3d Engines ?

[fusion_power]

Hi, I'm hybrid from the Irrlicht dev team.
We are currently developing several device drivers for mobile/embedded systems. A WinMobile port and a framebuffer device already exist. In conjunction with our software renderers we can easily port this setup to any hw device, though without hw acceleration. An ARM cross-compilation already exists...
But we also have an ogl_es 1.x implementation being prepared by our OSX and PSP maintainer. Since the basic setup is already working it shouldn't be too hard to finalize this extension.
Is there a way to access a Pandora SDK and a simulator somehow? And what would be necessary to get an Early Access to the actual HW?

I've never heard about this Engine but the Pix look interesting. Could be a good Engine for the Pandora to and because thePandora will have full Hardware Open GL ES 2 Support, the Engine could be HW Accelerated to...maybe.
Does the Engine include a Editor? Maybe such a great Ingame Editor like "Sauerbraten"?

Oh, because you are a Dev., it is possible to grab one of the first Pandora Units. Craigix could help you if you really want to make Projects for the Pandora. Good Luck!

 

[Wegg]

I like that it has a level editor and that there is already a community of people making games with it. Could this be the one!?!

 

[hybrid_irr]

Oh yes, I forgot that ogl-es 2 dropped the fixed pipeline support So the hardest job will be a replacement of the fixed pipeline by proper shaders. Another thing to fix is the color handling, because Irrlicht uses the Direct3D color scheme (BGRA) and the OpenGL BGRA extension.

Yes, there's the irrEdit scene editor, which also has commercial grade support available. But you can use the (currently Windows only) tool also for free. We also have a few other editors developed by the community.
Although Irrlicht is not a game engine (i.e. it mainly provides render functions and visual effects, but only a few collision check methods etc.) we even have a few commercially published games and many free or open-source games finished or in preparation. Also, many non-game applications from academia as well as from several industry areas have been presented. So I guess one can find the necessary features in Irrlicht for many types of 3d (and even plain 2d) applications.

 

[Kramy]

Irrlicht sounds perfect. If it could be ported to OGL ES2.0, that'd be incredible!

 

[Tinnus]

Personally I'm really looking forward to OGRE though

 

[Game_over]

I already have this emulator up and running for a while. I'll check how far the current driver will work with ogl-es 2.

I think porting from Open GL ES 1.x to 2.0 won't be a trivial task

The main reason for the incompatibility is the use of Shader 2.0. You would just have to make your arch compliant with the arch of OpenGL ES 2.0.

EDIT This is kind of redundant to what Hybrid said. They got rid of the Fixed point pipeline in order to utilize shaders.

 

[PokeParadox]

Long answer:
I'm writing Penjin3D which is basically the engine which CromoZome uses, but using OpenGL as the rendering API as opposed to SDL. Once this is finished (and task priority goes something like this: finish CromoZome, finish Penjin 3D, Finish Dare To Be Digital game PoC) I will add in OpenGL ES 2.0 support to allow Pandora compatibility.

Short answer:
I'll be using my own.

 

[ldesnogu]

Long answer:
I'm writing Penjin3D which is basically the engine which CromoZome uses, but using OpenGL as the rendering API as opposed to SDL. Once this is finished (and task priority goes something like this: finish CromoZome, finish Penjin 3D, Finish Dare To Be Digital game PoC) I will add in OpenGL ES 2.0 support to allow Pandora compatibility.

Short answer:
I'll be using my own.

Just be very careful : OpenGL ES 2.0 has no fixed pipeline, while OpenGL 2.0 still has one (at least that's my understanding). Since OpenGL ES 2.0 is almost a subset of OpenGL 2.0, a seemingly good advice is to only use that subset. Or else you're bound to basically do two completely different ports: one OpenGL and the other OpenGL ES 2.0

 

[hybrid_irr]

But it always depends which subset is chosen... After all, also ogl-es 1.x is a subset of OpenGL 2, but it's a very different subset with only a very limited common part. Due to the unavailability of the fixed function pipeline (almost all was dropped) there's far more similarity to OpenGL 3, it's just still using the OpenGL 2 API.
Fortunately, we already have several shader models supported in Irrlicht. So several materials are already based on shaders, but most still use the fixed functions setup. So I guess that this part is also not very problematic to change.
However, also the whole projection and transformation setup needs to be done in shaders, which seems to influence parts of our engine's architecture which were not designed to be placed into shaders. I hope it's just some lack of understanding on my side and it won't introduce too much of a hurdle. After all our animation guy was already working on hardware skinning, which also needs all the matrix stuff be done in shaders...

