Canardia

@Furbolg: Not true, iPhone and iPad are completely different architectures. That has been always a big minus for Apple, while Android is the same on Android Phone and Android Pad. Except that the Pad uses Android 3.0 which has no phone features, and Phones use Android 2 or 4, but not 3. I knew someone would complain about the +0.1 point for Android vs iPhone/iPad, even I made it purposely a very small difference. The fact is that Android is free, and Apple is a money leecher company. That should actually give 2 points for Android over Apple, but then the chart would be more subjective, because some people don't see the value of money

I made a comparison chart, how I believe LE3 will be. This is just pure speculation, as I don't have any official info: The 0.5 values just mean that it's not a full point, because not everyone values that feature as much as those full point features, or that the feature is not fully implemented. So the comparison is a bit weighted to give more accurate results. And I left out all features where all engine versions had 1 point, because it doesn't add to the difference.

No, I meant what I said, in human language the same terms can have multiple meanings Well, actually in C++ too, if you use overloaded methods.

The first version of LE3 is not the first version of LE3. It's just an alpha. Case closed If you don't want to try out the alpha, you just wait until it's done.

I might join the Community Project too, if you use Git hosting. I want to learn and experience it in a big team.

Only shaders need OpenGL 2.0 (I actually tested this again on a machine which had no OpenGL 2.0 drivers), but everything else works fine on OpenGL 1.0+. Shaders are pretty useless anyway, as they restrict interaction with the game logic. The best would be if there was just a CPU which had 3000 cores, like most GPUs have, and no need for a graphics card anymore. But intel just sucks, ARM and nVidia know how to design cores.

Josh would need to compile the engine with the GLEW_MX define, which enables threadsave OpenGL and multiple OpenGL contexts. See also http://glew.sourceforge.net/advanced.html

LE3 alpha supports GreenPeace, because less CPU and GPU power means less destruction of nature and children. And all the hot girls are in GreenPeace, so I want to be part of it too!

AAA means American Anti Alcoholics. I think they have even a website.

My friend told me he had to turn off the graphics in BF3, because everyone else did it too, to get advantage in hardcore multiplayer action. The "AAA" graphics was just causing zero vision to the player due to all debris, fog, explosion and fire effects, while the other players had turned them off to get maximum kills per second. So much for AAA games Yeah Crysis 1 is still a nice AAA game, but it really doesn't work in multiplayer, or any game which doesn't have insane expensive assets. Low end provides MUCH better quality for indie asset levels, like fast framerate, long range shadows. Actually I had a funny idea a few days ago: you don't even need shadows or textures if you make a hidden line rendered game (like tron or elite). It looks amazing with everything black and hidden line rendering. No lights, no shadows, and it still looks 1000 times better than a game which has textures and lights, but no shadows (like Unity on mobile).

Interesting, so it works in both ways That's truly a programmer friendly engine concept then. If another graphics engine is written correctly, it should kinda work like a subroutine in a standard glut renderfunc loop (which basically does only glBegin, glEnd, glSwapBuffers), so it could be even added and mixed with the LE3D renderer.

I am developing a 1 zip file idea, where you have a C++ IDE and compiler in 1 file and can extract it on any computer you go. It has also a setup.exe, which does the one and only system change you need to do: add the bin path of the tool to your system path. Even that seems too hard for many newbies, so just clicking with the mouse once should be easy enough. For now I have only basic OpenGL framework, so when LE3 alpha comes out, I can integrate it also into this pocket game development tool, and nobody should ever have problems with setting up a C++ compiler and C++ IDE anymore. It's kinda like the same idea that the user should not have to choose what browser he uses, because each browser supports different things, and might not work with your web site correctly. You just provide a tool which has been tested and is supported to play the web site. The same way I provide only a tool which can be used to code in C++ with LE3. And no other things need to be installed. It's also similar to the idea of BlitzMax or Blitz3D. You can just zip them, and then unzip them on another computer, and everything is included and works.

