Xith3d still alive? & Future plans

[Norrin]

I havent checked in here in a while. However.... Is the Xith3d project still alive and kicking. (cus I think it can be great and a brilliant contribution to the java3d programming world)

If so, what are the future plans for xith3d?

Just curious.

[blahblahblahh]

Assuming we don't burn-out first (trying to make the sun 7th june deadline!), I'm working on a fast-paced arcade-style shooter using Xith (along with KevGlass and others) which we hope to have an alpha of in a few weeks...

[aNt]

sounds cool. if u need good audio the fmod is now fully working with 3d action. i can post up some sample code if u want it

the audio playback is a million times better then OpenAL and JavaSound.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Matzon]

the audio playback is a million times better then OpenAL and JavaSound.

Not to hijack the thread, but how on earth do you come to that conclusion?? - FMOD might be easier to use, but the actual audio playback is just pcm data through a sound card - should be no difference whatsoever!

[aNt]

i think they have spec's on there site . and hassle free will always get my vote!

[William Denniss]

Matzon: Should be no difference - but I've certainly used some Linux Winamp clones which produced a much worse sound than others.

aNt:  One issue which would prevent me from checking out your library is that you havn't really defined if it's commercial or free.  You say it's free for non-commercial use but for commercial use "your permission" is needed.  This in my mind is a risk (what if you said no?).  I would suggest listing a price or making a more clear statement.  Also you need to clarify the distribution terms, and say that you're happy for people to distribute it with their applications but not stand alone (if that's what you wish - that's what I assumed from reading your text).

Norrin: It's still alive and kicking - hasn't been a whole lot of new features recently.  Personally I am spending more time on Odejava than Xith3D, but am using both in my game.  Odejava is simply newer and needs more work to be usable

Will.

[Daath]

alive that's good i guess that means we can use it but is it still being developed?... that was original question...Dave was main horse behind it and now when he left even his own creation (magiscosm) question is - is there anybody still thinking about added new features - or is it going to stay as is it from now on .....

[aNt]

im asking Jerome, Will see if i can get him to give out some of that free loving.

[SpuTTer]

Auh, I hadn't heard the news that David Yazel had quit the Magiocosm project... I assume thats what sparked this post? That appears to be bad news for Xith.

[blahblahblahh]

If he's left MC, how come no-one told MC about it? .

(look at the website, he's still all over the place, and no announcements to the contrary )

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[SpuTTer]

Yeah I know, it's really weird. I heard someone say something about it and I went and looked again because I was thinking the same thing as you. The only place I could find the info was in this post from 4-30-04

http://www.sword-and-sorcery.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000180.html

[Daath]

blahblah why dont you just go on and read forum  there...you know that link on main page ..if you need help how to click it let me know
http://www.sword-and-sorcery.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000180.html

[blahblahblahh]

blahblah why dont you just go on and read forum  there...you know that link on main page ..if you need help how to click it let me know
http://www.sword-and-sorcery.com/ubb/Forum11/HTML/000180.html

Well...they have this special page called "News" which has things on called "announcements" and which happens to be the front page of the site. It is traditional to post your own news to your own news page .

But hey, you know what, I did go to the forums. And there's no announcements section. So I had to randomly browse - and I found nothing. So I tried the search, using David's username (Dvlish or whatever). Turned up nothing. I also tried Yazel, and that didn't seem to turn up anything either - and in fact I just checked again and it STILL doesn't turn up.

So. I did look pretty hard. But you see their site is pretty rubbish w.r.t. announcements...

[blahblahblahh]

(reading the announcment) This is really sad. Magicosm seemed to be doing so well 12 months ago (and even 18 months ago). I several times looked at them and wished we'd been able to offer them a grexengine license before they started (nb: we didn't have a production release until way too late for them). I'd made the assumption they'd have no trouble getting content people, given how you can't go anywhere without tripping over them and places like worldforge have artists-to-spare. More or less.

Now it looks like instead of the "decent part-working game" release I thought was imminent, they've got to go back to basic design still and then pick themselves up to try and get to a first beta all over again. .

...How's Wurm doing? Hope better than this (although I've not noticed much from the Wurm guys here for a long while...)

[SpuTTer]

yeah, the site is pretty bad. I almost didnt find it.

Wurm seems to be doing well, I wish them luck. You're right tho, I haven't noticed Markus around these parts recently. Hope all is well with them.

[Yuri Vl. Gushchin]

Hi,

Coming back to original question...

alive that's good i guess that means we can use it but is it still being developed?... that was original question...Dave was main horse behind it and now when he left even his own creation (magiscosm) question is - is there anybody still thinking about added new features - or is it going to stay as is it from now on .....

Yes, Xith3D is still being developed. Last few months I made many contributions (primarily bug/compatibility fixes) to Xith3D and I plan to do this in future.

There are some things I see as main goals for nearest future:

1. Reduce amount of garbage produced by rendering engine.
2. Add support for LWJGL-based renderer.
3. Add support for more extensions exposed by latest hardware (point sprites, texture rectangle, occlusion testing, OpenGL 1.5 features, etc.).
4. Stereo rendering (there are already some successful tests with Red-Blue stereoglyphs, but I am thinking about other stereo rendering techniques).
5. Additional culling mechanisms.

In parallel, I am thinking about exposing to the developers internal multipass rendering mechanism in order to support render-to-texture and other specific multipass rendering techniques.

This is a short list, and of course there are a lot of smaller topics.

Yuri

[aNt]

rocking as always. i will see if i can help with some less complex stuff

[Daath]

Really glad to see Yuri's post. Xith is great and would be really bad to let it just go away. Stereo rendering sounds really sweet cannot wait for that!