What the writer is missing is the symbiotic relationship of Ubuntu and Debian. Debian does many things really really well. Somethings, like frequent releases, not so well. But for those of us who use Debian, that would be a beautiful design on top of the cake and frosting we already have... Without it, that cake tastes pretty darn good.
Ubuntu came along and tackled this problem, so Debian can continue doing what it does best. To top it off, Ubuntu has funding. And they aren't greedy leeches who take Debian's hard work and exploit it as their own distribution. They contribute back much of their work to Debian (if the Debian developers like the changes). With Debian, Ubuntu wouldn't survive. Ubuntu's funding and hard work ends up helping Debian.
So about saying "Debian will hit a brick wall"... I would ask the question, did you close your mind and hit a brick wall?
Our perception of a situation is based on our experiences and our knowledge of the situation. If we are missing information, our perception about the situation may be off. Like the fact I haven't read the actual article this is about... I'm probably missing something.
In related news... Dell, HP, and Apple are now fighting for rights to the photo I took of my three computers sitting side by side. To make matters worse, the following company's have joined in:
Logitech (mouse)
Arrowhead (bottle of water)
Lucent (phone)
Altec Lansing (speakers)
Borders (coupon sitting on desk)
SANFORD (sharpie on desk)
Papermate (pen on desk)
Popular Science (poster in the background)
SMC (router)
Some generic company over the external hard drive enclosure
Maxell (DVD+R media)
And myself (for the hand written notes I wrote on the DVD+R media)
Thank you for your input. It's good to hear that the code is clean by comparison... That's always a plus as well as useful responses on the forums. At this point, I doubt I will be going with TGE. C4 is still on my list as a possible engine to use, but I think I am going to do more research first. Is Eric the only developer of the engine or is there a team of people? Thanks again, you have been a big help!
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my posts! Thanks! I think I will invest more time looking at projects which have been made with the various engines as you suggested. I will have to define my different projects in more detail and look at what engine(s) fit best for each project rather then trying to find one that could work for all (good goal, but might hinder me in some ways). Thanks again, I have a lot to think about now. =o) Cool looking game by the way!
I assume your website is http://www.irrgheist.com/? If so, then you used Irrlicht for H-Craft? The trailer makes it seem like the graphics are still rather impressive even without being built upon shaders.
When it comes to open source packages like Irrlecht and Ogre3D I am more than willing to try them out and see which one(s) will work for my projects. And after your post and others like it, I think I will be looking at the open source graphics engines + specialized modular libraries as well as some of the other indie engines... but I do know TGE/TGEA is off my list as of now.
Ogre is on my list to try again after what I have heard about TGE and TGEA. How is Blender tightly intergrated with Ogre? The last time I used Ogre was with 1.0 I believe. I would love to know more because Blender is my favorite 3D modeling/animation package currently.
That is a very good piece of advice. The problem I am having with indie engines is that with some of them, Torque for example, is that it is hard to figure out if a feature I want is even working as well as they say it is, without buying the engine or in this case, asking the slashdot community for their experience. And when the features do work, having the community support to help you when you are thinking about the feature the wrong way is really important. It took many hours of research to find out the Atlas Terrain feature of TGEA has issues and from what I am hearing is that support is hard to come by.
Any way, thank you for the post. I will make sure to follow your advice.
I would be very interested in knowing what game engine you guys are working on, if you do not mind me asking?
How long have you used the C4 engine? That was the other indie license engine that caught my eye. What is it that you like about it so much? How is the support for the engine compared to TGE? I heard a rumor the physics integration needs some work?
I did see the Unity website and it looked really interesting. I would love to try it out... I just need a Mac though. The almost everyone in my lab uses a Mac (I use Linux mostly, but also make Windows builds of our software)... Someone else does the Mac builds, mostly because I don't have one yet. I use to have a Mac from OS 6.5 to 9. I really need to get one soon (cross-platform development is REALLY hard with only 2 or the 3 platforms you care about... Yelling, "Can you make a Mac build with the latest source code?" is a frustrating method of development. =o)
I also agree OpenGL is great for learning. I started with that actually and will probably do more for learning purposes. And I also agree it is bad to reinvent the wheel unless you are 125% confident that you can make the next generation wheel. And second, are actually capable of it (as in many years of experience and tried out other engines).
