happen first.

Mark hasn't said he will not be supporting the Max3D engine, he said he wants to open source it. He's been supporting the Max mods, solving lots of bugs, and max mods were open source (more or less) also, so don't get it as 'I will open source it and forget about it', becouse I don't believe this is the current situation.

I was not used to SVN before I joined the Blitz dev team forum, now I can only say good things about SVN so I'm sure there will be more people pleased with it than unpleased. It can take some minutes to understand how it works but, hey, it is not comparable to the benefits it has (suh as getting any fix/improvement inmediatly)

If he's using it to make a game then he will be fixing bugs and improving it as he goes I guess. Sounds good to me. Cant wait to see it and have a play to be honest.

I don't know, but maybe if you rant and rave enough you can stir up some followers.

Unlikely :-)

dont be so negative, its either this which is wonderful news and I suggested it to mark in the other post "any news mr. sibly" and he thought about it and decided it was best for all. its either that or Max3D probly never sees the light of day, and if you have problem with SVN you will definitly have problem using Max3D so it's all good ;) Just to mention I've never used SVN my self either but I can learn if anything becomes of Max3D ;9

..but why SVN use should be a 'problem' ? I have seen JME and few other engines using it too..or im missing something??

I dunno about anyone else, but I've only used Tortoise SVN before, and that was for Papervision3D. And it couldn't have been simpler, seriously. I'm not sure about the open sourcing decision, and I'll miss the convenience of a simple, occasional install package, but I can live with it.

Regarding SVN, what/where is it and how do I use it? ;-)

Well, Mark also writes that the game will be using Max3D! This means he will probably be one of the people who continue working on Max3D. :D And this seems a good method; to test and develop an engine by actually using it in a game.

Oh I see this was already mentioned by Big&. ;)

Happy Christmax3D!

Yes, Max3D is going to be developed by the community. I've got a snippet from it here:

Function MaekGame()
  'soon I will adding here
End Function

Function youSuck()
  Fail:+1
End Function

Function noYouSuckMore()
  'f*** you!  and f*** anybody who looks like you!
End Function

SVN can be found at:
http://subversion.tigris.org/

To fetch something from subversion, which is all most of us will need to do for Max3D type:

svn checkout URL_TO_REPOSITORY

See http://svnbook.red-bean.com/ for a complete manual of how to use Subversion.

svn log FILE_OR_FOLDER

Is another handy function, where you can see log entries for files, basically what has been changed. Using subversion is great for code, if you're not using it (or other versioning system such as git) for your own code now, you should. If you're on windows you can use tortoise svn, which integrates in Windows Explorer and is dead easy to use. Personally I prefer the command line though. :)


That said. I think this is great news, a real Christmas present from Mr. Sibly. Thank you!

Cheer up GfK, I'm sure it will be much worse than that :-)

I have seen some pretty ugly code in the past. What GfK posted is nothing compared to it. :)
In the last project I was hired to help work on, there was a method called "you_dont_have_a_bloody_clue". I'm not sure what it did. The rest of the code contained other similar things here and there. :D

I've been using Tortoise SVN for all my recent dev work - it's very intuitive, and doesn't take very long to get to grips with.

Does BRL/Mark have DIRECT & ONLY control on the engine or EVERYONE can 'messing up' things?
The latter situation - in my opinion - is not very profitable...
I hope SUGGESTED improvements/changes/new features will be 'checked' by someone before introduced in the engine.
Open Projects could bring to too much 'branching' for my tastes.

@degac, I'm sure SVN write access will be open to a limited audience.

Usually, one submits patches for review, and if accepted, is integrated with the trunk... more or less.

Perhaps part of the release could be to make an install guide and put it perminantly on the website? Something a user would not have to search in the forums to find.

A step by step with pictures. That way no one can get it wrong!

Aside from that, the news sounds interesting. I am most interested in how the community are going to be able to contribute final pieces of code. If the way this forum ralies together to create solutions in the past is anything to go on - the max3d module has a good future!

It's interesting to see that some people can't read a whole argumentation and prefer quoting only to a subset of it, if at all. Well, this makes you more confident regarding the quality aspect, especially for the contributions from those. :O)

Hmmm, I like that things are moving forward but I am unsure about the OpenSource aspect, the whole SVN/Wiki Docs/Patchy Code area is a real turn off for some casual programmers, again Blitz takes a step away from its original user base IMHO... I will remain as neutral as I can though till I see how complete the final engine is... ...maybe this is the only way forward?

The SVN thing is fine, provided instructions on how to rig it up are clear and accessible.

I just wish someone can also include a compiled version of max3d for lazy people like me :D

I'm doing my best to include a SVN service on the BLIde Plus IDE, to let people update their mods without having to know anything about SVN and what it involves. (it is being re-written now)

Thanks ragtag, I downloaded Tortoise SVN through the link you provided. Just waiting for Max3D now ;-)

Mark, regarding Item 2:

Does this relate to BlitzMax also?

Do we have an ETA on this?

Mark said hopefully before christmas..

Mark, if you are reading this, check your mail! I am available full time for artwork.

hippocoder@...

Sincerely,
Rob

cool :) personally I think this is a really good solution, especially if Mark is going to be making games with it. Nothing works out bugs and creates new innovation better than working on a project with it.

I was hoping Max3D would be a fairly high level tool for 3d programming. Taking all of the ideas of Blitz3D but making things even easier, etc, etc. Now it appears for all practical purposes that Leadworks and Max3D will compete for the same user base. ?

