Horde3D

Hi all,

I make the following proposition: I would like to create a Horde Showcase. But before I submit myself to such a long term aim, I would like test the community's acceptance.

The reason for such a show case has several reasons:

• I took really long to understand some H3D features. Others may find this a useful ressource
• I create a Game with Horde3D for a University course so there is already a codebase
• Horde3D needs definitely some Public Relations

I had contact to a lot of previously unknown technology like Horde3D and Blender since I had to learn it in a very short time period. So I want to share my knowledge with other people, perhaps in the same situation. My visio for thiw tutorial is to start with a Chicago-like world and extend it in descrete steps until a full-featured game has been developed.

The game I create is a pretty straight forward ego shooter featuring in C++:

• GLFW windowing
• Bullet Physics for walking, collision, and shooting (but we may leave that part out for a while)
• Multiple Weapons
• Animation for enemies and weapons
• A meshed world with some particle emitters and lights
• (Hopefully water reflections if I manage that at time)

The codebase is capsuled in several classes and may be licensed under a free license for general usage.

Nevertheless there are some drawbacks, namely:

• I am by no means a good C++ programmer. There is still a lot of work like too much redundancy etc
• Most of the models must be re-created or replaced for copyright clearance
• Community support is needed to raise a Public Relation-worthy showcase

So, ladies and gentlemen. What do you think? I am eager to hear your constructive criticism.
cheers

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

I think this would be a very valuable contribution to the community. I could imagine that as soon as someone starts such a project, other people might jump on the train as well.

Hi marciano,

I appreciate your comment. That is precisely my intention, bringing more people to Horde3D. I believe that a broad user community may bring some dynamics into the development of H3D. While I am aware that the base software stack is almost complete, I feel there is potential for contributions or to make H3D even easier -- though the general usage is already a cake walk

cheers

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

Ok guys (and ladies of course as well)!

I have finished my university assignment using horde3d. As previously announced I am going to release that code as a multi-lesson tutorial. For now I just unwind a bit and prepare myself for my oral diploma thesis exam. But to give an impression of what you may expect I have prepared a youtube video.

Check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/user/philipppixel?feature=mhw5. For those whose companies or countries generously block youtube (for political reasons or just because you have to work and not to surf at work) I am going to put a copy of the video on my homepage; this because I don't know if there are any file size limits for attachments in this forum.

cheers and have fun

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

Looks promising, although I guess there might be some need for an artist to create some assets for your scene
But for a tutorial I guess this is something that can be very helpful for a lot of people when starting with Horde3D.

Looking forward to see the code.

yes, I agree that some sort of "directed information" may help a bit further in the overwhelming 3D world of a newbie . But don't be disappointed of my code for I am no C++ pro. In terms of assets, I have to replace some assets. But since I am a "graphics man" I feel it won't take long to push it to the envelope, although I usually draw comics.

Anyways, as promised, here is the link for downloading the video from my homepage: http://www.schaacomics.de/thegame_.avi

have fun

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

Hi philippixel, it looks great and is all that a newbie needs to start coding. Thanks a lot for sharing and hosting the video

Best regards, Siavash.

I am just thinking about the way how to share my code. What would be the preferred way?

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

I can think of several ways, two common ways are to place the project into a gzipped tarball and place that on sourceforge or other publicly available place, or to place the project in a publicly available svn repo.

For tutorial code, it's common to place the code along with some explanations on one or several wiki pages or an article, so users are guided through the code (in good old howto/tutorial spirit). The complete source code is often provided at the end as a downloadable archive.

Since horde3d has a wiki, I suggest you make a tutorial page and place the code on there. How much text you want to have in between the code segments is of course entirely up to you, the beauty of a wiki is that you or anyone else can improve on the article after it's published.

So... Finally I have some time to take care of "The Game", my 3D shooter game prototype. As proposed, I attach my source code as zip file to this thread. I also have set-up a blog http://philipppixel.de/blog/ where I am bound to give the lessons how I created the shooter.

For now there is also a free SVN account. The SVN provider may be subject of change as the need for more flexibility and project control grows. You can find the svn credentials in my blog as well: http://philipppixel.de/blog/?p=16. For those of you who like to take a quick glance I provide the API here: http://www.philipppixel.de/thegame/TheGameDoc/html/

That's it for now. I hope this is going to be a help for the community.
Cheers

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

Please - replace that with a "real" license. GPL if you want to hinder commercial reuse of your code. But don't just generally forbid reuse for "non-educational" reuse, and define some clear rules about what is allowed with the code.

I'd really prefer anything liberal like MIT though, with sth like CC-BY-SA-NC for anything besides the code. ^^

Hint: If you want people to learn from your code, it might help if others than yourself improved and documented it. Impossible without a visible and legally correct license usually.

Thanks for the remark, but actually I fail to see why I should not forbid general commercial usage. I'd like to hear some arguments Anyways, CC would be fine, the legal notice is meant for a short term period because I don't have too much time right now.

In terms of your suggestion of improvement and documentation: I'm totally in favor for that one! But by now nobody sent significant signals to help...

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philipppixel
8=:(=)D { Save the Giraffes )

Mostly because if I look at your tutorial, and then go on to write my own commercial application, you could claim in court that because I saw your code, my code is a derivative work. This has in the past been argued using the GPL, but I am not aware whether or not the lawsuit was successful.

Regardless, a lot of us are a bit reluctant to contribute to something that doesn't have a clear and OSI-approved license

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Tristam MacDonald - [swiftcoding]

Yeah bring some tutorials, ill be very pleased to see some for newcomers.