[F4-users] .NET

[J. P. <ja...@37...>]

I've been poking around recently to see if it would be possible to
integrate flat4 with .NET, after a request in a recent post. I have
learned a *lot* about it in the last couple of weeks, and it has all
been good. Throughout this project, I have spent a lot of time
trying to hack C++ into an extensible, scriptable architecture, and
it's still not there (due in no small part to my own shortcomings,
I'm sure), and I'm sick of working on it. I want to write some game
code, dammit.

So here's my new plan: I am going to upload my latest code to cvs
over the weekend, and then I will be working on creating a new
engine core around Mono (http://www.go-mono.com/), a JIT compiler
for the .NET CIL (common intermediate language) bytecodes. I
don't believe this will be terribly difficult to do, the hardest
part will be setting up the project, build system, etc. to make
it easy to download, compile, and go. If it all works, you will
be able to "script" flat4 using any CIL compatible language (see
http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/partners/language/default.asp),
all of the scripted components will be able to interact, and
they will all be very fast. The performance critical parts of
the engine will still be written in C, but all of the interfaces
will be CIL-based.

As much as MS pisses me off, I think they got it right with this
one. And the availablity of an open-source alternative clinches it
for me, this is the right way to go. I will be creating a new area
on CVS for this code, I hope to have something available there soon.

Jason
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