As far as open source goes, let's face it...there's going to be a few peeps that have the time and the mindset to dig in and add updates, new features, etc, etc. The rest of us will wonder in amazement at their low level skills and wait for the high level tutorials, examples, etc, to show us how to do anything.

Just keep in mind, now that it's going open source, and no financial obligations, there may be no one to point the finger at about updates, or bug fixes. ;)

Its a bit pants to be honest, and pretty much typical.

Dabz

SVN is easier than FTP if you have something like tortoise, its as easy as logging into the bmax forum. Just need a URL, login and password and your done. Can move your folder anywhere on your hd and it will still update.

Looks like Max3D will be out about the same time flow3D is out.

Me too,

I'm revamping my website over Christmas to be setup more as a 3d artwork portfolio. Looking forward to trying out my new models in Max3D :)

john@...

I think going open source is very good. There are already some obviously skilled people in the BlitzMax community, and if the Max3D core is good enough it may well attract non-Blitz people to contribute. And I think it will.

The only ones who curse the decision are the commercial rivals, like Leadwerks and that Ogre wrapper. They will find it hard to compete against a free product, especially if it's better than what they are offering.

Will definately be interesting to see what max3D is like. I remember B3d was awfull for the first 2 years and had no art pipeline tools to speak of. It could be much worse with Max 3D depending on how shaders are implemented. GL is a dog that has no real third party support in the games industry where art pipeline tools are concerned. And the best renderer in the world sucks without good tools and access to it's features.

Just for assertive purposes...

As long as Blitzmax and Max3d work on my Mac I will be happy. Free, paid for, whatever.

PLS

I think the community making Max3d is a good thing, also I think that Mark should 'ratify' all the decent 'additions' to Max3d this will 'avoid' the problems that gfk has quite rightly pointed out :)

I think its the smart move personally.

Engine work is really just a grindstone, a long hard slog. It can be 'fun' to experiment but nothing beats actually making games.

Mark stopped that when he started Blitz3D, you can't help but imagine he's been tied to the grindstone long enough.

Don't forget it doesn't mean he's stopped working on 3D, far from it, it means its open source and more collaboration will make for a great engine.

I would love to see Mark make an actuall game that he enjoys making and have it realeased in the wild and then let everyone know it was made with the best tool ever BlitzMax or Blitz3D or whatever blitz product :) He made a really smart move to make it open source and let the community improve on it as well, best things on the net are opensource and mark him self uses lots of open source code so it's natural that he free him self from this self imposed must do commercial success projects that hold him down, the guy is creative as hell he should be making much more cooler stuff, so good move to let the community come in and help with Max3D :)

There's certainly been a dearth of Defender clones since Blitz3D, to be sure.

I thought I'd just point out a few facts that some people have missed...

- Max3D will not be free, just open sourced.
- There will be a stable version of Max3D for download, SVN will have the latest/testing/unstable version.

Open source sounds good and hopfully ASSIMP works well. I was hoping to be able to encrypt 3d model files. Looks like this will make i possible to write a custom IOStream for the importer object.

LineOf7's what are the names of said clones? Just curious.

A general question - I haven't heard mention yet of whether Max3D will still be a paid for product that just happens to be available as open-source code, or is it going to cost nothing to obtain and use it? Making it available soon on SVN seems to indicate it's going to be free - so long as you have a copy of BlitzMax to use it with? Presumably not a dll-only solution?

I was surprised too to hear Mark's news but good for you Mark pursuing your interests.

@markcw: How do you know that?

Either way, I'm happy.

Are there exist "Google Summer of Code" for supporting open source projects?

It was just a guess.

ImaginaryHuman:

dearth noun: an insufficient quantity or number

It was a reference to many many (100s?) of Defender clones Mr Sibly is reported to have put together over the years, and how that seems to have stopped since the focus moved to developing Blitz.

"- Max3D will not be free, just open sourced."

I'm new to the open source concept, can someone point me to a succesful open source project that's also being sold? I'm just curious about the work flow of sales, support, etc, etc.

Yes, there "ARE" exist such an event.

I don't know why Mark would want to open it to such a thing though, especially if it is a product he will be selling.

hmm... just been reading over the worklog and I cant see where it says he will be charging for Max3d???

I naturally asumed it would be free as it is open source...???

If Max3D is free, I am sure if Mark put a PayPal donation link somewhere on the Max3D product page, he would definitely see some donations come his way.

Makes me think it will be free..

I got the impression it was likely to be free to blitzmax owners. Will have to wait for confirmation of course :)

You sig's busted AdrianT.

I'm not sure this is 'open source' open source as Mark won't allow redistribution or resale.
My view is he will 'open the source' much like Bmax already delivers.
I could be wrong.

I supose the move is to make it free open source (hence the LPGL license). This way much more users can be interested on the library (people that work with C/C++, Java, .net, Delphi, Objective-C, etc.) and this, in the other hand, could mean that knowledge and interest on BlitzMax grows, so the BlitzMax users base can get bigger. IMHO, portability of BlitzMax still has no real competition on the other languages, Additionally it is really fast (almost as fast as C++), and has an incredible well constructed framework, not to mention this active community.

There are companies which offer dual licenses. Free open source and also a commercial license.

If Mark takes that route, I hope he is very careful with the choise of licenses, because otherwise things may get ugly (regarding things like third party source, which may not be able to comply with the licenses, viral license stuff and so forth).

See for example the mess with Ext JavaScript library licenses.

yes and no http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGPL

This is good news.

This could potentially be very good. If it's like a lot of other open source projects we could see an explosion of features.

