[Plib-devel] KobayashiMaru & plib

[Alexander R. <ale...@us...>]

Hi,


this is an 'Open Letter' to Steve and Oliver Baker and all other people
 behind plib, Tux_aqfh and Tuxkart:

there is a new game in town that uses plib:

   Kobayashi Maru      kobayashimaru.sourceforge.net

a Mailing List kob...@li... has been
created

It's goal is to write a flexible, extensible, multi-platform (blah blah
 blah :-) Space Fight Simulator in 3D

I searched a long time for a scenegraph I could easyly use, because
I didn't knew GL at that time, and the onlu useable I found was plib.

Arg! It took me a whole month experimenting with euler angles,
rotating starfighters, completely failing.
Then I switched to up-right-forward-direction vectors and succeded.

Exacly one day later, I stumbled across 'Euler Angles are Evil' by
Steve, and I knew why I failed a whole month.

Dear Steve, I could kiss you all day long for plib and Tux, but
I'll gonna kick your ass sometime because it would be very very
better if you'd put at least 'Euler Angles are Evil' and
'Matrices can be your Friends' on the _plib_homepage_, so that
even an idiot like me will stumble over it before he looses time.

I also want to have you a look at KobayashiMaru, because I am even
worse in designing spaceships than in maths, and so I took the
models that came with Tux_aqfh for my own project, please allow me
to use them in my game.

Your authorship is of course mentioned.

I am some time now receiving the plib-* mailing lists, but I actually
never had time to read them, so it could be that I am using plib
not in the optimum way to give best performance.
All calls to plibssg have been capsulated in class KobScene and
KobSceneObject, if there is something to impove, let me know.

I am also having the problem of being not able to use a 3D modeler
at all (tried,failed,tried,failed,tried,failed,gave up), couldn't
even make a Tie Fighter, and all free 3D objects I found
in the net where designed for ray-traying and had far too many
polygons and no texture - I'm desperate.

So, if there is anyone out there dreaming like me to see X-Wings and
Tie-Fighers and Klingons and Borgs and the not-yet-created ships
from the Free Stars Foundation (FSF) (their High Priest is a Holy Gnu -
a really weird hairy animal ;-) and the TuxFleet (a horde of inter-
stellar penguins flying giant Iceberg-shaped glistering StarLiberators,
they cooperate in an alliance with the FSF to fight
Imperator Raw-Ass The Utterly Evil - aka me, in this game I wanna be
 the bad guy)

I'll do the coding till my fingers bleed, but please, please, PLEASE

    can't anyone out there design 3D Models for this game?

I need models with few polygons as possible, in low,mid and high detail,
and with _lots_ of texture, since that's what a modern Gfx-Card
(exept GForce) can take.
You can even create more detail levels in between, but I need
anything that runs on a todays computer (and - in low detail - even
on old ones).
I also dream about running Kobayashi Maru on a PDA running linux -
ever there ever is something like a 'fastGLforPDA' available,
you'd need even low low detail ;-)

I also want to have the plib community to look at ssgUtil.cxx (maybe
there is something to go to plibsg/plibssg) and at class puScrollList
I've implemented - puScrollList even doesn't work correct for me,
but you could take up the Idea and implement a cleanly designed/working
puScrollList (or is there an easier way?)

I also have to say that (for my implementation of puScrollList I badly
need something like puObject->setLegendPlace, in Mission/Model Selection
the scroll-list in the top-right corner looks like shit - the legends
should be aligned to the left (inside the widgets).

Now again thoughts about plibssg performance.
I have not much performance on my Athlon500/Tnt2, some is wasted in
my code (I know exactly where), but a large part is lost in ssgCullAndDraw().
If there is something to be improved in KobScene/KobSceneObject, please
do that.
But the capsulation of the Scenegraph the game uses in KobScene will
make it possible to 'switch' between different Scenegraphs (at least
at compile time).
The aim should be that KobayashiMaru should be able to compile for any
Scenegraph and any Soundhandler at any time.
I'd really like to use a glDoom/glQuake/Quakeforge/Aftershock-based
Scenegraph, if you could give me a pointer to where to find good
docu and easy-to-use examples...
Other Scenegraphs I've thought of are SGI Performer, Crystal Space, 
Genesis3D, PVision, and - as a very very optional native implementation -
Direct3D (urks) would also be possible, if someone is mad enough.
I had yet no time to look at those, can't anyone else do that and
mail me a summary?
What a Scenegraph for KobayasiMaru should be able to do can be seen
by reading kob_scene.h/cxx

At the moment I use plibsl for very very basic sound effects, but for
a game like that I need full-stereo-full-pitching-xxx-channels etc,
even 3D sound will be possible with the right underlying Soundhandler,
but, as like for the Scenegraph, KobayashiMaru will compile at any
time optionally for plibsl , with the limitations plibsl has, of course.
But which other portable open source sound system, that features at
least 4 to 8-channel-stereo with modern soundcards, I don't have
experience in that, the only Idea I have is to have a look at
SDL from Loki. Any other Ideas?


Please reply to the KobayashiMaru Mailing List, I hope I hear
from you.



Alex

Notice: this 'Open Letter' will also be (seperately) mailed to
        the KobayashiMaru mailing-list to archive it
        better use the mailing-list for your answer, to keep it
        in the public