@Furbolg: A graphics engine (in my definition), uses an graphics API, like OpenGL, DirectX, Wing, etc... which gives the graphics engine the possibility to access the graphics card directly. Then the graphics engine adds high level graphics commands, like rendering a scene (not all graphics engines use a scene graph either, it depends what they find faster), adding vector or voxel based 3D models to the scene (it's totally open to the user in what format they are on disk, or in what format the textures, if even needed, are on disk, or even if they are on disk at all (he might want to load everything from the network or some other media)), adding some default shaders and post processing effects, vector based shadows, texture based shadows, voxel based shadows, 3d fog, distance fog, particle systems, perhaps also ocean rendering, cloud rendering, rain and snow rendering, although those again need a verlet physics engine to work properly with a game (since they need to collide and animate). Initializing the graphics driver, is also not necessarily a part of the graphics engine, since the user might want to use his own framework (freeglut, glut, glfw, sfml, sdl, etc...) to initialize the graphics and create a graphics window.

I think it would work quite well, because usually the logic of C coders is so out of this world, that their game logic would not be understood by anyone. A C coder is just happy to make super fast code, which processes trillions of bits per nanosecond, or elgantly avoids calculating those at all using some optimizations The game project leader will anyway fight with the game logic designer, so better leave the C coder out of their problems.

The C++ programmer could write modules, which the game logic designer then utilizes in his Synapse work. For example some highly optimized C module for verlet particles, or sqlite/postgresql implementation, or some procedural texture generator.

So why are people complaining about an alpha version then? Shouldn't they be happy to get to play with that, instead of waiting for LE3D 1.0, which might come out earliest at christmas?

If Josh would have said that he will first release an alpha version which has only low end renderer, nobody would have complained about anything, but they would be happy to get to test out the first alpha version Like I said earlier, Josh's way of defining what's tech test, tech preview, alpha, beta, gamma, delta, version 0.0.0.0, version 0.0.0.1, version 1.0, etc... is not what most people are used to. He calls version 1.0 what I could call version 0.0.0.1, or other people would call alpha or tech preview. But then again FireFox calls 9.0 what is actually 2.1.9.0

Yes, I only explained it in more detail why it is not only an graphics engine

LE was never an graphics engine, which for example Ogre3D is. An graphics engine doesn't have these features, which LE has: - Sound - Bitmap fonts - Networking - Loading of 3D models - Loading of textures - Loading of sounds - Loading of fonts - Editing of scenes - Loading from pak files - Creating a main window - Lua scripting - Keyboard input - Mouse input - Physics

I am missing certain low end features from LE2, which prevent me from doing a gameplay what I want to do. For example low end scissor volume shadows, which reach for long distances. With LE2's shadow maps the length and visibility is very limited, because it's using a texture for shadows, and not vectors. It would be nice if you could avoid using textures completely and use only long distance vectors for everything. That would make your game low end capable, while providing the same look and feel on all screen resolutions from mobile to cinema size gaming theatre.

I actually need LE3 to make business apps and system tools for mobile, but of course some 3D graphics is needed for them too if you want to make them look fancy and provide some additional value to the customers.

That's a bit difficult question to answer, because different people understand different things as a beta LE2 had a turbulent development anyway, because it was first released as a completely rewritten LE1 engine, and then again in LE2.1 it was rewritten again to be a deferred renderer. It was a learning process for everyone, and deferred rendering was found out to be the best solution at that time, however modern engines have hybrid forward/deferred rendering also, because although deferred rendering can handle much more content, it also lacks of features which forward rendering can do, of which OpenGL 4 brings back a few features to deferred rendering. LE3 is a modern engine, and it brings back forward rendering as an option also, and even null rendering, which allows it to run on every toaster. I don't think it has hybrid forward/deferred rendering though, but that might come in future also.

So far I haven't got any early access to LE3, I'm just preparing generally to test the beta.

I am preparing to test LE3, yesterday I started making a reference framework from standard libraries, which I can then use to identify LE3 specific issues and provide feature requests which I already know how to implement.

I found today xz compressor, which beats even 7-zip ultra lzma2 mode, in both compression ratio and speed. I found it when I was wondering with what those latest GNU coreutils (because I needed a SHA512 calculator) were packed with, as usually GNU things are packed with .tar.gz. 7-Zip can still read xz files, because they are still LZMA2 format, but just optimized very nicely. Even in fast mode, xz packs very good, which is good for online networking. I guess xz will get a standard for GNU things, because those guys only care about efficiency.