RipTorn, you haven''t said anything that should warrant viruses being sent to you. In fact, your post brings up very valid points that should be considered in any engine. If you know who may have sent these viruses to you, then email me with the email addresses or other info, and we''ll see what we can do.

---

Kevin "Khawk" Hawkins
CEO and News Director, GameDev.net
Author, OpenGL Game Programming
Developer Diary

well, unfortuatly, because I use a webmail service (the email address I advertise here is forwarded to it), I deleted the email as soon as I realised what it was...
The only thing I did get were two (almost certainly fake) email addresses it came from... although I can''t fully remember the more likly one, so I will not report it in the event I get it wrong and get someone in trouble they don''t deserve to be in.
(and it may well be faked in someone elses name)

What about making multiplatform. It''d be good idea to make it to work in linux too.

Whoa, lots of feedback.

To the people getting exactly 50 errors: I need to see some sample of what kind of errors you are getting, since some people are having it compile fine, I'm guessing that the people getting the errors either don't have the DX8 SDK (and the path set to it in MSVC++), or have something else wrong.

Riptorn: I know what you mean with some of what you said. And contrary to how it might appear, the engine *has* been well planned and designed. And I'm perfectly prepared/capable to handle the eventual complexity of the engine. And I do not want people to use the engine to learn either C or C++, if I wanted them to do that, I would've written a few C/C++ tutorials. The point of the engine is to give the community something to work with, and eventually have it end up with something very powerful. Its a teamwork thing, and if I wanted it to include everything you said, I would've done it myself, and released it as a finished product, that only my team could update.

And finally, Riptorn, you point out all of the things that are wrong with the engine (its a nice list too, I printed it out ), but yet, you refuse to contribute to it? How does that help it? This is a tool for the community, and by pointing out things that are wrong with it, and refusing to help right those same things, you are far from helping.

Nazrix: I personally like the ColDet library too, but I really do not like using other people's libraries (I hate using SDL and GLUT for God's sake). Thanks for the suggestion though.

Also, we are planning for multiplatform, but it won't be for a while, as the "engine" (extensive wrapper as pointed out before ) is still under heavy contruction, and editing two ports of the engine would be a serious bitch.

And I'm planning on working on a detailed object system very soon. Also, would anyone be interested in having the engine support DirectDraw7? (I have code for it, but I took it out a while back)

Trent (ShiningKnight)
THE Engine
ShiningKnight7@hotmail.com

Edited by - ShiningKnight on February 2, 2002 8:12:48 AM

I got it, compiled it fine and started tinkering. I was soon very annoyed at the fact the the particle engine wasn''t in anysort of class . I think you should comment things like startColor1 and startColor2. You seem to have 2 of everything but don''t explain why. I think that would be useful. If you are making this engine to helpp people out, perhaps you would seriously consider making the classes, because at first sight, with 50+ globals, its a little overwelming.

A few things. I agree that that many globals is a bad thing, I would use a singleton class to make it cleaner and less prone to problems. Plus it avoids possible duplicate names. There is a great chance someone using the engine will want to define a variable called "input".

I would also add extensive commenting. This is important anyway, but in a community project where others must understand your code, it is vital.

I would also keep a detailed documentation of features and functions, so that use will be easy for those who did not make it when it is done. I would start now, It''ll be hard this far out, but will become an ulta-daunting task if you put it off.

Otherwise, it looks great! Best of luck to the project. I would try to make some of these changes to the code myself, but:
-my comp. with a compiler is not usable due to construction
-I am busy working on MY engine

Hope all works out for you as planned.

Alex Broadwin
A-Tronic Software & Design
-----
"if you fail in life, you were destined to fail. If you suceed in life, call me."
"The answer is out there."
"Please help, I''m using Windows!"

The thing with the particle API is that I wanted the user to be able to make any sort of effect under the sun in under 7 (or so) function calls, but I had the idea this morning, of making a seperate wrapper OVER the particle API, it sounded like a good idea to me.

And the engine used to have a ton of comments, but most of them were out of date, so I delete most of 'em, and am in the process of recommenting everything right now.

I'm also thinking of making a yahoo newsgroup for everyone actively involved in the updating of the engine (and add new people as they come), I think this would help everyone greatly, yet again, need more feedback.

Trent (ShiningKnight)
THE Engine
ShiningKnight7@hotmail.com

Edited by - ShiningKnight on February 2, 2002 10:35:49 AM

I would have to say that from my brief look at things it looks very promising. I will be going through it later but is something I am definitaly interested in...let us know if you set up some kind of newsgroup or what not.

OME

ShiningKnight: actually RipTorn''s comment was a really huge help, even if he doesn''t want to participate in this project!
Firstly I must say that I haven''t looked at the source code, but after reading riptorn''s message I realized that you don''t have a good object class. If you don''t have such a class then I''m sure this project will sudden with a lot of others, because it''s maybe the most essential part of an engine!

On the other hand I don''t agree with supporting d3d/ogl etc. because it is a nice feature but such an engine would be less effective than one with only ogl(for example) support.

Good luck!

ps: sorry, but I can''t help making it, because I have to do my own engine...


-- tSG --

Good job on twisting my words around, try reading before you make a statement. I did say that Riptorn''s words were a large help, did I not? I was just trying to make a point that he said he wouldn''t contribute because of the look of the code.

Pay more attention to what is written please.

Trent (ShiningKnight)
THE Engine
ShiningKnight7@hotmail.com