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Three Axis Promises Nanosaur For Linux
lvillalt writes: "Three Axis Interactive is porting Nanosaur (a 3D Mac game) to Linux, using the Quesa 3D graphics library." Nanosaur seems like one of the best reasons to buy a Macintosh -- smooth action, good controls, nice textures, and action suitable even for small kids. But if you can put Nanosaur and a close-enough-to-Aqua theme on a Linux box, the premium for The Real Thing suddenly looks a little steeper. However, no release date yet.
One thing mentioned on the Quesa maillist is that this may allow for more resources to bear in the completion of the library. Progress on Quesa hasn't been too bad (although you wouldn't guess it from the rather infrequent releases-- there are just a small cadre of developers working on it), but a few hard snags still remain before the current goal of QD3D 1.6 compatibility (e.g. NURBS equations, according to Joe Strout)
By the way, for anyone not familiar with Quesa, check it out. It's an incredibly well-designed 3D scene graph API, roughly the equivalent of Inventor. (Or is it Performer? I keep getting those two mixed up). Apple dropped support for it in OS X (they went OpenGL-only), so right now the API is in that same eerie twilight zone as the old OPENSTEP API, where you have this very clean, well-architectured standard basically abandoned by its parent company. (The cool thing being, of course, that future development of such a standard falls into the hands of "the community," a la GNUStep)
I've heard wonders of the elegance of this API. Definitely superior to Inventor. (or Performer). And the nice thing about Quesa is that the implementation is sweet-- the structure, even the commenting is beautifully done. Quesa is going to be one hell of a graphics library when it is finished. I'm hoping it will become the cross-platform standard 3D scene graph layer, much as OpenGL already has for low-level 3D. I'd be hard-pressed to name anything better.
iSKUNK!
I am very dissapointed to see the lack of support that most have shown so far in the discussion of this forum. Most of the posts have either been useless trolls or simply stupid. Do you think what you are doing is at all helpful. Did you even follow the links. Looking at this it is probably not the type of game that I would play now as I am more into the first person shooter genre. It is however something that I would have loved when I was younger and anything that broadens the scope of linux is a good thing so rather than criticizing stop and think what you are doing. So far their have been very few worthwhile posts. Slashdot is going downhill and only the people that are causing the problems can fix this.
When you are hitting the submit button pause and think for a second. Is what you are doing in any way helpful. Is it even going to help you or are you behaving the way you are simply to be cute or because you want attention?
On another note people that actually read the article would have noticed that this is a good thing not only because linux will get more software but because the developers are embracing a concept called "charity ware" in which people who like the software give money to a charity instead of paying the developers.
Aaron
Aaron Bryden
Aaron Bryden
abrydenREMOVETHIS@gmail.com
This is just another example of the endless stream of hand-me-downs the Linux community has been given. It's great that companies are giving us anything, and I certainly don't blame them. I'm just sick of never having anything of our own that is so great that Win/Mac users can't wait for a port so they can get in on the action.
Isn't it about time we did something monumental instead of just porting and cloning apps from other OSes?
I'm grateful for what we've been given so far, but it's time to innovate.