It will be free. The only restriction is, you must release if you modify or add anything to Max3D code.

Would be good to know what the features actually are right now. Mark?

Pick a Linux Distribution and off you go.

WRT Max3D being free or not, it will need to find another license if it's not, because the LGPL wouldn't be compatible with selling a media-free project like this. He could sell support, but it doesn't look like that's part of the plan.

Yes, you can charge for a LGPL project, the problem there is that once you sell one copy, there's nothing stoping the buyer to give the copy away for free. You can even charge for the download service of the free copy, etc. There are lots of ways to charge for a LGPL project, but reading the worklog, it seems Mark is thinking to making it free:
So I supose it will be a plain LGPL project, wich sounds awesome to me!

If Mark/BRL want to release Max3d for free, he can always SELL related products such editor/graphic gui/material editor or whatelse he did last year (the 'famous' all-in-one-game-creator).
Of course BRL is in business and it needs money - so its business could be more modules for BlitzMax: I still need an 'official & multiplatform' support for media (ogg streaming, video and so on...)
Or (see the last work by Simonh) focus on other platforms such iPhone/iPodTouch/WinMo/Android for release BlitzMax...
I think there are some 'space of business'...



If he decided to return making games, and presumibly sell them, BRL could start (now) to think to act as 'portal' and sell products made by users (just an idea - but never say never).

I think, esp. if max3d is going to be in DLL form, then it should attract more attention to the community. Look at all the new people that came because Blitz3d SDK was released.

Where are they?

it sounds like putting it in dll form is going to be smart because it may now be equivalent to creating many languages... bmax b3d b3dsdk and bmax+max3d b3d+max3d b3dsdk+max3d etc...

That is a bit illogical..

and why would that be?

First off, Max3D and b3dsdk are not languages (that's a given), secondly, Max3D is supposed to replace/be the better of B3D, so why would one even want to attempt to combine b3dsdk and Max3D?

The goal is not to create new languages, but instead to support the current ones.

oh ok I didnt know that b3d sdk was not a language. I guess I havent read up on it enough.

An SDK is a Software Developer Kit.
Typically a set of libraries / API's for another language to interface with, expanding its functionality.

Traditionally, open source projects have one or more maintainers who have executive power over what goes into the project and what doesn't. If you disagree strongly enough you can create your own fork of the source code (vis-a-vis Wine/Cedega and Beryl/Compiz). Also traditionally an Open Source project will have a comprehensive unit test suite, to help ensure project integrity, and that nothing gets "messed up". How much of this Mark is going to embrace is another matter entirely.

With a proper deployment framework, you don't need a "guide". Ever tried installing cygwin? Or anything in Linux? You can make proper installs from Internet repositories (be they Subversion, Apt or ftp) no problem.

A perfectly valid argument. There seems less and less incentive to stick with BlitzMAX/Max3D and not (say) C#/TV3D. The bar for entry into the world of 3D games does seem to be rising slightly each year. However given the Open Source nature of the project, and if there is a commercial incentive to provide a tool that makes all this easier (like say Blide integration) I'm sure it'll all work out eventually.

Sure. Here is a non-exhaustive list of well-known commercial open source projects:
Cedega.
MySQL.
Eclipse.
RedHat Enterprise Linux.
JBoss.

Free as in "free speech", not "free beer".

If it's LGPL, there really isn't much he can do to prevent it.

If it's LGPL it will be sold, or spread free, by others once they have obtained it under LGPL. See the case with Ext JS under the old dual license.

The other part is possible limitations set to third party additions and modules, if chosen dual license is of viral type. See the case with Ext JS under the newer dual license.

Just some more:

Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome
Audacity
Irrlitch engine
The Gimp
VLC Media Player
Apache
The GNU C /C++ compiler packages

The list is huge!

Mono is a good example too

Sure. So what? Isn't that the whole point of Open Source? Free competition? If someone can brand, sell and support Max3D better than BRL, doesn't everyone benefit from this?

Ext was never actually LGPL software (because it contained conditions which explicitly violated the LGPL). The new dual license is either GPL3 or a commercial license. So while Ext is a good example of an Open Source project that you can sell commercially, it is not a good case for LGPL controversy.

FlameDuck,

I have nothing against open source or LGPL. Both are cool. I'm just pointing out, by using Ext JS as a warning example, that the licenses should be selected very carefully.

Sure. The main differences between Ext and Max3D as I see them is that Ext was always intended to be a commercial project, while Max3D not so much.

There are of course advantages and disadvantages to this approach, and what you're using BRL products for will largely determine whether you think this is a good thing or a bad thing.

The only real downside I see here is that Mark is probably going to have a really tough time getting people to meaningfully contribute. Aside from a few really hard-core people here, who are using BRL products commercially, who are interested in 3D engine development, who haven't yet started working on their own (or at the very least, haven't gotten very far) and who are intimately familiar with C++ and it's many pitfalls, existing Blitz users probably couldn't care less whether Max3D goes LGPL or not.

For me, one of the strong points of this, is the fact that you could use the Max3D dll from different programming languages. BlitzMax is a great language to make games with, but IMHO not the best one to create editors or integration tools. In the other hand, there are tones of alternatives, but BRL has a big reputation on releasing stable products, and this is something important to keep on mind also.

I agree with flameduck that "Mark is probably going to have a really tough time getting people to meaningfully contribute". Well there is a very small number of users that could contribute meaningfully, but I also hope that if the engine is good and stable enought, it can attract also some experienced C / C++ coders that wish to contribute on an interesting LPGL project. So... who knows?!

