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I'll work on a PB include once the new DLL of the LEADWERKS engine is out: http://www.leadwerks.com

I'd have to go with the free Irrlicht wrapper. And I used to program 3D game engines for a job a few years back

We need to include the B3D engine...

http://www.blitzbasic.com/Products/blitz3dsdk.php

I am torn between this and Leadwerks... When I was big on Blitz3D he did help me greatly...

@SEBE... Pleasekeep us updated on your progress!

Leadwerks used to have one big problem. He keeps doing new versions of his stuff, leaving people who registered old stuff in the dark, without delivering the updates that was promised. (Cartography shop anyone?)

Blitz3D while the coolest way to program 3D ever, is hopeless outdated with it´s DirectX 7 only rendering. (Vista will take over in time. No doubt about that. The casual users will change without a thought)

Irrlicht on the other hand is a mature, fast, stable 3D engine and you get full source to both Irrlicht and the wrapper. Can´t beat that

Currently there are problems with getting Leadwerks engine to run with PureBasic:

Leadwerks engine is programmed in BlitzMax using OpenGL. Sadly it's programmed object oriented in BlitzMax. So while the functions are exported the general behaviour of Blitzmax is a problem when it comes to any deep Leadwerks engine programming with PureBasic.

This is the main problem with most of the engines nowadays: they are object oriented what makes it hard to get them working in PureBasic. I was already thinking of porting Truevision3D to PureBasic via Interfaces but then decided it's too much work for 6.2/6.3. And to get access to 6.5 one has to get a non-freeware license which is too much for me.

@Irrlicht: yes Irrlicht is nice. It's also bloated (2 DirectX modes, 1 OpenGL and 2 software modes). If I had the time I would just take Irrlicht, strip it down to DirectX9 OR OpenGL only and create a engine that exports the functions. But I don't have the time for that. If anyone of you knows a decent engine (3D graphics and 3d sound) that is not object oriented and a DLL then tell me. I'd like to bring this engine to PureBasic. But as long as this engine doesn't exist I will just go with BlitzMax for Leadwerks engine.

MAYBE I will think of an procedural system for the Leadwerks engine and create a DLL for PureBasic myself. We'll see... Actually I'm more interested in getting my game ready then fiddling around with engines. If that means PureBasic is no option for me then be it so!

I'm giving Blitz3D SDK + PureBASIC a go. I was going to use C, but the PB interface for Blitz3D SDK seems to (mostly) work well and I have missed using PB. I've been away in Blitz3D land for a while. Well, in between getting sucked into MMO's that is.

I just don't like Ogre, or most of the other engines talked about here, and Blitz3D programs do work reasonably well under Vista (with some exceptions). However to be on the safe side I'll be testing my games under Vista as I go. DX7 functionality will do me fine as I only need one bell and maybe half a whistle - shaders not required.

Quite frankly what tool/SDK/library/whatever you choose to use should be based upon need, not greed. Mind you that is my philosophy about life in general.

Sebe wrote: This is the main problem with most of the engines nowadays: they are object oriented what makes it hard to get them working in PureBasic. I was already thinking of porting Truevision3D to PureBasic via Interfaces but then decided it's too much work for 6.2/6.3. And to get access to 6.5 one has to get a non-freeware license which is too much for me.

This is something PB is to blame for.
Yes i know it has been discussed to the end and it seems that we will never see oo features in PB ever.
But optional oo features , allowing the users to create simple classes would help to build bridges from PB to modern 3D engines and other libs.

Sebe wrote: @Irrlicht: yes Irrlicht is nice. It's also bloated (2 DirectX modes, 1 OpenGL and 2 software modes). If I had the time I would just take Irrlicht, strip it down to DirectX9 OR OpenGL only and create a engine that exports the functions. But I don't have the time for that. If anyone of you knows a decent engine (3D graphics and 3d sound) that is not object oriented and a DLL then tell me. I'd like to bring this engine to PureBasic. But as long as this engine doesn't exist I will just go with BlitzMax for Leadwerks engine.

Irrlicht might be bloated with all those different renderers but you can easily remove the not needet ones in about 30 minutes.

Also there is Lightfeather avialible.
A spawn of the Irrlicht engine which is already stripped of unnessesary things.


On the other side in my opinion Ogre3D is the best choice since the size of theyr community and the ammount of coders are a guarantee that it is developed with an higher speed than irrlicht is.

The drawback is that PB will always hang behind the development of Ogre3D and especially with the current speed of development the 3D part of PB is plain useless in my eyes.

Last year i startet a topic here in this forums
http://www.purebasic.fr/english/viewtop ... highlight=
In august last year i received a pm from Fred saying that the 3D Engine sources

... will be made available as soon as it's cleaned, it shouldn't be long. Thanks !

I think the development of the 3D part , mainly the integration of Ogre3D into PB , is something we could do if we would have the sources of the current implementation of the Engine3D.dll .

So Fred could concentrate on improving other things of PB while the only work he would have to do with the 3D part would be deciding what should be wrapped for use with PB and to wire our Engin3D.dll and PB together.

Godai wrote:Leadwerks used to have one big problem. He keeps doing new versions of his stuff, leaving people who registered old stuff in the dark, without delivering the updates that was promised. (Cartography shop anyone?)

Blitz3D while the coolest way to program 3D ever, is hopeless outdated with it´s DirectX 7 only rendering. (Vista will take over in time. No doubt about that. The casual users will change without a thought)

Irrlicht on the other hand is a mature, fast, stable 3D engine and you get full source to both Irrlicht and the wrapper. Can´t beat that

Incorrect, the casual users are actually RETURNING vista to stores after buying it. Its extremely common actually. Though you made a good point with dx7 in general.

I'm using b3dsdk and C# on my Vista Ultimate machine, and have not run into *any* problems what so ever. The game I'm currently working on uses some dynamic multi-layered texturing, and meshes with large polygon counts. Everything runs smooth as greased lightening.

As for the DX7 "limitation". When have shaders ever had a direct impact on actual game play?

CoderLaureate wrote: As for the DX7 "limitation". When have shaders ever had a direct impact on actual game play?

On gameplay ? never

Lets see it realistic.
99,99% of the people here which are working on 3D games are doing indie Game development with very few resources on theyr hands.

So the main question isnt "does engine xy supports highend feature z" but "is the ratio of features written per programmer hour good enough to give my project a chance to become complete ever".

Actually i dont care if the functions i write are slower than they could be using the best possible solution or programming language or framework.

All i care is how much do i have to programm on my own cause it isnt yet done by the programming language and how stable do these things work.


So dx7 isn't a bad thing after all since most indie projects wont do more than scratching on the surface of what dx7 offers.
Although its always nice if the code was written in a kind which allows to exchange the components ( like 3d lib ) easily.
So if the game would ever be complete and the requests for better graphics are there - it could be thrown out to use something with more features.

Right now im working withs some friends on a 4x 2D game written in purebasic.
Its a turn based strategy game inspired mainly by master of magic and kales CivIV mod Fall from heaven.
Its just because we are sick of waiting that some company will ever bring out a master of magic II.
And to be honest - i would love to see the game having state of the art 3D models , shaders , terrain and all of this.
But to be realistic i have to say i would be more than happy if we manage to get our wishlist working

Interesting...

http://www.panda3d.org/

Panda3D is Python and C++ only, it's also object oriented what makes it hard to use it from PureBasic. It's a nice engine though.