Other engines

[kryton9]

I have been doing research while working on learning Aurora. The fact that Paul and the other developers have put together this much of Aurora together in a really amazing amount of time, I might be mistaken in making this proposition. But I will make it anyways.

The team of people working on Aurora seem to be about the same size as those working on Ogre, ODE, Irrlicht etc. Maybe even less. Since Aurora is not specializing in just one aspect as those are, but is an all purpose language. It just seems like to get a 3d Engine up to Ogre or other's level is going to take sometime. As we see on the post those of us into multimedia 3d want our stuff, those who are into the ide want there stuff and on and on it goes. Then you have physics, sound, well I guess input is already taken care of. As I said Paul and crew are doing an incredible job.

I think Paul should eventually develop his engine the way he wants. As we have seen it is really cool. But with being pulled in all directions maybeÂÃ, we should say lets implement a wrapper or whatever it would be to tie into Ogre, Ode and we need to find an Open source audio api.ÂÃ,  This way users of those engines will discover Aurora as I am sure once we get a good working tie ins, we can be linked to them and them to us etc. I am not a member developer, but would love to help and want to learn how to do those type of conversions. I am sure it seems zumwalt and the others who have posted in this area would feel the same way.

Ogre is doing some amazing things. I recommend all interested to download this demo. It is actually a series of demos and some of the effects are spectacular.
I didn't play with ODE, I guess it is buggy, but it seems everyone is jumping on the bandwagon from my reading. I am open to any of the engines that others might seem interested in.

Panda is didn't seem like what we need, and Jet lacked in areas.

Irrlicht looks good too, but I don't know it just seems ogre is as the main guy wrote trying to put the best engine and leave the other things needed for gaming to others allowing flexibility to the programmers.

But there is this sort of Ogre Ode type synergy I sensed in reading heavily.
Ogre and Ode have pretty good documentation and tutorials etc too.

I thought might as well look at open source stuff as the liscensing is laid back.

http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_remository&Itemid=57&func=fileinfo&filecatid=40&parent=category

I am sure all of us interested with some guidance in writing such conversions would love to work on it and add to Aurora.

In the meantime love all that Paul and others are doing.

Would love to hear what others have dug up and your thoughts!!

[J B Wood (Zumwalt)]

Good points, all of them.
I am all for aurora having its own 3d engine, although it probably should use ODE since there are something like 400 methods already done with it.

The thought did cross my mind about Ogre wrapper, but then we are dependent on if Ogre changes pricing scheme, etc. Then we are stuck.

I would like to see Paul and the gang continue there work on there own 3d engine, it will pay off in the long term with great desire to use it. I don't want to deal with 'just another ogre wrapper' routine.

The idea is to make this product as stand alone as humanly possible without any external forces controling its destiny.

[kryton9]

I agree with all you said Zumwalt, but ogre from their site:
Is it really free?
The Ogre source is made available under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which basically means you can use it however you like as long as release the source for changes you make to the core engine if you distribute your product. The source to your application or to new plugins you create does not have to be released (although it would be nice if you did). See the licensing page for full licensing terms.

That is why I thought it would be a great candidate. We would just use these for now to give The Aurora Development TeamÂÃ,  a chance to take their time in developing Aurora's 3dEngine, Physics Engine, and all the rest that will make it the best all purpose programming language out their!!

In addition, we could be bringing in lots of existing Ogre and Ode users and introducing them to Auora.

[Parker]

LGPL means you must make any modifications available to the public, but that you can use it in a commercial application. It's often known as the Library General Public License, because libraries use it so that programs using them aren't forced to be open source.

[kryton9]

I guess the confusion that has risen, is that we would just use it as it is , but not making it a part of the Aurora engine.

So no need to worry about releasing code and this would be a way to bring in their users and introducing them to Aurora, while it gives the development team here time to take their time, complete the language and then go back in and make all the cool engines the way they would like.

We would do as zumwalt did with 3dimpact engine, write what we need to use Aurora and Ogre, ODE etc.