Let's wait and see...

FlameDuck,

Sorry, I'm not very interested in arguing about the subject. I just want to be sure Mark understands that LGPL will "leak out" from any restrictions he makes originally, just like what happened with Ext.

Agreed. 100%.

Fair enough. However since Mark has been using LGPL'ed (or similarly licensed) software for his own commercial product for several years, I'm quite sure he is aware of the repercussions.

So leaving all that other stuff aside, when can I get a copy?

Did i read somewhere that some of max3d was to be writen in C++ for speed reasons?, hopefully not to much because it will limit who will be able to add/mod whats already been done to it. Apart from that its great news. i look forward to seeing what happens in the new year.

Just when you thought there was nothing left for people to whine about, Pete steps up to the plate with the bases loaded, swings and knocks the ball out of the park.

Let the moaning and complaining begin :O)

Just one thing: let's hope Max3d will be out in these weeks, otherwise I can't support another year of threads about it (not yet available/ is written in C++/ Blitz3d is better / I want Blitz3d v2 / is LGPL / I want this / I want that...)...:D

> otherwise I can't support another year of threads about it

Well, you know the threads will just switch from "when is it coming?" to "can it have this?" and "why doesn't it work with my 13 year old, 512K video card?"

Mark!!! I am waiting for years to something (after the first demo of BM3D, you remember?)

So, i am 2 days free now. After all the years...give me something tonight.

A dll, a message, a module, a c++ snippet, a line of C! Whatever...but please, dont let my go to bed with nothing. *wuäh*

Merry Christmas

hehe

so... no Max3D under the tree !?! :(

There's still the new year and the orthodox Christmas, so plenty of time for Max3D to appear. ;-)

Barney

Have any of you stopped to consider the possibility that Mark might actually be having a some time off for Christmas? Max3D isn't that important in the scheme of things.

I thought Max3D was supposed to come out before christmas, so where is it? :)

hopefully...

He never said 'before christmas' -- just that he was hoping for a christmas-sy release date.

Yeah, but isn't "hopefully" right now?

Ogre, RedHat, ... erm cant, the list is too big.

Blitzmax itself is mostly open anyway isnt it? :/

Selling would usually be a failure of open source software.
But yes, there's tons of open source software which was raped by business men.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_open-source

You don't *sell* open-source software...

..all i wanna know am i legally free to sell my application i have created by using of corresponding open source software..in this case max3D?

there's a *new* worklog.. looks like Max3D is delayed a little, and Mark is going for a BSD style licence..

Hi all,

Where could we download Max3D?
Any hyperlink?

Thanks in advance

You can't download Max3D, it's not released yet.

hey cool! where can I get it?

Nowhere yet.

From todays worklog update:

delay release. I see

oh, I thought he said it was in svn. It is the b3d sdk in svn. I'll download that instead. Bye!

Reality check for quite some people.

You do sell some Open Source software. While the "selling services" model is quite popular with Enterprise Solutions, that's not a huge comfort for anyone here, because they're not really into selling into that market.

The point is that all that is irrelevant, because Mark is using a less restrictive license (now BSD, hopefully MIT eventually), meaning that you can have your own source as closed as you wish.

It certainly preempts my noob-question of whether to wait for this or go straight for MiniB3D.

*looking for Max3D*

:
Science fiction (ooh ooh ooh) double feature
Doctor Sibly (ooh ooh ooh) will build a creature
See Max3D fighting (ooh ooh ooh) bugs and glitches
:

Kidding... ;O)

-> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlew7FcXsyU&feature=related

While we are waiting here is a funny story inspired by taumel!

Interview With Dr. Sibly

There once was a man named Dr. Mark Sibly. He created a big 3d engine, but then the engine ran away. Dr. Sibly looked all over the world for his engine.

Dr. Sibly visited his friend, Simon. Simon wanted to know what happened. He asked Dr. Sibly many questions.

"I tried to create an engine," Dr. Sibly said, "but I created it open source."

Dr. Sibly worked very hard on this experiment. He tried to create a next-gen engine out of many parts of C++ code. He linked together source code that he found on the internet. Finally, the engine came to life!

The engine he made was very complex. It was stitched together with different tools. It could only compile and run like a Java application, but it was alive!

"The engine ran its benchmark and it rendered for me," Dr. Sibly said. "I knew right away that I had made a terrible mistake."

The engine whirred very loudly. The engine reached out with its huge gpu power. Dr. Sibly was afraid of the engine he created. Dr. Sibly ran away from his lab.

When he returned the next day, the engine was gone.

"What happened next?" asked Simon.

"I was afraid," said Dr. Sibly. "I shouldn't have left the engine alone in the lab. It was not ready to be out in the world. And the world will never be ready to accept such a frightening engine."

"Where did the engine go?" Simon asked.

"I have been looking for it," said Dr. Sibly. "During my search, I have talked to many geeks who saw the engine."

Dr. Sibly told Simon about a man who saw the engine in a shed near the laboratory. The engine saw the man's Apple Mac. The simple engine liked the light and warmth of the Mac. The man was frightened by the engine. He ran to the geek chat and told everyone what he saw.

"What did the geeks do?" Simon wanted to know.

"They went back to the shed with ideas and suggestions," Dr. Sibly said. "They were afraid of the engine. They did not know that the engine was also afraid of them."

The engine began to hum noisily when it saw the geeks. Their bright ideas and suggestions scared it. It rendered many polygons. It calculated. Then it ran away from the geeks and into offline mode.

