Horde3D

I really think a BVH would be a good first step (and simple too). A quadtree would work, but I dislike the worst case (stand at corner of the world and look at other corner).

Ya, that would be an issue, if you could see the other corner

Remember, you can only look down at the map at an angle. Warcraft III had a similar viewpoint. Only a few dozen map chunks are ever rendered at a time.

The game-engine is intended for turn based strategy, RPG, style games. The game I am building with it is a Roguelike in the style of NetHack.

Another small update... (I should start a devblog)

As I work on my engine and learn more about Horde3D in the process, I can see why some developers (*cough* gamedev *cough* Ogre forums *cough*) are turned off by it. It is relatively spartan in it's API, to the point where it doesn't define any complex types or classes for you. I found this out when I had to add my 'Math3D.h' file into the project to do my own matrix calculations and vector offsets. At first I was a bit annoyed, but then I realized the beauty of it. Unlike Ogre3D which has "kitchen sink" philosophy and a truly gigantic API with little internal consistency, Horde3D gives you the bare minimum of what you need to achieve the graphical effects you want. As a result, instead of having to learn hundreds of API calls spread out through various libraries, you only need to know about a dozen or so.

This reminds me of very nicely designed plain C libraries I find myself often using and wondering why people deride the old-skool designs of yor so much in favor of OOP spaghetti-code.

Couple this small API with the incredibly versatile pipeline mechanism, you really have an excellent engine. Kudos! I am really impressed working with this thing and I am upset with myself for not jumping aboard with this project ages ago

We got a long weekend coming up here in the USA, I plan to chill out and program in the fabulous world of Horde3D.

Ok, it worked!

650+fps

Now I need to create a light shader to get rid of that sickly red glow:



Is this red glow the Horde3D default? Shouldn't it just be black?

You mean the ambient color? Yeah, that's just a texture you can easily remove.

Sounds like a good idea

Thanks for your feedback. It is interesting to read how you get along with porting your project.

Regarding the API, one can't deny that it is a bit spartan but I always found that the most useful libraries are the ones that are rather small, have a clear and limited scope/intention and don't try to force you too much into their world view. I like object oriented programming but I like to build up the architecture myself and not to be forced to take over other people's design. Having to use the resource manager of the graphics module for my whole game engine would be way too intrusive for my taste. I know other people see that different and they also have a valid standpoint. In the end, what is the best choice depends on your project requirements and your technical skills/experience. If you have never written any math functions you will probably be happy if you just get them served. On the other hand, if you are an experienced programmer you probably have a very precise image of how you want your math lib to look like. I think it is good that there are different options out there so that people can chose what they think fits best for them.

BTW, Horde has a small and nice math library that can also be used from outside (int the game engine) as a good start. You can also have a look at Horde's resource manager if you need to implement one, so you are certainly not left alone with these things.