Aurora will then have its own engines, but as you guys have a whole language to develop it just adds lots of free resources for use quickly there by making Aurora even more useable quicker and therefore helping you guys make money and keep all of this going and growing.

From my experience so far, here is what I sort of came too:

1. To someone new to programming or coming from old school, Aurora has a steep learning curve, with the effort needed to learn Aurora, C and C++ could be learned. YES Aurora, does make things a lot easier than those languages, but to get to that point the learning curve is there.

2. What Aurora offers and this is the big PLUS is freedom from all the cumbersome stuff that being tied to Windows programming forces people using the Microsoft Languages.

3. Most of the young kids getting into programming are doing it for game development. Of all the boards I frequent, the gaming development boards are the most active. This is the driving force and market out there.
Just look at all the different engines out there, there are tons of them and each has lots of users. So the thing that will make Aurora money is to bring and keep those programmers.

4. Ogre and ODe already have a wide userbase, just look at their forums. Imagine them coming to discover Aurora, then think of those sales.  (it doesn't have to be Ogre and ODe at the moment, just in my research they both seemed like good choices, but there are so many engines out there, I went through the top 10 and Irrlicht looked good too, you never know till you use them of course, so that is up in the air, it would be great to hear from those who have used them and hear their recommnedations).

5. You guys developing are putting a lot of time and effort and I would like to see you compensated and to help keep Aurora growing. All the better for the rest of us. I understand you guys are doing this first from the joy of it and secondly income, but still, making money is a good thing, think of all the cool hardware out their waiting

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

I won't be writing any wrappers for Ogre.  Feel free to take it on yourself.

Built in 3D is the only way to go so we are not dependant on someone elses source code.

C++ has a much steeper learning curve than Aurora does.  That much is for sure.

And the only 'guy' working on the 3D engine is me at the moment.

[kryton9]

I didn't mean you or anyone else working on Aurora, I know that eventually Aurora will be totally self reliant and complete system.

I meant for us users interested in writing a wrapper for ogre or whatever the consensus open source engine might by the others are interested in.

I won't add more to repeat what I wrote in the last few messages, I thought it was clear, but maybe I am not communicating it correctly somehow

[J B Wood (Zumwalt)]

Nah, its just a pain to write wrappers thats all. For one thing, Aurora has the BEST interface for writting wrappers I have ever seen. If an amature like me can write a wrapper in under 3 days from initial purchase of the engine to use with a wrapper, than a pro can do it in 6 hours or less.

3Impact for instance, has physics built in, it has networking built in, not to mention a few other things, but it has its limitations, like all engines do. I know the point your trying to get at, only because I have been at trying to figure it all out since September of last year. What I have written so far with Aurora has surpassed what I thought the initial 3d alpha would be able to handle, so I think paul is on the right track and keeping it short and simple

[Kale]

3. Most of the young kids getting into programming are doing it for game development. Of all the boards I frequent, the gaming development boards are the most active. This is the driving force and market out there.
Just look at all the different engines out there, there are tons of them and each has lots of users. So the thing that will make Aurora money is to bring and keep those programmers.

I'd agree with that point. The game coding market is huge! Look at the size of the DBPro community and that language is about as buggy and slow as you'll find, it's just that it makes it easy to slap 3D models on the screen.

I would embrace the gamer community and profit from the thousands of people that want to make games. I know i'm one of them! I've bought Aurora with the express purpose of creating games and as a stepping stone to C++.

I would say another opinion of mine about OGRE. While it is a very good engine and can achieve very good results I, and many others have found it a pain to use purely because of not getting an exporter to export OGRE meshes properly. There are many exporters around but the ones i've tried, tended to create meshes that would'nt load correcty.

The last time i tried was for examples for my (Purebasic) book and everything seemed to go ok (go figure?) but i have had probs before. Just something to think about.

I would support the creation of a built-in 3D engine as Paul is doing. I know it's a lot of work but Paul has full control and isn't tied to APIs that may break in future versions. Not only that, impressive visuals can still be created with a small but robustly built engine.

