Next steps? 0.7

[Geofff]

I'm coming from the jME world (under a different username), but I've been keeping an eye on Ardor3D and waiting until it has matured enough to get involved. I like the professionalism of Ardor3D and the great strides it has made in the past year. I think that the addition of

* Animation/Animation Blending System
* Game States
* Game Controller Support
* Audio/3D Audio System

will make a strong argument for starting projects using the engine.

Other things that I would like to see (although not specifically for the .7 release):

* Pre-Rendered FMV System
* Simple Physics System
* Android OS Implementation

[renanse]

These are all great ideas and perspectives. Keep them coming in.

Right now it looks like Rikard and I will focus on Animation for the next 1-2 months and I am working to revamp our web site and presentation at the same time. Support for game controllers is also very likely in 0.7 as well as further improvements to the Collada pipeline.

Areas where we could use help or would love to have some volunteers (for 0.7 and beyond):

1. Physics Master. This has been discussed before, but I'd love to have an experienced and motivated person take on the role of "physics integration expert" for Ardor3D. I'd like us to focus on one really good physics library such as Bullet.
2. Build Master. Also discussed elsewhere. Basically someone who will be our expert in all things build related.
3. Sound Master. Similar to Physics Master, we'd do well to have someone who was focused on integrating with one really good audio library.

If you have interest, please PM or email us directly rather than responding here on the forums.

[MrCoder]

Apart from what Josh already mentioned, I agree that we need support in the game state area. seems like people in general want better support for getting their game up. We need to have something other than ExampleBase to point people to as well (it was never intended to be a startingpoint for anything but our examples)...

[faust]

We need to have something other than ExampleBase to point people to as well (it was never intended to be a startingpoint for anything but our examples)...

agreed, guice is a horrid thing to look at for new ardor3d programmers especially if you haven't used it before.

[faust]

3. Sound Master. Similar to Physics Master, we'd do well to have someone who was focused on integrating with one really good audio library.

could be really nice if you ripped out the sound stuff from Slick2D (its already pretty modular and standalone) and has been well tested, supports lots of sounds format too, like wav, ogg, xm, etc.

however aside from the ardor sound library what underlying sound tech would JOGL users use? LWJGL comes with OpenALSoft which is very good and well tested but JOAL and JavaSound are way too poor as viable alternatives.

[faust]

I think I've seen you over on the jME boards as well. I too have been giving thought as to how to implement the classic RPG "screen tear" that happens between field mode and combat mode. What I am on the verge of experimenting with (in jME) is capturing a screen shot of the current 3D scene via jME, displaying that to a full-screen quad, and then directly manipulating and updating that image to produce the tear effect. I don't know though... this route may be too slow in practice. The second and more complex option would be to use a shader to achieve the desired effect. Of course, when the image is being torn the gamestates between field and combat would be flipped.

As to your post requesting this as part of the core for Ardor3D, I'm not sure if it belongs there. Certainly gamestates, but not snazzy game-specific screen tears...

If you'd like to explore screen tearing in jME, let me know and we'll get a gameplan together!

agreed, didn't mean for all the snazzy effects to be in the core, instead there should be something like a transition class (blank effect by default) that can be extended and and you can plug in your own transition effect.

[Geofff]

Apart from what Josh already mentioned, I agree that we need support in the game state area. seems like people in general want better support for getting their game up. We need to have something other than ExampleBase to point people to as well (it was never intended to be a startingpoint for anything but our examples)...

Providing something like the jME SimpleGame (which I think was also never intended to be the foundation for actual games) or BaseGame classes would do much to ease noobs into the Ardor3D way of doing things. Also, a good tutorial like the classic jME Flagrush (or maybe the series of demos/tuts mentioned on this thread-piece: viewtopic.php?f=10&t=189&p=1227#p2089) would also be very helpful. Of course, with something like SimpleGame and/or BaseGame in place they would probably get developed faster (by those who are not a part of the main/core development process but by those who want to learn/use Ardor3D and also provide something in return).

[gouessej]

however aside from the ardor sound library what underlying sound tech would JOGL users use? LWJGL comes with OpenALSoft which is very good and well tested but JOAL and JavaSound are way too poor as viable alternatives.

JOAL is no more maintained but it works fine with a software implementation of OpenAL.

I remind you that Paul Lamb has written 3D Sound System above OpenALSoft/JOAL/JavaSound/JOGG/JORBIS/... and it is on my view the most complete and viable sound library for Java even though the streaming is a bit slow on low end machines: http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/forum/index.php?topic=10948.msg82790#msg82790

[faust]

I remind you that Paul Lamb has written 3D Sound System above OpenALSoft/JOAL/JavaSound/JOGG/JORBIS/... and it is on my view the most complete and viable sound library for Java even though the streaming is a bit slow on low end machines: http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/forum/index.php?topic=10948.msg82790#msg82790

ah good to know, thx.

[Galun]

Quite some time ago I worked with a commercial engine which I dropped again for some reason but there are some things I really liked.
Of course they used a forum and a wiki as well but there was one quite huge repository for howto's and tips and tricks. One article in this section was typically about one specific problem or addition to the engine and organized in categories (which product, which part, purpose) and types (like documentation only or documentation plus code, different licenses etc.)
A nice search engine helped a lot finding the articles for a certain issue.

A lot of useful things that were not part of the engine (especially things that are only used in one game genre) could be found there. The articles could be submitted by registered users so the company only need to check the articles from time to time whether they followed some rules (e.g. not posting something without a proper license and so on). Beside that it was completely community driven.
Each article could be rated and you could add comments just like in a blog.

In the end it was a very valuable source for documentation of existing features as well as very good ideas for common issues.
The articles I described are only accessible to licensed users but if you want I can create an example of how that looked like. I cannot just quote one as there may be an NDA involved.

I suggested such a thing in jme before and thus some of you may remember that