The previous poster suggested making my own engine (And agree with this poster). I have a limited, but significant amount of time to write my game or for work scientific applications. Using nicely written game or graphics engines allows me to learn quickly form those with more experience and save me time.
I will definitely have to try Irrlicht now... it has mentioned several times now. Which suggests to me it's worth a look. Thanks you guys.
From my experience with this post, posting your question to Ask Slashdot would be a good idea. Since you made the comment of "hire a programmer/programmers to do a small MMORPG"... it suggests you guys may not have much experience with software development? (Please correct me if I am wrong, because I am only trying to be helpful). If that is the case, make sure you find people who know what they are doing... Making an MMO is not easy and requires knowledge of many aspects of programming. Depending on what you mean by small, you would likely need a decent size group of programmers to complete your project. Although with the right people you can do amazing things. I would recommend getting involved with some open source MMO projects, creating your own open source project saying "Here is a our idea, we have the graphics, now we just need the programmers." They might come and work on it, who knows. Best of luck!
The Panda3D engine looks interesting from a quick glance... and +1 for the Python use. I will look into this more. Thank you everyone who suggested it.
You rock. This is what I was wanting to hear! I think you just saved me $150 to $300. After other posts I have seen, I think I will be looking into other options and trying Ogre3D again. Thank you for your honesty!
What do I want to hear? I want to hear what the community has to say. I don't want to waste money on the Torque Game Engine if it's not worth it and from what I can tell from the comments to my post, it's not as good (especially the support) compared to what GarageGames advertises. (By the way, this is why I love open source code as I can try it out for myself and decide if it works for me).
The intention was not an advertisement for the Torque Game Engine. I will have to be more careful the next time I make a post like this. I was leaning toward the Torque Game Engine, but now I am not so sure. The comments on the GameDev.net reviews were not enough for me to make a decision. In fact I believe more people should post there experiences as reviews there and I probably should like to the comments made in response to my post.
Yes, scientific stuff... A game engine may not be the best choice for many scientific applications, but I try to keep an open mind. When I do that I find I can take a technology meant for another field and make it work very nicely for my needs. Note that I am a gamer at heart and software developer in bioinformatics by career. Of course I will use the game engine first for making games, but those who know me know I take technologies a squeeze as much juice as I can out of them.
P.S. I am looking for a casing and some powder so I can add my own silver bullet.
I think this is ridiculous. The United States of America didn't become one of the strongest countries in the world because we were afraid of kids occationally getting hurt. I don't want the next generation of Americans growing up telling the next Hitler, "I'm sorry, I can't deal with you because I'm not allowed to deal with situations in life... I might get sued."
I mean come on! Touch football teaches you how to work on a team, how to strategize, make friends, etc. If some bully comes along and starts getting rough, then the school can revoke his right to play Touch football. That will teach concequences... Or has the education system lost any backbone it had?
And guess what, kids get hurt! It happens. In the future, if I have to sign a paper telling the lawyers that I won't sue the school if my kid gets hurt for playing touch football, then I would. I think any Judge SHOULD (doesn't mean will) see that holding schools accountable for kids getting hurt in normal acts of playing during recess, is like telling a writer they will be sued if they use incorrect grammer or misspell anything!
Kids need to have experinces and work through a few tough situations while they are growing up. I'm not saying they should have to deal with school shootings. I'm just saying a little touch football is probably going to do them more good then bad.
By the way, did I meantion taking away touch football is more likely to teach them revoking peoples freedoms is not only ok, but expected and therefore tollerable. Schools should be trying to teach the next generation of Americans to live life and understand why we live in such a great country, the importance of freedom, and why it should continue to be a free country... I fear for the future of our country when kids can't play touch football during recess. What is this country coming too?
I wish people could think about the long term consequences/benifits of making major decisions. Oh, that's right, everyones blinded by "I might get sued.", rather than, "You know, there are many benifits to a game like touch football." (Assuming it doesn't get out of hand, but that's why they send teachers out during recess to monitor situations like this.)
See, the problem I am having with Windows Vista is that IE just stoped working... And IE is required to report the problems to MS. Firefox works though, but not for reporting problems. Any way, I guess I'll have to reinstall to tell them about it or find another machine not running Linux.