[kryton9]

I am all for getting Paul to do all the parts to Aurora. I don't know why that gets lost.

Just he has his plate full with not only 3d, but the rest of the language and documenation.

I thought in the mean time we could all use existing engines and work as a team (that being not Aurora team, but users of aurora interested in this subject) to write the wrappers as I don't know how but would love to learn. As soon as I finish my model viewer which is coming along, that is the next subject I am going to tackle. Parker already gave me some good points in another thread to get me started.

Then we can post on those sites stuff we did with Aurora and mention the available wrappers and I am sure those sites would link back to Aurora.

For instance zumwalt, you should post on 3dimpacts site about wrappers for Aurora available and maybe they or you could write an intro like they have for using their engine with ibasic and dev c++.

[LarryMc]

kryton9

You keep mentioning "all the guys on the development team".
There are those that are "development partners" that don't do squat.
I'm included in that.  All I have contributed is a database frontend that reads the inc files and creates the help file skeletons.
There are some that may contribute code.  There are quite a few who literate enough to offer constructive suggestions and identify bugs.  But the "main man" is Paul.  If he doesn't write it then it isn't an integral part of Aurora.  I'm not smart enough to write an application in Aurora let alone try to write part of the source for the language.

Just wanting Paul to receive the credit he deserves and not siphon off his rightly deserved praise by merely hanging on to his coat tail.

Larry

[Zen]

Yep, I am afraid i have to hold my hand up to that one. Im a partner developer who hasnt contributed anything yet. Mainly as i currently dont have the time and the other being i am very limited when it comes to programming knowledge at the moment. I hope to be of some use in the future though.

Although i guess I am working on Aurora Live, which although is not something that was intended by Paul or anyone else, it was an idea i had that would hopefully give Aurora a good niche in the market as its never been done before. Its just finding the time to finish it off. I hope to get it done this summer though.

Lewis

[Zen]

Ohh yeh i did those 3D Software box renders for anyone who wished to use them on there website. Again something i did of my own accord lol.

Lewis

[J B Wood (Zumwalt)]

Great minds think alike Kryton, however, I beat you to the punch on the 3Impact suggestion, its the reason why I purchased it. You see, there was a member named SUBWING (bold cause thats how he does it), he asked about Aurora, and well, I opened the link, bought it and the code, then made the wrapper. Here is the link to the thread:

http://www.3impact.com/3Impact_Engine/forum/index.php?topic=1702.0

There has been only 24 downloads there to date, but as long as it is more than 1 download, I am happy.
Oh yea, I forgot to mention, no one has complained about it either.

[LarryMc]

You can get some idea of of how much someone has been involved (contributed) by the number of postings.
People are contributing to Paul's efforts by finding bugs, making suggestions for features, and asking questions.ÂÃ,  We all learn from those activities and you don't have to be a partner developer to participate.

But just as Paul was the 'heart and soul' of IBasic so he is with Aurora.ÂÃ,  We have all been spoiled by his programming skills and depth of knowledge; but even more so by his constant involvement in the forum itself.ÂÃ, 

and he usually doesn't appear to be aggravated about answering a question until the 5th or 6th time he has to repeat his answer

Larry

[Steven Picard]

The last time i tried was for examples for my (Purebasic) book and everything seemed to go ok (go figure?) but i have had probs before. Just something to think about

Your PureBasic book looks good!  What the world really needs is an Aurora book, though.     Perhaps you and Paul could team up for something? 

[kryton9]

zumwalt, this is nice that you got it all going over there at their forum.

24 downloads and it isn't really listed in the main pages of 3dimpact where they have their how to setup with various language tutorials.
That is an awesome number of downloads being that it costs $100 for their engine and yes that is cheap, if the engine is good and you plan to make money with it.

You need to make a new topic about converting and writing wrappers. Would love to learn what you did and how you did it.
Parker sort of gave a very nice description here, maybe you can take that and go from there?