"Where did the engine go next?" asked Simon.

"It ran until it found a place to hide," said Dr. Sibly.

The engine came upon a little directory when offline. It did not know why the geeks chased it away. It knew it should be where no one could see it. There, in its tiny directory, no one would be afraid of it.

But the engine was lonely. It rendered and processed from loneliness. It discovered that it had neighbors. Their installation was not far from its directory. It often watched them from the root path.

The engine saw that an old blitz engine lived in the installation with two younger ones. The products were very cheap. But they were very happy.

To be continued...

I do wish there was a demo of B3D SDK to try before you buy.

Newest worklog is a bit erm, cack, if I'm honest.

Dabz

With the rate the "plans" keep changing, give it a day or two, and you might like the next worklog better ;)

..I would like to see some features list as well as recommended low end configuration for Max3D if possible..

I hope its longer than a day or two, reading them worklogs nowadays is like watching an omnibus edition of EastEnders...

Dabz

Berkeley license has a quirky third stipulation that requires permission from BRL to promote Max3D with your game. Taking the legendary blitz anti-marketing campaign to the next level?

I think it would be in Mark's best interest to promote BlitzMax and anything else as rigourously as possible :)

We know mark is the Anti-Christ of marketing but I really think he should try it, maybe uploading demos to places like download.com, tucows.com etc just to push it a bit harder.

Some people just aren't into building empires. He's got a pretty sustainable groove on by all accounts (ignoring the lineup of 41 jagermeisters last night).

Ah - so that's why it's delayed!!! ;) hehe

Jeshua :=)

Urban legend says that Jagermeisters contain deer or elk blood.

You're allowed to strip that out and the license is still OSI Compliant :)

I don't understand why people have to use license declarations from other people. Wouldn't it be much easier to make your own license declaration which fits your needs exactly?

> Wouldn't it be much easier to make your own license declaration which fits your needs exactly?

Not if you want it to get past a lawyer's touch. Miss a dot, forget an *I*, or have something just out of place and next thing you know - you just gave away all the rights to your software...

That's just the lack of people's skills to be able to make accurate specifications and to be able to explain something to total newbies and children. I find it easy, because I need to talk to a computer the same way in C.

The problem with picking a new license from scratch is that it can seriously hinder the program's adoption in certain organizations -- with the main licenses, they already know what they're getting into, and it's just a matter of 'another' GPL/LGPL/MIT/Whatever license which probably already has been cleared by a legal department.

A new license can easily be too much hassle to even look at.

I think lawyears need so many words because they have no skills in C programming.
I can easily make a new license which is short and efficient, and has no security holes:
"Siipi Public License:
It is forbidden to sell this software even if you modified it, but it can be given away for free.
It is allowed to sell programs which are using this software.
If you misinterpret or don't follow these rules you are committing a crime.
Crimes are punished by your local law."

This is very true for where I work.

Well there is a very large grey area where your first and second clauses contradict one another, so I think that amply proves the need for a proven license.

Can you give an example?

The one you posted is the best example.

You haven't defined what "programs which are using this software" are or how they differ from being "forbidden to sell this software even if you modified it". As such, I could write an incredibly simple wrapper, present it as a program, and resell your library, breaking the intention of clause one. You could fight it, of course, but you would need one of those lawyears with their distinct lack of C skills, and I would have one of my own.

Equally, I could write an incredibly large program which uses your library, and you could consider that I have modified your library and sold it. I could fight it, but I would need a lawyer, and you'd have one too.

From what I read, in natural English, I don't think either of those were your intention. You've made it very easy for a lawyer to argue either, however.

This is why licenses are long, and why they reference source code and treat it differently to binaries. This is why static and dynamic linking are differentiated. Because one of those lawyers will find the slightest ambiguity in your license and use it to go against your intentions.

If its a true LGPL licence then thers nothing really to worry about i dont know what all the arguing is over.

You ARE allowed to write closed source commercial apps and wrappers as long as you dynamically link the original lib (ie '.dll' '.so' etc..) only and not compile-in the source to your own app or directly expose its functions (otherwise it would defeat the whole point of LGPL which is to allow commercial use while keeping the free stuff free). The only catch is -any changes- to the original lib(s) must be declared, re-released and be open source, but thats all, this does not extend to anything outside of the original lib.

not really as the version of the lib binary included with your app would be binarically (<-if thats a word :) identical to whatever LGPLed version you used.

I think you've confused yourself by reading one part of my comment completely out of context. This has nothing to do with LGPL, binary vs source or static versus dynamic linking. We're discussing his proposed Siipi license which makes no reference to any of those issues. Which is precisely the problem.

Furthermore, given that his license bans me selling it even if I don't modify it, it would matter not whether any binary component was identical or not.

@Gabriel:
No you can't, because you did't write an own program, but just a wrapper for the software which was under SPL. The license clearly says that you can only sell your own program, not the software even if you modified it (which would be your wrapper).


Also that is covered in the SPL. You must write your own program, which obviously is not the same as the software under SPL in any modified form.
Your own software is your own software, maybe that could be defined closer, but the 3rd rule already says that you are not allowed to misinterpret the rules. And that would be a clear intentional misinterpretation.

@D4NM4N: SPL is not the same as LGPL, although it's similar. SPL gives you more freedom, as you don't need to publish your modification to the software under SPL. You just can't go and sell free SPL software commercially, although Oracle and Microsoft and all those suckers always try to do it, and even prevent you from making free software.