Slashdot Mirror
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." ~Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office, 1899
What the writer is missing is the symbiotic relationship of Ubuntu and Debian. Debian does many things really really well. Somethings, like frequent releases, not so well. But for those of us who use Debian, that would be a beautiful design on top of the cake and frosting we already have... Without it, that cake tastes pretty darn good.
Ubuntu came along and tackled this problem, so Debian can continue doing what it does best. To top it off, Ubuntu has funding. And they aren't greedy leeches who take Debian's hard work and exploit it as their own distribution. They contribute back much of their work to Debian (if the Debian developers like the changes). With Debian, Ubuntu wouldn't survive. Ubuntu's funding and hard work ends up helping Debian.
So about saying "Debian will hit a brick wall"... I would ask the question, did you close your mind and hit a brick wall?
Our perception of a situation is based on our experiences and our knowledge of the situation. If we are missing information, our perception about the situation may be off. Like the fact I haven't read the actual article this is about... I'm probably missing something.
In related news... Dell, HP, and Apple are now fighting for rights to the photo I took of my three computers sitting side by side. To make matters worse, the following company's have joined in:
Thank you for your input. It's good to hear that the code is clean by comparison... That's always a plus as well as useful responses on the forums. At this point, I doubt I will be going with TGE. C4 is still on my list as a possible engine to use, but I think I am going to do more research first. Is Eric the only developer of the engine or is there a team of people? Thanks again, you have been a big help!
I appreciate you taking the time to respond to my posts! Thanks! I think I will invest more time looking at projects which have been made with the various engines as you suggested. I will have to define my different projects in more detail and look at what engine(s) fit best for each project rather then trying to find one that could work for all (good goal, but might hinder me in some ways). Thanks again, I have a lot to think about now. =o) Cool looking game by the way!
Why does that guys post remind me of hitler?
I agree, putting together a requirements list is a good idea before deciding. I appreciate the post. Thanks!
I assume your website is http://www.irrgheist.com/? If so, then you used Irrlicht for H-Craft? The trailer makes it seem like the graphics are still rather impressive even without being built upon shaders.
When it comes to open source packages like Irrlecht and Ogre3D I am more than willing to try them out and see which one(s) will work for my projects. And after your post and others like it, I think I will be looking at the open source graphics engines + specialized modular libraries as well as some of the other indie engines... but I do know TGE/TGEA is off my list as of now.
Thanks for the post!
Ogre is on my list to try again after what I have heard about TGE and TGEA. How is Blender tightly intergrated with Ogre? The last time I used Ogre was with 1.0 I believe. I would love to know more because Blender is my favorite 3D modeling/animation package currently.
That is a very good piece of advice. The problem I am having with indie engines is that with some of them, Torque for example, is that it is hard to figure out if a feature I want is even working as well as they say it is, without buying the engine or in this case, asking the slashdot community for their experience. And when the features do work, having the community support to help you when you are thinking about the feature the wrong way is really important. It took many hours of research to find out the Atlas Terrain feature of TGEA has issues and from what I am hearing is that support is hard to come by.
Any way, thank you for the post. I will make sure to follow your advice.
I would be very interested in knowing what game engine you guys are working on, if you do not mind me asking?
Thank you for the post. I will have to look into that engine. Cute game by the way!
How long have you used the C4 engine? That was the other indie license engine that caught my eye. What is it that you like about it so much? How is the support for the engine compared to TGE? I heard a rumor the physics integration needs some work?
I did see the Unity website and it looked really interesting. I would love to try it out... I just need a Mac though. The almost everyone in my lab uses a Mac (I use Linux mostly, but also make Windows builds of our software)... Someone else does the Mac builds, mostly because I don't have one yet. I use to have a Mac from OS 6.5 to 9. I really need to get one soon (cross-platform development is REALLY hard with only 2 or the 3 platforms you care about... Yelling, "Can you make a Mac build with the latest source code?" is a frustrating method of development. =o)
I really appreciate you taking the time to respond. I will have too look into David's book. Thank you for your posts.
I also agree OpenGL is great for learning. I started with that actually and will probably do more for learning purposes. And I also agree it is bad to reinvent the wheel unless you are 125% confident that you can make the next generation wheel. And second, are actually capable of it (as in many years of experience and tried out other engines).
