Re: [Cubesoft-dev] OMIGG and TuxFleet

[Alexander R. <a_r...@in...>]

Hi,

Ed Page wrote:
> 
> Hello
> 
> On Mon, 06 November 2000, Alexander Rawass wrote:
> > I am maintainer of tuxfleet.sourceforge.net
> > TuxFleet is a free, extensible GPLd 3D-Space Fight Simulator.
> 
> Yes I have seen your site before.  Looks promising.

It's nice to hear that at least someone has seen my site ;-)

> > The aim behind TuxFleet's design was to write a Space Fight Sim with a
> > 'universal' gaming engine behind it, so that TuxFleet can be extended to
> > be a Heli-Sim, a Car-Racing game, maybe even Quake, a Tank game,
> > whatever.
> > Another goal was to able to play all those games together in a universe
> > (if your machine can take it)
> > Another goal was to get TuxFleet action-capabilities as well as
> > strategic modes.
> 
> I did not notice the versatility you want to achieve in your project, or else I would have taken more notice.

I have to admit that the code doesn't look or feel very versatile at
all, but I think I could bring it to that point (in the far future).

I tried to do a Space Flight Sim that _can_ be extended at some time (if
I ever get the space flight sim complete)

Yet there's only action-mode, strategic playing will be far away in the
future.

> > Now I stumbled across your homepage:
> 
> So nice to know people visiyt.  Most people download OMIGG without a peep to me to get feedback on the current state.

The feedback I get is also nearly nought.

> > I have yet to download omigg and CS , so I can't say yet more, but what
> > you say in your homepage sounds promising!
> 
> I notice that you use Plib.  I reconigize Plib from being used in the Mario clone and the Free Flight Sim project.  My concerns are in optimzation.  I wonder how well does Plib handle the 3D versatility we would need of indoors, outdoors, and terrain.

Don't know ;-)

I choose plib because it was the easiest 3d renderer with the best docu
I could find.
I had a look at CS some time ago, but their homepage & archive was a
mess.

Can you tell me where to find good documentation/tutorial for CS?

I have abstracted calls to plib in a seperate class, so I will probably
be able to switch to another renderer (on compile time at least)

>   CS, the project I use, is designbed as an indoor engine with outdoor plugin.  my only concern I have had over CS is space, for which we could use an unoptimized dual sky dome to create a sphere.  Sky Domes are infinitely far walls in CS.  You would use 2, one for up and one for down to create a sphere.  Maybe we could work with CS folk from their and optimize.

There are no optimizations in TuxFleet yet - neither for game logic, nor
for 3d rendering.
That has to be done yet, I worked for functionality, not for speed,
although that may sound weird for a 'fast' action game.

>  The dvelopment style problem is that you make it sound like you want a complete space game, and then change it later to make it versatile.  I

Yes, my code/style got not so extensible like I wanted it to be, I am
already discussing that with other people, probably thinking of a
re-write or like that for some parts of my game.

 implement a feature, then make it versatile then.  This makes it so
major code changes needed do to versatility are done as early as
possible.  Maybe 

Yeah, that's better :-)

you could just be on the forefront of features while I work on my
priorities and making it versatile.  We'll see.
> So as you can see, my concerns aren';t too great.

You're lucky that you are 'many people' - I am only one coder, no chance
to talk to other people for brainstorming before ;-(

> I will try and get around to downloading your code and taking a look at it to see the structure to see if we can handle a code merger or if we should take one of our code bases and move to other.

The code of TuxFleet is now so mangled that I can say that - in this
state - it can be no code base :-(

> I think this is a very promising idea to share our work and join up.

I am doing no more TuxFleet development at the moment, more discussing
things with other people/finding other people to help/get helped etc.

There are some other projects like mine around, like SpaceThing, MOTE,
Foundation, Unreality, Gauge3d, whatever

I'm just looking at all of them to decide what to do and where to go
before I continue on TuxFleet or decide to work elsewhere ;-)

What about 3D models?

I had a very hard time searching for free 3D models of spaceships (or
other) in the net, but most spaceship-models I found were designed for
ray-tracing and have far too many polygons to be useful for me :-(

Where do you get your 3d models in different levels of detail from?
Or can you breakdown high-polyon models at runtime?


Alex


-- 
                   Alexander Rawass
          Email: ale...@us...
     Project Homepage: http://tuxfleet.sourceforge.net
...but some day you'll be a STAR in somebody else's SKY...