You're wrong on both counts. Ask any lawyer. You can't add a rule which says "the words above have to mean what I want them to mean not what you understand them to mean" and expect that to have any legal standing. To the best of my knowledge, Humpty Dumpty didn't write any constitutions.

Everyone knows what a sentence is meant to mean. Snaky people like lawyers just think people are so stupid that they don't "understand" what was meant, and can get away with their pretentions.
This is why I added the 3rd sentence, to prevent such lying and pretending not to understand clear english.

Coolbasic anyone?

if you create a wrapper you can sell it as long as it DYNAMICALLY links the original lib. This way you are NOT modifying the original as it has not changed.

I know, but thats not what i was saying. OGRE is LGPL and there are many commercial products linked to that and do not need or use the 'full licence' (which is only needed for a closed source mods to the OGRE engine itself. This shouldnt include dll wrappers and last time i checked was discontinued anyway). If it did, if i simplified a load of ogre commands (from the dll) into one function in my game (a common practice regardless of SDK) then i would be wrapping it anyway.

Ah, I thought it was to be LGPL (at least according to the last log i saw, which i thought was what this was all about)

> This is why I added the 3rd sentence, to prevent such lying and pretending not to understand clear english.

Glad to see you think so, of course in a court of law what you (or I) think, doesn't mean diddly. Suffice it to say that your proposed license does not cover what you intend it to cover, would never stand up in court to do so, and is worthless.

If you don't believe me, write something truly useful and release it with that license...

@D4NM4N: I don't know why you don't understand plain english. A wrapper is a modification of the software, and not your own program. An own program does something completely different than aping 100% of the software's functions. Modifying the source of the software does not matter at all, as stated in the 1st sentence.

@dynaman: I don't really see how a clear english text would not apply in court. At least in Finland the judge would just remove all lawyers from the court room if they were trying to predate to understand something differently than they actually do. There are also lie detectors which work quite reliably. You can be your own lawyer too, if you can't find any lawyers with 35 years of C programming experience.

Which is why i wrote above:

Obviously you may get backs up if you simply expose the raw naked functionality and commercially call it your own, as you have not written a program or added anything, there is no program. Any wrapper that does this should be free out of principle. Your program needs to do something useful with it, i was talking more about syntactical wrappers & mini engines

For Example: if an engine had no way of moving an entity independently of its axis without a load of messing about with transform matricies and positions. I write a (dyn-linked) program that manages my own entity class and syntactically wrap it into:

TranslateEntity(e,x,y,z)

This is not exposing anything from the original engine and i could keep this stuff closed source and whack a pricetag on it if i wanted.

Anyway, this is what i and MANY other people understand by LGPL

I've lost count on how many times you've used this as an argument. Contrary to what you might think, words or sentences do not always mean, what you think they mean. Thankfully, not everyone thinks like you do.

A wrapper is his own program. As long as it contains instructions to execute, and is written by him, it qualifies as software.

To bad the 3rd sentence is rubbish. It doesn't matter what you write in your license, you do not have international legislative powers, so you cannot decide what does, and what does not constitute a crime.

Ironically, you're the one who doesn't understand English. Writing a wrapper does not modify the original software, if it did it would not be a wrapper. Thus writing a wrapper (like Gabriels TV3D wrapper) is his own software, and does not modify TV3D in any way (in fact it requires you to have TV3D already). So either you're the one who doesn't understand English, or who doesn't understand what "software" is, and in either case you probably shouldn't be giving out advice on how one protects ones software from being used differently than one intended.

I hope you are never charged with a crime. Your understanding of how the judicial system works, even in your own country, is quite disturbing actually (never mind the absurd idea that a 65 year old C programmer would be a good choice as defense attorney). I can only assume you are not yet of the age of criminal responsibility, so none of this applies to you.

I just read mark's worklog.



How is it physically possible he could have been working on this 3D engine for this long carefully designing the user interface, and have ended up with something which is only 10% complete and will only be usable by people with access to a C++ compiler who are willing to download new updates daily?

The mind boggles.

Are there any countries where lie detectors are legally admissable in court? I thought most countries bar them due to their unreliability.

> How is it physically possible he could have been working on this 3D engine for this long...

He has been starting and stopping and going in new directions repeatedly

..mann...when i thought i got it..it disappeared again..ehh..i guess its best to go back to my Horde3D wrapper...

@FlameDuck:
Actually there's 2 kinds of wrappers. One which loads the software as a DLL, and one which binary includes the software. The first case would be allowed, since it's your own program, the second case would be not allowed to sell (but it would be allowed to give out for free), since you would sell the software within your product too.

I took "at about version 0.1" to be more like a figure of speech.

What you're describing, as others have pointed out a million times already, is the difference between dynamic linking and static linking. Neither of which modify the original library (as by your license agreement), and neither of which your license takes into account.

There is a reason why legal speech is so elaborate and long-winded. It's not because lawyers aren't C programmers, but rather because humans aren't C compilers.

Sure. Also a version 0.1 doesn't mean that it's only 10% complete. Just be aware that it's not generally useful to everyone at this point in time. Still opening it up to 10 people is better than opening it up to nobody.

come on mark already!

make shadows=true!!!

