Hello! I don't know what is the future of soya but I know what I want and I know my ideas:
I want : 1. to be able to write games with 3D graphics and multimedia capabilities(sfx, different input methods etc.) completely in Python(or almost completely in a few cases). 2. to be able to sell some of my games. 3. a completely FREE engine for my FREE games or some way to pay a REASONABLE FEE if I want to sell non-free games. Of course that a completely free engine(with a non-copylefted free software license) wouldn't hurt me at all. 4. a game engine which integrates well with 3d modeling applications(like blender and 3dsmax). I REALLY wish I can ask for artwork from a 3dsmax user or from a blender user or whatever and just use it without too much hassle. 5. I'd also like a system like battle.net with a good Python API in order to have internet gaming enabled in my game. The metaserver should be hosted for public use for free games, and non-free game developers should pay a fee to host their game rooms on the metaserver, or run it on their own systems. 6. an engine that is EXTENSIBLE: I want to be able to add features to the engine to suit my needs for my type of game if Python is too slow or if I simply cannot do it because of lack of low level access to system resources. As an example for extending the engine I can give this one: If I want to implement my own tools for modeling and level design, I might also want to add a new type of model and level to the engine without modifying the sourcecode of the engine(it should work by just plugging new modules for new features). 7. an engine that just has the features that a game engine should have :) (see soya's features + some more ! :D) 8. the software should be actively maintained of course One way of achieving this is by writing a 3d engine from scratch strongly oriented towards python(though I don't know what's there to orient). This is the soya approach. Another way is to use an existing GOOD engine and write a GOOD wrapper with GOOD documentation for Python. I don't know if such engine exists. The third option, if the first version is not realistic(there is no fun in forcing the use of Python in a game engine I believe) or if the second option doesn't exist, is to write a new GAME ENGINE(and not just a good looking but useless 3d engine) in a popular(many libraries to choose from) compiled language with good performance(C++ eh ?:) ) with Python in mind(this way ruby or other interpreted languages may have wrappers for it) that has all(or some, the most important) of the above mentioned features. There are many more things to say but that should be enough :)
