in my game (see IOTD flipcode a couple of days ago) the actaully opengl part is only 1 file (prolly less than 1000lines in that as well) out of about 50+ files in my project

http://members.xoom.com/myBollux

There are some people here saying that you can code an engine in a week..
But they''re forgetting one very very important thing: FLEXABILITY.

Most "professional" engines are very flexible and therefore you can use them for many sorts of games (1st person, 3rd person, shooter, race, blah).

And have you ever coded a REAL shader system?
Don''t think so because it''s very time consuming to write a flexible shader system wich is easy to use but still powerfull.
Now with the newest GeForce cards it''s becoming even more time consuming!
Like Jallen said the specification for the GL_NV_vertex_program extension is 75 pages long.. this is HUGE!!
Now go look at the specification for Register combiners + Texture shaders (= pixel shaders), also pretty much to read...

So yes, you can code something nice in a week.. but it won''t be flexible enough, not optimized (like other people already said) and it won''t make use of vertex programs, reg. combiners and texture shaders because it''s impossible to do that in just one week.

Coding is like cooking : if you have the recipe, it''s a lot easier... Reinvent from scratch BSP trees, implementation of curved surface, lightmaps, collision detection, user input, and so on is a long task. We have the chance to have the recipes. "I want to add shadows in engine!" no problemo : let''s follow a tutorial somewhere on the net and then a few hours later, my engine feature shadows "I want to add beautiful realistics stormy clouds in my engine!" damn... no tutorial around there... and then a few months later my engine, perhaps , will featuring those clouds... Everything is easier if someone have already made the blueprint and explained it... We are all in a learning stage!
BTW you are not arrogant LaBasX2 : your screenshot is nice and i think you are right to say that a full-featured 3d engine (but only the engine and without real innvocations) don''t take much than a few months.

John Carmack didn''t invent anything, he ''just'' learn 3d through many books.
All technics used by Mr Carmack are very old (10 or more years old for some, a few years for the others)

He didn''t have a tutorial... well in fact he had plenty of usefull informations from books.

I think that you''re just relying to much on the Internet and tutorials while you should learn from good old books too ;p

Don''t get me wrong, I respect Mr Carmack work, cause he tried something new for the PC, made great 3d engines, very powerfull, fast and well written.
But saying that he invented 3d on the PC is just wrong.

-* So many things to do, so little time to spend. *-

Hi all.

I want to write a Q3 level viewer myself. I''ve already half done a q2 viewer but I figured why bother when its already obsolete!?!

Where can I get an up to date Q3 level file specification to work from?

Cobra, LaBasX2 can either of you point me in the right direction...

Thanks

Pete

You could try www.wotsit.org, they have all kinds of file formats described. Don''t know about Q3A though.

Harry.

First thanks for your nice comments concerning my screenshot.

@Cobra: My engine isn''t complete and I''ve stopped working on it; you seem to be much further than I and so I think a comparison is useless. But have a look at www.planetquake.com/aftershock
This project is dead but you can still use the message board

@panic: At the moment, soft shadows are impossible in a realtime applications. Perhaps the GeForce3 offers support for them.

@Pete: Go to www.planetquake.com/aftershock and have a look at the source code; you''ll find all you need

@richardve: My engine uses register combiners for per pixel shading and it really isn''t much code

LaBasX2:Very nice indeed...,it''s a pitty that you have stopped working on the engine.
I have tried planar shadows with clipping planes, and volumetric shadows/stencil buffer on my engine, but they are both to slow..., how are you calculating you shadows ? Some hybrid thecnique ?

thanks,

Bruno

I actually think that it''s possible to code a engine in a week... well at least the graphics and the keyboard handling and so on.. if you already got the tools for it, you just have to apply the new features to it and do a bit of optimizing.. don''t understand me wrong I really respect J.C., he''s for sure a great programmer... Well, I also know how hard it is to develop a new rendering technology like BSP trees. We (Rarebyte) developed something new.. nothing like BSP, Quadtree or Octree or anything similiar.... We discussed for hours about how to do that and we finally got the main thing.. We still got a lot of work to do... but it seems to work (hopefully).

Well, if it''ll work, I''m sure you''ll hear from us some day ;p

good night,
cya,
Phil

Visit Rarebyte!
and no!, there are NO kangaroos in Austria (I got this questions a few times over in the states

RAW!

@Bruno:
Thanks. I''m still working on the engine, I''ve only canceled the quake3-map-viewer. I''m using projected shadows (see NVIDIA page). First I was trying to use shadow volumes, but they have
many disadvantages although they are much faster than projected shadows.