Re: [Plib-users] plib for a game engine..

[Steve B. <sjb...@ai...>]

ha...@sl... wrote:
> 
> I'm designing a 3D RPG and am considering plib as the one of the options
> for a 3D library.

The Majik3D folk were going that way too.  I think their project fell
apart though.

> I'm wondering if there is currently any mechanism to convert or load
> worlds from any of the decent game editors (worldcraft, quake editor,
> etc).

We now have loaders for LOTS of formats.  Quake's level file format is
VERY weird - and we can't load that yet.  The Quake player/monster file
format is supported though.  What format does WorldCraft use?

The loaders currently in PLIB/SSG are:

  ASE    (3D Studio)
  MDL    (Microsoft FlightSim Aircraft)
  TRI
  3ds    (3D Studio)
  DXF    (AutoCAD and others)
  OBJ
  AC3D   (From AC3D - a Linux modeller)
  MD2    (Quake-2's creature format)
  SSG    (PLIB's native format).

...it's getting relatively easy to write loaders for PLIB now - so if
you know the format you want to read then writing a loader for it and
(hopefully) contributing it to PLIB shouldn't be rocket-science.

> I was also wondering what the general differences are between plib and
> crystal space. (e.g. what advantages does plib have over CS?)

I've talked about this offline - so I won't go into that again.  It would
be interesting to hear what other people think though.
 
> Two differences I've noticed are:
> 1) plib looks *much* simpler with a much smaller learning curve than
>    crystal space.

I can't tell - I've never used CrystalSpace.

> 2) plib provides tree based rendering and culling, where crystal space
>    focuses on a "portal engine" for performance.  Does this theoretically
>    make plib perform better than crystal space in an open area scene,
>    while CS performs better in a closed quake-style engine?

That's certainly what I'd expect.  There has been quite a bit of
discussion of a Portal class for PLIB/SSG - it doesn't look that
difficult to me.

> 3) crystal space has more functionality:
>      *      a decent software renderer

Well, we only support OpenGL - there are software OpenGL renderers - but
their performance sucks.  If the CrystalSpace software renderer is
significantly faster than OpenGL-in-software then it's very likely that
it lacks many features of OpenGL...that's A Very Bad Thing because that
would imply that CrystalSpaces' interface to OpenGL much exclude those
features that their software renderer can't hack.

Personally, I think the era of software rendering is dead.  ALL new
computers are now shipped with hardware 3D...3D cards are down to
sub-$100.  I have no interest in software rendering...for games at
least.

>      *      more file loaders

Well, we are getting new loaders appearing at an amazing rate...and
they are truly not hard to write.
 
-- 
Steve Baker   HomeEmail: <sjb...@ai...>
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