Strict

Import max3d.m3d

GLGraphics 800,600,0,60,GRAPHICS_BACKBUFFER

m3dInit "SHADOWS=TRUE"

m3dSetClearColor 0,.1,.4

Local yellow=m3dCreateMaterial()
m3dSetMaterialColor yellow,"DiffuseColor",1,1,0

Local entity=m3dCreateBox( yellow,1,1,1,2,0 )
m3dMoveEntity entity,0,2,0

Local light=m3dCreatePointLight()
m3dMoveEntity light,6,10,-10

m3dSetAmbientColor .5,.5,.5

Local green=m3dCreateMaterial()
m3dSetMaterialColor green,"DiffuseColor",0,1,0

Local ground=m3dCreateBox( green,100,.1,100,2,0 )
 
Local camera=m3dCreateCamera()
m3dMoveEntity camera,0,2,-2

While Not KeyHit( KEY_ESCAPE )	
	m3dTurnEntity entity,1,2,3 
	m3dRenderWorld
	Flip
Wend

Materials!

You, sir, are an obnoxious tool of the highest order.

Begone!

So.... those shadows. Do they only cast onto flat things?

Is there a new tMaterial object? The code above seems to be using an Int?

Why does m3dSet<whatever>Color use floats instead of Ints 0-255?

Shadows will cast on everything i hope, I can't see if these are stencil shadows or shadowmaps (to low resolution) but both support self shadowing and uneven surfaces.

I also think the commands use floats because colors in OpenGL are in the range 0 to 1 and so you don't need to recalculate each color (which could be a really pain).

btw:
Will max3d arrive 2008 ? ;)

In OpenGL you could just as easily specify colors as integers, e.g. glColor3ub() uses unsigned bytes. By natively floats don't need conversion (faster?).

in pure opengl it is possible, thats correct, but if you have a shader based Material system you should pass the colors in floats to the shader. GLSL uses floats and no bytes as far as i know.

Skid: Here's a nice brick texture you can use for your cube shadow demo.

I feel all hyped now! The release is near! :)
How's it on a Intel Macbook with an Intel graphics card? Will it work at all?

I'm not going to create the biggest and bestest game evah! I just want to play with it.
(If something that could resemble a game is produced, it's just a bonus)

lol, nice texture Tom! Very nicely done... :P

..thats very nice ...I would be glad to give a try fir Max3D over my levels, if you guys willing to share it :)

lol... nice subliminal messages in that texture Tom!

:)

Well, in the code above, cameras, meshes and lights also seem to be using ints. Indices in an internal array of each? I'm not a big fan, but it's quite popular.


Because the 0-255 thing was a Blitz3D invention. Neither DirectX or (I think) OpenGL refer to colors in that way, because you're not always dealing in 24 bit color. You might have higher or lower precision than that, but a decimal fraction is universally applicable. When you work with DX or OpenGL, this is the case with many things.

PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAASEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE don't make it so that I have to put "m3d" in front of everything :(

PS VERY good work :D

Mark is in a no-win situation.

Czar, since Max3d is going to be open-source you can change it yourself if the commands start with m3d ;-)

I'm really hangin' for Max3D, whatever its incarnation... Bring it on! :)

Was thinking that myself.

Would it cause any confusion/conflicts if it didn't have that prefix everywhere?

Well, I'm not sure how Mark is incorporating it, but if he removed the prefix, could it potentially conflict with Mini3D?

Just wondering.

Dabz

I also would favour if you could use the commands without the prefix m3d.

The field of view looks pretty high. Is this vertex or pixel lit? Hard to say as either the light is pretty intensive/high range or it's just vertex lit.

So the first three parameters for a primitive are the scale, what does 4 and 5 mean? Visibility=both, poly subdivision, physics on/off, object receives/casts shadows, ...?

A bit off topic but this could be good incentive to introduce name-spaces to BMax. :)

m3d prefix is just fine and it should stay for all of us who intend to use Max3D with other languages. Makes life much easier without going through all that namespace nonsense.

Barney

Im thinking you wouldn't include minib3d in the same project. right?

Yahfree: Cool design! Very eye catching.

Using m3d ? ;)

Right. I can't see any reason for the m3d prefix other than the code being instantly recognizable.

m2dSetColor 1,2,3 vs. SetColor 1,2,3

Why is it even an issue? The rest of the code will contain your own logic and is the important bit.

Because people like to complain :-)

I guess it's due to that BlitzMax does care about simplicity and readability of code. It's one of the best features of BlitzMax and worth trying to keep it as good as possible, otherwise you can also use Unity's Javascript, that's somehow nice enough for feature freaks who don't care about a language's syntax.

Brucey, i'm really suprised that your getting a hang of such posts. ;O)

If we are going to be picky, shouldn't it rather be

m3dSetColour ?

Or has New Zealand become the 57th state of the US?

I think it looks okay.. with the prefix... And if you are using something like Blide it's a non issue anyway, since it does all that sexy intelliprompt stuff :-)

Maybe some people would like to voice their opinion without being accused of complaining?

Probably Mark had made an 'exporter' from C++ code-source to BlitzMax so the presence of the prefix M3d. It's not a heavy limitation.
And of course I think it will be possible to change this exporter to cut-off the 'm3d' prefix (and/or replace it with you want).

More interested into knowing what is/does this

m3dInit "SHADOWS=TRUE"

(..yes I can read SHADOWS=TRUE -> Shadows are present), I mean why with 'string' tag

SECONDED!!

Why are you friggin parsing a string to set an option?
I want it in functions.

The m3d prefix is a good idea though..

@Brucey
m2dSetColor due it was meant to be used from Max2D.

BlitzMax IDE as well as Blide aren't what you really want when looking for a good IDE.