 

[PokeParadox]

Just be very careful : OpenGL ES 2.0 has no fixed pipeline, while OpenGL 2.0 still has one (at least that's my understanding). Since OpenGL ES 2.0 is almost a subset of OpenGL 2.0, a seemingly good advice is to only use that subset. Or else you're bound to basically do two completely different ports: one OpenGL and the other OpenGL ES 2.0

Ah yes, I'm aware of many of the problems and quirks, but I would rather support both render targets if possible since ES2.0 needs an API emulator if you wish to run a project on a pc... unless I have misunderstood something somewhere.

Shaders aren't too much of a problem, I need to brush up on them, but they are not alien to me.

EDIT: Although... taking a look at the irrlicht engine, I'm very tempted to just use that... I really must resist as I want the experience of writing my own

 

[squeakypants]

Doesn't Ogre use Blender for its level building and content creation?

Every engine can use Blender However, regardless of what you use to create the content, you need to convert it to Ogre's format (which I believe is XML-based).

 

[hybrid_irr]

I'd bet that there's a blender exporter into Ogre's .mesh format. And yes, there's an XML based version, but the one to use for ingame objects is the binary variant: Much smaller and far less overhead for parsing.
And just for completeness, Irrlicht has also its own scene and mesh format based on XML (the latter only started with the last release, so it's not yet really complete), but Irrlicht's main paradigm is a very broad support of formats directly within the engine. So you can load over a dozen of mesh formats without further preprocessing.

 

[Lineus]

When I get a p&|a, I'll port Yeti3D

...keyword being when

 

[squeakypants]

I'd bet that there's a blender exporter into Ogre's .mesh format. And yes, there's an XML based version, but the one to use for ingame objects is the binary variant: Much smaller and far less overhead for parsing.
And just for completeness, Irrlicht has also its own scene and mesh format based on XML (the latter only started with the last release, so it's not yet really complete), but Irrlicht's main paradigm is a very broad support of formats directly within the engine. So you can load over a dozen of mesh formats without further preprocessing.

Ah, yes I remember. It's an XML format, but to actually use it in the engine you convert it to .mesh.

 

[Wegg]

How is character animation handled in Irrlicht?

 

[hybrid_irr]

How is character animation handled in Irrlicht?

We have keyframe interpolation, e.g. for models from md2/md3 files, and skeletal based for the other animated formats, namely x, ms3d, b3d. The newly introduced animation systems gives direct access to joints and weights, you can attach other objects to the joints in order to align them with the animation of the character. As said, skinning is performed on the CPU right now, but some case studies for HW skinning have already been done.

 

[fusion_power]

I'm sure, the Pandora can handle the coolest 3D Engines. But is a free 2D Engine out there? I could need something to test user made graphics, many Parallax-layers, destroyable Objects, "something like Sonic Games" and "Something like Metroid Games"... ^^ I really have to test some "...things..."
I'm sure this could be done for GP2X to but maybe a 3D Engine could be abused for 2D Games and nobody will notice it? Or a cool 2D-3D Switch like this new "Paper Mario" Game or this one new Homebrew-Game (forgot the Name)

 

[squeakypants]

I'm sure, the Pandora can handle the coolest 3D Engines. But is a free 2D Engine out there? I could need something to test user made graphics, many Parallax-layers, destroyable Objects, "something like Sonic Games" and "Something like Metroid Games"... ^^ I really have to test some "...things..."
I'm sure this could be done for GP2X to but maybe a 3D Engine could be abused for 2D Games and nobody will notice it? Or a cool 2D-3D Switch like this new "Paper Mario" Game or this one new Homebrew-Game (forgot the Name)

SDL (or PyGame) is probably the most popular.

 

[Julius]

there is also FIFE for RPG like games:
http://www.fifengine.de/

Edit: just to clarify, thats a 2D engine.

 

[PokeParadox]

Also Penjin is nearly ready (based on SDL).