[Bf-committers] Re: Working on Big Patch for GE...

[erwin at erwincoumans.com]

Welcome, new development should be appreciated.
I assume you want to improve the game engine in some way, just like 
snailrose does, and that's great, its open source. 

My recent contributions just focus on improving Bullet physics, add vehicle 
and other physics features, work on its performance, make the engine a 
plugin. That's I can offer with my limited time. 

If you really want certain bugs fix, either learn to code, or make a great 
demo that motives someone to fix the bug.
Erwin 


Brian Eason writes: 

>     Well after being a user of the Blender Game Engine almost since the
> beginning, I have a pretty good idea of what the rest of the GE users want.
> So, after waiting years and never getting quite enough I just decided to
> take a look at the source.  Wasn't to long till I was making my own custom
> builds.  Unfortunately these were tailored to my style and way of working
> and as a result not very user friendly.  So I pretty much kept my work to
> myself, It was more of a learning experience that anything else.
>     I already have my own Game Dev package (GE, Modeling tools, all that
> good stuff).  Made it myself and I love it, but I didn't make it for public
> use I made it for my own use, mainly cus Blender's GE just wasn't cutting it
> for me.  But then I see the rest of the guys who use the GE, and the
> majority only know alot or very little python.  Very few know C++/C and even
> those who do don't want to do the work to get involved in blender's
> development.  They want so much and yet none of them are to lazy to get it
> them selves, they just wait and hope that what they want will come. 
> 
>     To get to the point of all this...
>     I'm working on multiple reasonably sized patches for the Game Engine.
> The one with highest priority right now is a large set of mesh tools
> available to the user though python.  There are a few new files the most
> significant being KX_PolygonProxy and KX_EdgeProxy.  There will also be
> selection groups, so a user may add verts,polygons, or edges to one of these
> groups then perform a single operation on all of the groups contents as a
> whole.  I will also be implementing basic mesh editing tools such as,
> addition of verts/polygons/edges (given the verts that the last two require
> exist), recalculation of normals, rotating/slight bending of normals,
> extrusion of polygons, breaking verts, destroying verts/faces/edges, moving
> verts along normals(shrink/flatten), and using the "disp" button in the
> material buttons to displace verts based off of texture information (most
> useful for height maps).  This is all off the top of my head as I write
> this, I assure you the written list is much longer.  Or could you imaging
> the creation of trees and foliage on randomly generated landscapes???  Or
> cutting holes in things then filling them up (Rocket Launcher + Concrete
> Wall = Big Hole). 
> 
>     OK now that that's part is done with...  I have another smaller project
> that will be more actively worked on when I finish the mesh stuff.  It is
> the creation of texture information in real time along with a few preset
> tools for specific tasks.  One of those tools I plan to implement is real
> time texture shadows and would be used in conjunction with the mesh tools
> (some kind of adaptive mesh that the texture is applied to).  Another use
> could be low res texture reflections, but that would be much more costly
> than texture shadows and I will probably not include it unless testing shows
> otherwise.  There are also possibilities for render to texture. 
> 
>     Well I guess that's It for now.  Please tell me your thoughts.  And if
> you prefer that this stuff didn't happen plz tell me ASAP so I don't get to
> deep to have to just throw it all away. 
> 
> Thx,
> Brian