I don't like it because it adds more things to type without adding anything to the language. When are you ever going to use more than one 3D engine simultaneously? I like to read my code and it makes it harder and less natural with the same 3 letters everywhere. Come on, as if I don't know what 3D engine I'm using? Maybe I will forget if I'm not reminded I'm using m3d every other line?

What extra informatoin or purpose does this add, in the practical scheme of things?

I am amazed at how many people are willing to step up and admit that typing "m3d" is beyond their mental capacity.

Dabz types 'TurnEntity' into the IDE.. turnentity turns yellow... Dabz hits F1, text editor is replaced by the mini3d functions summary page.

Potential conflict on the cards with the docs maybe..

I dont actually know, thats why I asked! :)

Dabz

I am amazed you cannot read, as I never said that. Or perhaps you can read, but understanding is beyond your mental capacity. Maybe you just like to insult people who disagree with you, it's one of those three.

I said it was useless typing for no real reason, not that I am somehow mentally inadaquate and unable to do so. It would be like renaming DrawRect to m2dDrawRect, or ReadFile to mioReadFile just in case I forgot ReadFile was an input/output command. Maybe we should rename Int to Integer and New to IWouldLikeToDynamicallyCreateANewObjectAtThisPointInTime.

Have you ever worked on a large programming project? Less itty-gritty things and hoops to jump through for no real reason are VITAL to 1. getting it done on time 2. not having nightmares about pointless things you have to do just to get it to work. Try dynamic HTML using Javascript and then you'll know what I mean. Whenever you want to access something on the page you have to write document.getElementById(this) document.getElementById(that) do you have any idea how tedious that gets? And don't be smart-ass you can copy and paste what if you're copying and pasting something else, plus it's just extra work when doc.getId() would work just fine. Btw it's case-sensitive too, trying typing it 10 times in a row.

Sorry for this rather wittering post but I just got that annoyed by your condensating and ignorant remarks. You don't have to agree with me, just at least have the respect to acknowledge my ability to think. Thanks.

Dabz is right. It won't conflict for the compiler unless you import both modules, but it will conflict with the IDE.


BlitzMax already has namespaces. I'm thinking that people who are complaining that typing m3dturnentity is going to be too much for them are probably going to balk even more at having to type brl.max3d.turnentity.

It could probably do with a directive equivalent to Using in C# to save everyone from moaning about having to type three additional characters though.


Well you might think it was a rude reply, and I would be inclined to agree with you, but you did say it. To be specific, you said


As I say, I won't argue that it wasn't a rude reply, but you did make the the size of your memory an issue.

I was using sarcasm to make a point.

Anyway wouldn't it be the other way round? Writing m3d requires less mental capacity because you'll always know where the commands come from, whereas you must remember if you don't write m3d. That was my point, I *can* remember so don't need the reminders on every other line. GaryV's point was that the typing of extra letters was the mentally challanging task.

I am guessing that you haven't. When using a third-party lib, it is very common for the commands to have a custom prefix that pertains to that specific lib. Some would argue that this should be a standard.

You are annoyed because I am sweating?

People will keep whining and griping no matter what Mark does. Most people would have thrown in the towel by now. Obviously, for Mark this is truly a labor of love. Why else would he put up with the constant nonsense from people griping and telling him how wrong he is and how he should really be doing things.

> Why else would he put up with the constant nonsense from people griping and telling him how wrong he is and how he should really be doing things.

Everyone, in every line of work, has to put up with that.

I was only making a suggestion and to me and a lot of people Max3D is going to be more of an offical extention that just some generic 3rd party library.

Unfortunately the best graphics engine in the world doesn't do much without the talent to make proper use of it. With the fancy rendering comes a lot more technical skill requirements from both artists and programmers.

Some people will probably find they are better off sticking with what they know simply because time is limited and the hardware your average joe indie gamer has isn't upto much.

With flow we have gotten it running on a old ATI video card with 16mb vram so long as you stick with shaderless fixed function materials. but we have still had disappointment that flowED didn't run on a s3 with 8mb vram.

Will be interesting to see how Max3D turns out.

I'm also not a fan of m3d* function names, but for BlitzMax the functions are imported from the DLL like so:

Global m3dLoadTexture%(path$z)=m3dProc("m3dLoadTexture")

A simple find-and-replace for "Global m3d" -> "Global " over the relevant block of code will sort that.

No object orientation at all in this engine then?

:( another Blitz3D.. There goes the hope of a 'modern' engine.

Some of you may be insane. Just a heads up.

Yeh, and that is prior to me posting in the thread.

That's a good point.

I think that whatever way the engine is coded, there will be people who would have liked it a different way. That's the thing with communities, you can rarely please everybody.

On the other hand, varied viewpoints and politeness and respect for eachother's viewpoint is necessary for a constructive community.

<rant>
It's a sad fact that there are far too many people (in all the forums I have read recently actually), who are willing to resort to insults and unhelpful comments when they see a post they disagree with. I've seen many things said in forum posts which would likely never have been said face to face. It seems the thought that the other poster is probably a thousand miles away and that it's highly unlikely that some 6'4" rippling-death 10th DAN gorilla is going to beat the living crap out of us, makes us fast and loose with our words.

And another thing...Picking on spelling or grammar, or anything else that we may be able to get away with, in an attempt to put the viewpoint of the poster in a bad light doesn't make much sense. Often English is not someone's first language or it may simply be a typo, or Dyslexia or whatever!

It is possible to disagree without being disagreeable!
</rant>

YAY NEW YEAR AWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

Shhut ur trap! It's only 9:30

:P

Ha! :)

And with 230+1 posts, perhaps we should start a new thread.