[Bf-committers] BGE IRC Developer Meeting: May 1, 2011

[Mitchell Stokes]

Hello everyone,

Today we held an IRC meeting to discuss the BGE and it's future. We
plan to have more of these in the future (possibly once a month). Here
are the minutes of this meeting:

License:
  * Attempt to use non-viral licenses going forward
  * Allows for code to be reused and shared with other projects (eg, GameKit)
  * Modification to existing code needs to be GPL, new “modules” can
be licensed separately
  * Try to double license GSoC 2011 projects
  * Some food for thought: http://altdevblogaday.org/2011/04/12/sharing-code/

Current Projects and Merging:
  * The GSoC BGE Shaders branch still has workflow issues and missing
data-types. Mitchell will come up with a list of todos and rebranch
with working code (trying to use an existing branch if possible)
  * The GSoC Recast/Detour branch is stable enough to merge, and Nick
will prepare it for merging in the next couple of weeks.
  * The TexFace removal feature is almost ready. Dalai will be giving
the patch a “final treatment” this week/next.
  * A list of smaller features will be sent to the mailing list for review

Some ideas of what new developers could look into:
  * Discrete LoD
  * Save converted BGE data out to a file
  * Document bge.constraints and bge.texture modules
  * Adding threading to the BGE (eg, loading a new scene, separate
render thread to make use of swap buffer wait time, etc) [NOTE: This
one's tough!]

GSoC 2011 Polishing and Bugfixing Project:
  * Fixing GLSL lighting bugs
  * Fixing python functions for mist, ambient, etc in GLSL mode
  * Support for DDS textures with DXT compression (patch started)
  * VBO support (patch started)
  * Multi-UV (patch started)
  * Mip Map settings per texture
  * A BA thread will be started for more feedback

Future involvement:
  * Mitchell Stokes will remain active.
  * Dalai Felinto needs to finish his book, but he plans to do more
coding after that.
  * Sven Brand hopes to remain active at least until December when he
finishes his thesis
  * Vitor Balbio will continue studying the code and will help with what he can
  * Daniel Stokes plans to continue contributing
  * Benoit Bolsee plans get back to some BGE work after 1 year