Re: Regarding Crystal Space and PengiunPlay

[Adrian Ratnapala <s369625@student.uq.edu.au>]

Jorrit Tyberghein wrote:
> 
> Hi everyone,
> 
> I'm new to this list. I was invited here by Christian Reiniger in order to investigate
> the possibility of merging Crystal Space with PengiunPlay (or at least making
> a port of Crystal Space to PengiunPlay).
Hmm, I don't think a merger would be a good idea.  That would halt
development of CrystalSpace
in its tracks, I'm sure.
 
> 
> I've always been a little sceptical about a possible merge because I'm not sure
> that the goals of both projects are similar and compatible.
Maybe, maybe not.  I haven't looked into CrystalSpace in great detail
yet. 
Basically what we are looking for is a C++ 3d graphics API which fits
into
the rest of PenguinPlay.  Personally I beleive we need to be much
clearer
about what we need out of such an API etc.  than we are before we can
decide
whether to write our own API or use an existing one, and if we use an
existing 
one which.


> As far as I understand it PengiunPlay tries to be a 'working environment to create
> and port game and multimedia applications to the Linux OS' (quote from the
> WEB page). So two important features are: general game SDK and Linux.
The web page needs fixing.  There is nothing I know of in PenguinPlay
which is dependent on Linux  (although the sound SDK would be using OSS
sound,
I assume, I haven't seen anything).  Basically PenguinPlay is (or nearly
is)
targeted at general Unix, with Windows a far off pipe dream.
 
> However, I see a possibility in writing a port for Crystal Space which
> directly supports PengiunPlay (just as there are ports for OS/2, Windows, ...).
> So PengiunPlay could just be seen as another platform to support.
> Crystal Space already has a port to GGI and I understand PengiunPlay
> uses this as well?
PRO:  The idea saves us a lot of work.  There should be no reason why
you
cannot do this.  I suppose you would just use the 2d API when it
matures.
Also if you are planning to support OpenGL at all, we will be having
hooks for
that.

CON:  One problem with using CrystalSpace, (or any other theird party
API) is
that it impares the consitency of the PenguinPlay interface. 

Personally I would take a wait-and-see approach.  PenguinPlay is _very_
immature
at the moment.

> In such a port I also see the possibility for more advance features as allowing
> PengiunPlay textures or bitmaps (or whatever they are called) to be used
> as Crystal Space textures for polygons. That way one could use the standard
> PengiunPlay interface for manipulating Crystal Space textures.
Certainly.  The 2d API has already been designed to provide for exactly
this sort
of thing.  All one would have to do is derive some new classes.