Subject:
Post Posted: 10 Jan 2008, 20:27
Yes it's a sprite thus working with polygons makes no sense at all^^
Also furry surfaces would require shaders, I'll just be happy to implement simple texture-based pixel shaders not really caring about vertex shaders, since it's really really difficult to get into geometry path of the engine without having more access to the source..
something else.. I really need an advice from all of you. One problem I want to prevent is version mismatching through updating... and be sure it'll be updated. Even if I'm testing and testing it all through offline AND online (hopefully with the support of creavion) there'll always be errors, bugs and so on. The pack currently consists of ~300 classes and ~80 textures now. I thought to make one Core/System Pack and one Pack with the "real" extensions based on the core features. So I wanted to know what is better:
Pack Variant 1 (currently used)
Core Packs:
- 1 Core Pack, containing the basic SDK "itself" with everything needed to build up something on top of it
Extra Packs:
- 1 Tech Demo Pack, containing classes and methods to build up an Tech Demo Environment (Menu, Maps, Interaction and so on) based on the Core Pack
- 1 Content Pack, containing the real used classes and being an example pack for custom packages made by mod authors, based on the Core Pack
So let's say in the Core pack is the root emitter, to make your own emitter you don't save your subclassed emitter into any of these standard bundled 3 packs but in your own (like shown in the content pack..)
Advantages
- great variability, core pack gots never changed except for updates
- own classes in own packs based on the core pack
- it doesn't need to load the whole thing
Disadvantage
- updating the core pack is critical, say if the final version gots released and I'm putting out an update 1-2 months later it'll break any previous version.. people are forced to download the updated core pack in order to work with it in general or online
Pack Variant 2
All-In-One Pack, all the content of the 3 seperated packs are merged into one. This results in one big u pack (probably about 50 MB in size).
Advantages
- Everything is available out of one pack
- own classes in own packs based on the whole pack
Disadvantage
- updating becomes nearly useless, uploading a big single pack just for updating is kinda useless...
Pack Variant 3
Core Packs:
- 1 or 2 System Packs, containing the root features, utils and functions of the SDK (root emitter, utils, root classes, no audio/gameplay/ai/physics extensions and so on)
Extra Packs:
-
- 1 Tech Demo Pack, containing classes and methods to build up an Tech Demo Environment (Menu, Maps, Interaction and so on) based on the Core Pack
- 1 Content Pack, containing the real used classes and being an example pack for custom packages made by mod authors, based on the System Pack
- All textures moving into texture packs, not u packs
In this variant the whole content is partionated into theme-based packs:
- System
- Visuals
- Audio
- Physics
- Gameplay/AI ...
Advantages
- great variability, core pack gots never changed except for updates
- own classes in own packs based on the core pack
- it doesn't need to load the whole thing
- more deployable because it doesn't load audio extensions when you use visual extension or vise versa, or: doesn't load gameplay/ai/item extensions when using visual extensions, this depends on how the components need each other to work however (but a revamped weapon for example (gameplay/item) that uses visual extensions will force it to load needed extensions no matter what..)
Disadvantage
- updating the system/core packs is critical, say if the final version gots released and I'm putting out an update 1-2 months later it'll break any previous version.. people are forced to download the updated core pack in order to work with it in general or online
- most time consuming variant, every feature has to be placed into fitting packs..
However.. please understand that I'm in a conflict not wanting to break older versions but to make it possible to update it at all costs. I can't fully guarantee everything working 100 % correctly. Speaking of the Demo it didn't really matter if it would break any versions because it was just a Demo. Who had version 1.0 and switched to 1.01 won't really want to stay on 1.0 what ever.. I hope (and the downloads for the 1.01 show it...) this will work for the Final Version too. Any interested developer should be interested in downloading updates in order to work with it online or having fixes and improvements... There's still the option to to back up older versions. Yet I'm still worried about this updating issue...
For mod-versions of the SDK this really plays no role because every class, texture or whatever will be implemented into the mod (adapting names, code, all classes will differ from public version) itself and can be updated while the mod can be updated.