Reply #1:
http://www.ionicwind.com/forums/index.php?topic=673.0

[J B Wood (Zumwalt)]

Right now I can't dedicate the time to doing that, although I will try to make some sort of tutorial for how I accomplished my task.
Besides being a full time programmer for a local computer firm, I travel for my company, take CCSI classes, try to work on my games, and deal with a 12 page report that is due in 3 weeks. Maybe after this session is over at school, I can dedicate some time to typing up some tutorials.

[kryton9]

Zumwalt:ÂÃ,  Thanks. It doesn't have to be long, just a few steps of how you went about it? But yes, you are busy and when you have time, thanks again.
Also what did you fnd lacking or limiting about 3dimpact?

Kale: Also wanted to say good catch to Kale, about the file formats. I saw the list of exporters, but it never occured to me that they were to their format and that they
don't support direct x and 3ds etc. So, yeagh that is a big no no in my mind too.

Stevenp: Where did you find the link to Kale's book?

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

and he usually doesn't appear to be aggravated about answering a question until the 5th or 6th time he has to repeat his answer

Larry

Usually the 7th or 8th time

Even though I took college programming classes I was a self taught programmer starting in the 7th grade writing BASIC programs on a heath H-8 and then assembly code for RCA processors, RCA CDP-1802 in an Elf II home built computer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELF_II

I had to beg my parents to get one.  You coded on a hexidecimal keypad with a 2 digit display, entering opcodes one at a time.  Eventually I aquired the 4K ram board, 64 char terminal kit and TinyBASIC on cassette.

The point is I do get aggrivated by those not willing to do a simple search, use the tools that are available, and figure things out the good old hard knocks way.  Back then programming took physical leg work.  Many visits to the library, reading books and magazine articles, and writing code down on paper.

It also required knowledge of electronics, good soldering skills, and an early addiction to coffee and pizza.

For someone like me everything is a bit too easy now. 


EDIT:
Found a picture of the guts of the elf:

http://www.qwkslva.com/Museum/Netronics_Elf/elf2a.jpg

Brings back memories.

[Steven Picard]

Stevenp: Where did you find the link to Kale's book?

It's for another language so I'll PM you the link.  It looks very professionally done and I was serious about wanting him to do the same thing for Aurora. 

[Doc]

The point is I do get aggrivated by those not willing to do a simple search, use the tools that are available, and figure things out the good old hard knocks way.

It's the instant gratification that we as a society have come to embrace..
"I want it now!"
"I want it to work, right now!"
"I don't care about the details, just as long as it works... now!"

Sadly enough, that describes me and about 90% of the population pretty well. 

Nice pic of the Elf, Paul.
I wanted a HeathKit that I knew I would never get, finally started with a Vic-20 then the C-64 and finally got side tracked with mainframes for several years through my employers. Shoot, I was still using the C64 all the way up until 1990 when I got my first "IBM Compatible".

-Doc-

[LarryMc]

ELf! prefab circuit boards!

I've still got a tool box around somewhere that has all my wire wrap sockets and wirewrap tool.

I can remember a programmable timer I built using nothing but 7400 series ICs and power transisters.ÂÃ,  It controlled some solenoids to open and close pressure values.

I wired into the 7- segment LEDs of a Fluke digital voltmeter to capture pressure readings at various times in its cycle and then wired into the keypad of a Radio Shack Thermal printing calculator to simulate punching the captured numbers into the calculator.ÂÃ,  that was around 1978 and it was on an experiment to determine the bulk density of raw polyethylene via pressure equalization.

Eons ago.

I hate to look up stuff now because my mind starts wandering and I forget what I'm looking for.
It's easier to ask Paul and I'm not within arms reach so he can't hit me.

[Ionic Wind Support Team]

It's easier to ask Paul and I'm not within arms reach so he can't hit me.

Naw.  I wouldn't do that

[Kale]

Stevenp: Where did you find the link to Kale's book?

It's for another language so I'll PM you the link.ÂÃ,  It looks very professionally done and I was serious about wanting him to do the same thing for Aurora.ÂÃ, 

It's something i'll definately consider when the documentation is complete and i have a proper handle on how everything works.