How do you spend the $5000?

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 4:43 pm

My studio has a budget to buy some necessary tool to do a specified work.

I got $5000 and my job is to make an "Environment Editor"

(This doesn't include the salary, I just have to burn these money)

This is an 3D editor, what tool/language will you spend on?

Trond · Post by **Trond** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 4:55 pm

Buy the 3d editor.

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 4:58 pm

I thought of that, but the editor will bind with the game, which has to be redistributable.

And it has to be get customized with the game... I may need to make one eventually.

Fluid Byte · Post by **Fluid Byte** » Sun Nov 26, 2006 5:18 pm

How do you spend the $5000?

Bitches and Beer!?!?

chromaX · Post by **chromaX** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 11:17 am

I'd go with Booze instead of Beer. Less restrictive.

White Eagle · Post by **White Eagle** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 12:48 pm

You could buy your good buddy White Eagle some web hosting :roll:

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:10 pm

I can help for web space if you need, and I won't ask for anything......

These money is a project budget for a game and I might use it to purchase some material CD licenses abd programming SDKs, not for personal use and must contain formal receipt.

And it's a good way to show them the ease and flexibility of PureBasic to them.

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:18 pm

I think this would depend highly on your requirements. You have $5000, with that you could probably get a decent no-name toolkit to make your life easier making this editor, but nothing mainstream. For that you're looking at hundreds of thousands. Don't treat this money lightly though. How you spend this money and how what you spent it on is actually used will be a big deal to most of your higher-ups I'd think.

With PB you could probably build a 3d editor, but theres a slight catch. If you use the built-in 3d toolset in PB you'll need to redistribute it's source code with any commerical project. Theres a problem here, and a big one. Fred hasn't opened his OWN source like legally required to do. The older version of PB OGRE has its source opened, but the LGPL has very strict requirements and for ANY binary release code must be included. Its not optional, its not a "you'll get it eventually", but it must be available immediately with the binary distribution.

Now, theres absolutely nothing to stop you from buying PB and using OpenGL or DirectX directly. The only thing you may want to consider, depending on your position, is how you'd explain a bug in PB to your boss when a deadline comes up. Chances are you won't see the bugfix in time for a deadline in your project and you'll have to explain why (of course I don't know your company buy I'd assume theres accountability and all that being tracked).

Don't get me wrong I think PB is great but it may not be what you're looking for. I'm surprised that the in-game renderer and the editor are going to be separate. Thats just asking for bugs to show up that will be very tough to resolve. I recommend planning this ou with your main game engine programmer.

Of course with $5000 you could buy a PB license "for research".

I think I'd recommend you find yourself a very good GUI toolkit that integrates with OpenGL and/or DirectX. You'll probably want something that can do both, not for linux' sake, but for console development. If you ever want to release something on the Wii or PS2/3 you'll need to keep Opengl in mind.

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:31 pm

drac, you opnions is very vauable

I'm taking consider this, I have already registered PureBasic long ago, but it's not used on work yet(using VC2003 on formal work).

There're still many guys think it's "STONE AGE" of BASIC, and I'm lazy to waste my tongue explaning PureBasic is good.

Some software is very expensive, I'm arranging the list now...

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:35 pm

I'm sorry, the above post wasn't entirely accurate. When I was talking about having to release the source code, I meant you'd have to release the code for the 3D engine itself (OGRE+ODE). Your actual editor could remain closed source.

yoxola · Post by **yoxola** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:45 pm

Looking into Irrlicht now... hoping it's suitable for this job :roll:

dracflamloc · Post by **dracflamloc** » Mon Nov 27, 2006 2:53 pm

Irrlicht is quite capable for an editor. The GUI elements are pretty nice and relatively easy to use. If I were in your position considering irrlicht, I'd try to throw together a quick proof of concept and if you think you want to go for it, make a list of changes/features you'd need. Send that list to someone who can get deep into the engine and make the changes you need and use some of that $5000 to have them properly change and document what they do.

This way when you go make your final editor the engine is fully capable and any potential major hiccups can be avoided before you're halfway done with the project.