Hello
Here comes my personal point of view about this current debate.
First, let's think about what are the main soya features and why people are
using it:
Soya allows to create a 3D game quite easily, using python, blender and/or
image editing tools.. So the strong points are :
- high level API
- performances are OK
- you can model your objects in blender and quickly use it.
- python, allowing to express yourself very nicely with good API's.
Using it for quite a bit of time now I think it would be great to improve it
in these ways:
- a default collision system. I mean if I don't want to handle
collision Soya should provide a way to tell "If XX collide with YY then call
this method" . Soya is high level but not concerning collisions. Using
raypicking is never "trivial" and lead to many errors.
- a basic event system. I remember a soft, Klik and play (then Game
Factory)
you had possibility to catch events like "the latest XX object is destroyed"
and things like that. This soft allowed you to create a game very easily.
Perhaps it's something to dig in..
- exporting meshes from blender to cal3d and/or soya is not trivial
right now and many issues are open.
- Because the high level is a strong point, I think Soya should provide
high-level API for most of the game programming concerns. I mean default
classes for controllers, for cinematics (perhaps here being able to re-use
blender could be great)...
- perhaps it lack a bit of documentation...Or perhaps the website don't
push the documentation. Pydoc should be available from the website and the
soya wiki should be the main area for documentation..
- concerning deployment, I think packaging is the distribution
responsibility, but it could be great, and not difficult to provide pre-built
static packages. I mean for example, a package with everything needed for
linux (libs, python modules), windows or macosx (.app) . I did one already
for linux, a cmg package (klik system) and a pure binary one.
- concerning technicals aspects, pyrex don't seem very maintained.
Exports
scripts in blender neither (soya or cal3d). Perhaps it could be time to
re-use another c++ engine just as Dunk said. It could provide an high quality
backend, but more of that less things to maintain. I think it would be great
to maintain just a good API using ogre, or crystal space.. I tried Ogre for
example, and I have to say that on my low end system (PIII 500/ savage card)
it is a lot faster than soya, for a great graphical quality..
- and at last, because in many areas people need to redefine things,
could be
great to have a more extensible architecture for soya.
Thank you if you read this mail to here :) As I said at the beginning it's
just my point of view, but I have the feeling Soya is in a crossway right
now.
Cédric aka Tortoose
Le Mercredi 11 Janvier 2006 23:40, Dunk Fordyce a écrit :
> i want to kick start this this conversation and i keep coming up with a
> load of dumb emails to start it but i dont like any of them...
>
> so what is the future of soya?
>
> what do you want?
>
> what are your ideas?
>
>
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