The previous poster suggested making my own engine (And agree with this poster). I have a limited, but significant amount of time to write my game or for work scientific applications. Using nicely written game or graphics engines allows me to learn quickly form those with more experience and save me time.
I will definitely have to try Irrlicht now... it has mentioned several times now. Which suggests to me it's worth a look. Thanks you guys.
From my experience with this post, posting your question to Ask Slashdot would be a good idea. Since you made the comment of "hire a programmer/programmers to do a small MMORPG"... it suggests you guys may not have much experience with software development? (Please correct me if I am wrong, because I am only trying to be helpful). If that is the case, make sure you find people who know what they are doing... Making an MMO is not easy and requires knowledge of many aspects of programming. Depending on what you mean by small, you would likely need a decent size group of programmers to complete your project. Although with the right people you can do amazing things. I would recommend getting involved with some open source MMO projects, creating your own open source project saying "Here is a our idea, we have the graphics, now we just need the programmers." They might come and work on it, who knows. Best of luck!
The Panda3D engine looks interesting from a quick glance... and +1 for the Python use. I will look into this more. Thank you everyone who suggested it.
You rock. This is what I was wanting to hear! I think you just saved me $150 to $300. After other posts I have seen, I think I will be looking into other options and trying Ogre3D again. Thank you for your honesty!
What do I want to hear? I want to hear what the community has to say. I don't want to waste money on the Torque Game Engine if it's not worth it and from what I can tell from the comments to my post, it's not as good (especially the support) compared to what GarageGames advertises. (By the way, this is why I love open source code as I can try it out for myself and decide if it works for me). The intention was not an advertisement for the Torque Game Engine. I will have to be more careful the next time I make a post like this. I was leaning toward the Torque Game Engine, but now I am not so sure. The comments on the GameDev.net reviews were not enough for me to make a decision. In fact I believe more people should post there experiences as reviews there and I probably should like to the comments made in response to my post. Yes, scientific stuff... A game engine may not be the best choice for many scientific applications, but I try to keep an open mind. When I do that I find I can take a technology meant for another field and make it work very nicely for my needs. Note that I am a gamer at heart and software developer in bioinformatics by career. Of course I will use the game engine first for making games, but those who know me know I take technologies a squeeze as much juice as I can out of them. P.S. I am looking for a casing and some powder so I can add my own silver bullet.
Hi Everyone, I suggest we all e-mail the school board (schoolboard at fwps.org) arguing against their decision.
I think this is ridiculous. The United States of America didn't become one of the strongest countries in the world because we were afraid of kids occationally getting hurt. I don't want the next generation of Americans growing up telling the next Hitler, "I'm sorry, I can't deal with you because I'm not allowed to deal with situations in life... I might get sued."
I mean come on! Touch football teaches you how to work on a team, how to strategize, make friends, etc. If some bully comes along and starts getting rough, then the school can revoke his right to play Touch football. That will teach concequences... Or has the education system lost any backbone it had?
And guess what, kids get hurt! It happens. In the future, if I have to sign a paper telling the lawyers that I won't sue the school if my kid gets hurt for playing touch football, then I would. I think any Judge SHOULD (doesn't mean will) see that holding schools accountable for kids getting hurt in normal acts of playing during recess, is like telling a writer they will be sued if they use incorrect grammer or misspell anything!
Kids need to have experinces and work through a few tough situations while they are growing up. I'm not saying they should have to deal with school shootings. I'm just saying a little touch football is probably going to do them more good then bad.
By the way, did I meantion taking away touch football is more likely to teach them revoking peoples freedoms is not only ok, but expected and therefore tollerable. Schools should be trying to teach the next generation of Americans to live life and understand why we live in such a great country, the importance of freedom, and why it should continue to be a free country... I fear for the future of our country when kids can't play touch football during recess. What is this country coming too?
I wish people could think about the long term consequences/benifits of making major decisions. Oh, that's right, everyones blinded by "I might get sued.", rather than, "You know, there are many benifits to a game like touch football." (Assuming it doesn't get out of hand, but that's why they send teachers out during recess to monitor situations like this.)
See, the problem I am having with Windows Vista is that IE just stoped working... And IE is required to report the problems to MS. Firefox works though, but not for reporting problems. Any way, I guess I'll have to reinstall to tell them about it or find another machine not running Linux.