gamedevlists-general

RE: [GD-General] compresson

[Brian S. <bs...@mi...>]

I think what you're really talking about is zlib.  I think of gzip as an
executable that just wraps up zlib compression.

Have a look on the zlib pages for the minizip library, which provides
zip file reading & writing. =20

http://www.gzip.org/zlib/
http://www.winimage.com/zLibDll/unzip.html

--brian

-----Original Message-----
From: Idahosa I. O. Edokpayi [mailto:ida...@sw...]=20
Sent: Monday, May 06, 2002 6:47 AM
To: gam...@li...
Subject: [GD-General] compresson


I am trying to compress and decompress files for a small game project (I
need to stay under 5 mb) using the crypto library. Crypto, or rather the
gzip library in crypto, doesn't handle multiple files in one zip file in
an obvious way. You specify a source and a target and that's it
apparently. Does anyone know enough about gzip to suggest a better way?
=20
Idahosa Edokpayi
O2Cool Games Software
=20
=20
=20
Idahosa Edokpayi
O2Cool Games Software
=20

[GD-General] MEL

[Corrinne Y. <cor...@sp...>]

How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.
What kind of Maya export mangling should I be careful of?

My artists are moving more to Maya, and the data we need for engine is
increasingly those from Maya than Max.

How do you think is the fastest way for me to ramp up to MEL from Max
plug-in?

Thanks for the heads up.

Re: [GD-General] MEL

[Tom S. <tsp...@mo...>]

> How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.

    Well they're two different things...

    MEL is Maya's scripting language and is more akin to MaxScript than
Max's plug-in API.  Unfortunately the best source of information on MEL i've
found is the command documentation ( goto the 'Help' menu then 'MEL Command
Reference...' ) and reading other MEL scripts.  MEL is great for quick and
dirty tasks, but it's very hard to debug so don't write anything too big
with it.

    Now Maya also has a C++ plug-in API and from what i've been told it can
be a bitch to work with.  You can find info on the API in the
\Maya4.0\docs\en_us\html\DevKit folder of your Maya install.

> How do you think is the fastest way for me to ramp up to MEL from Max
> plug-in?

    There is far more info available on Max plug-in and script writing than
for Maya, so you'll have to settle for the 'just do it' approach to learn
how it works.  Tom

----- Original Message -----
From: "Corrinne Yu" <cor...@sp...>
To: <gam...@li...>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 11:47 AM
Subject: [GD-General] MEL


> How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.
> What kind of Maya export mangling should I be careful of?
>
> My artists are moving more to Maya, and the data we need for engine is
> increasingly those from Maya than Max.
>
> How do you think is the fastest way for me to ramp up to MEL from Max
> plug-in?
>
> Thanks for the heads up.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________________________
>
> Have big pipes? SourceForge.net is looking for download mirrors. We supply
> the hardware. You get the recognition. Email Us: ban...@so...
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> Gamedevlists-general mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-general
> Archives:
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Re: [GD-General] MEL

[Jeff L. <je...@da...>]

Not a guru on either one really, but I don't find the Maya SDK any more
difficult than Max.  Some things are a little tricky since it is very object
oriented.  For example, getting the weights from an object envelope is
needlessly complicated, but that is true for Max as well.  Otherwise I would
say they pretty much do the same things and work about the same.  If you are
going to be writing rendering modules, I would much rather use the Maya SDK
but most game developers don't care about that.  I wrote a cartoon shader
for Maya a year or so ago and it was very easy.  Tried to get the thing
working in the Max SDK and it was a huge hassle.  But I am not as
experienced in the Max SDK.

In some ways I like working in the Maya SDK better.  You can dynamically
load and unload plugins in Maya which makes debugging easier.  Last time I
worked on Max that wasn't the case.  Also I really don't care for the Max
interface system but that is really just a personal preference.

No books on the Maya SDK that I am aware of but I do have a book "Mastering
Maya" or something that covers Mel pretty well.  But I think you will find
Mel is really easy to work with.  For the SDK, the online docs and sample
code is pretty much all I found I needed.


----- Original Message -----
From: "Tom Spilman" <tsp...@mo...>
To: "Gamedev General List" <Gam...@li...>
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 10:34 AM
Subject: Re: [GD-General] MEL


> > How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.
>
>     Well they're two different things...
>
>     MEL is Maya's scripting language and is more akin to MaxScript than
> Max's plug-in API.  Unfortunately the best source of information on MEL
i've
> found is the command documentation ( goto the 'Help' menu then 'MEL
Command
> Reference...' ) and reading other MEL scripts.  MEL is great for quick and
> dirty tasks, but it's very hard to debug so don't write anything too big
> with it.
>
>     Now Maya also has a C++ plug-in API and from what i've been told it
can
> be a bitch to work with.  You can find info on the API in the
> \Maya4.0\docs\en_us\html\DevKit folder of your Maya install.
>
> > How do you think is the fastest way for me to ramp up to MEL from Max
> > plug-in?
>
>     There is far more info available on Max plug-in and script writing
than
> for Maya, so you'll have to settle for the 'just do it' approach to learn
> how it works.  Tom
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Corrinne Yu" <cor...@sp...>
> To: <gam...@li...>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 11:47 AM
> Subject: [GD-General] MEL
>
>
> > How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.
> > What kind of Maya export mangling should I be careful of?
> >
> > My artists are moving more to Maya, and the data we need for engine is
> > increasingly those from Maya than Max.
> >
> > How do you think is the fastest way for me to ramp up to MEL from Max
> > plug-in?
> >
> > Thanks for the heads up.
> >
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________________________
> >
> > Have big pipes? SourceForge.net is looking for download mirrors. We
supply
> > the hardware. You get the recognition. Email Us:
ban...@so...
> > _______________________________________________
> > Gamedevlists-general mailing list
> > Gam...@li...
> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-general
> > Archives:
> > http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=557
>
>
> _______________________________________________________________
>
> Have big pipes? SourceForge.net is looking for download mirrors. We supply
> the hardware. You get the recognition. Email Us: ban...@so...
> _______________________________________________
> Gamedevlists-general mailing list
> Gam...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/gamedevlists-general
> Archives:
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?forum_id=557
>
>

RE: [GD-General] MEL

[Corrinne Y. <cor...@sp...>]

-----Original Message-----
From: gam...@li...
[mailto:gam...@li...] On Behalf Of
Tom Spilman
Sent: Wednesday, May 08, 2002 12:35 PM
To: Gamedev General List
Subject: Re: [GD-General] MEL

> How tough is it to learn MEL? I am coming from Max Plug-In SDK.

    Well they're two different things...

    MEL is Maya's scripting language and is more akin to MaxScript than
Max's plug-in API.  Unfortunately the best source of information on MEL
i've

-- Thanks.

-- I was going to "learn" MEL by working from the D3D MEL X exporter, as
my (very few) artists are increasingly using the MEL exporter and
ignoring the MAX exporter that was the engine's real standard tool. :)

-- OTOH the MS exporter is painfully slow, mangles quite a bit of the
polygons (added vertices and polygons, even tessellations) and I really
need to go into the code to see what's going on there.

-- It looks like part of while MEL exporter is so slow is probably
because I should probably write a new one in Maya API instead of MEL
script.

-- I do need to learn it quickly as I can't spend too much time on the
mesh and animation exporter too.

-- Again, thanks for the heads up.