Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[leuat]

Development of the Polly 3D engine with anim8or support has been resumed. Information, screenshots, comments and free women can be obtained at http://www.irio.co.uk/polly

[Francesco]

Well that's really a good new Leuat, have fun coding Polly - but tell me, isn't there any chance to see the 0.095 version when it will be ready? You might take advantage from letting us testing it.

The screenshots are awesome, I'm really looking forward for the first release.

[leuat]

Well, there's the rub!

The problem with Polly right now (that is, developing 0.095), is that it is really incomplete and user-unfriendly. I haven't tested anything yet on other computers, there are weird bugs, still hard-coded stuff and lots of hard-to-do-things that needs to be moved from scripts & code to a better-behaved GUI. Even more, lots of important features are not yet implemented.

The only "real" difference between 0.095 and 0.1 is going to be *user friendliness*, and I will have to spend a month or two working on this. And when 0.1 is released, you guys will all download the new version, find it buggy, crashing and full of faults. This will be the crucial part - the part when I listen, tear out my hair and spend the entire spring trying to fix bugs. But eventually, we will agree, and a stable version 0.11 will be completed.

And then the fun begins: Do *not* expect version 0.1 (or version 0.11) to be "fully" usable. But when a stable, working release based on user feedback has been established, we can start working on the fun parts: implementing new and awesome features.

[Francesco]

Thank you very much Leuat, you made it very clear so that we all know exactly where you are - but as the most important thing, seems like _you_ know exactly where you are (and this isn't a small thing at all, speaking about making a system such as an editor or an engine).

Sharpening my tester's blades for the incoming occasion I wish you all the best coding time (seriously here).

[3D Joe Wiltshire]

User Friendliness = Awesome

Can't wait to try it out, and with all the people waiting for a go on polly, you'll find  any bugs in no time!

Can't wait.

[Steve]

Nice work, leuat.

[texel]

screenshots are impressive.

[xalener]

How's the indoor stuff? Or have you tried it?

[leuat]

Ah. Indoor. That's a good question! I really haven't thought about that. Right now, I've implemented various collision detection stuff for objects. Like, trees are cylinders, static buildings are boxes. I also implemented a "full" collision detection system, where I've tested a 500-poly church (the one in the images), so you can run inside, collide with walls and ceiling and such. However, "large" indoor buildings will *not yet* be implemented, that is, portal-based BSP levels and so on. At least not for the upcoming version.

Alas, in the beginning I'll only be focusing on outdoor scenarios, scattered with small houses, caves and such inserted by the user, without any space partitioning of these. And then we'll see what happens =)

Right now I'm working on user-friendliness. I am not a particularly user-friendly guy right now, because I have to create listboxes and buttons and labels and blah need find good ways of presenting the stuff. And at the same time fix bugs, bugs, soon implement a dropdown-list-fontex-object, fix more bugs, all while I should be producing cosmological PhD-work =)

Last week I even brought Polly to bed, which upset my girlfriend more than usual.

[xalener]

Well, don't let her stop you .

Believe it or not, there are hundreds of people out there counting on your success. *pressurepressure*



Lol.

Another question: Can we see a vid of this engine in action? I'm sure we'll all be interested to see it. ...................................*pressure*................................................


*sigh* Sorry for all the questions, but there's just one more.

What about game exporting? I've seen a lot of engines that require the game player to downlead the engine themselves. Will there be a way for the games to be exported as exe files or something?

[3D Joe Wiltshire]

*Drools*

I want it now!
Seriously, looks AMAZING! just the game engine i've wanted since I started getting interested in game design... and best of all... Written in Lua... I WUV YOU!!!

It's like the day before christmas... I can't wait... but I know I must...

[leuat]

xalener: I added a small vid, but I don't have a clue about video editing. So the vid includes bugs and other crappy things. It can be found on the front polly page.

Well, I need to cool you guys down. The engine is still *far far* from complete. Even though the fun parts (graphics) is implemented, you still cannot really *do* anything with polly. Add some objects, script a static spider to run around and scream "hell yeah!", but that's it. In order to be able to create a proper *game*, there are lots of things that need to be added, like an item editor, AI-system, conversation editor and XP system. And before that gets done, I need to sit down and find motivation to implement animations, reimplement sound (ALut doesnt work for mac), finish the object editor, think about shadows and *puh* wrap it all up together.

The good thing is: xmas holiday is soon starting. which means way more time for coding!

[floyd86]

Even if it isn't far from done, it still looks great. The user friendlyness of the engine looks really cool.

[xalener]

I've got another completely obscure, way off question. Will there be a way to incorperate gore/ destruction in a game? I've got a low poly giger alien model made to be destroyed. would I be able to shoot its limbs off in a more final version? I guess this is more of a feature suggestion that a question, but yeah...

Don't worry about it now. I'm sure there's a lot to work on as it is.

[leuat]

Well. There is alot of work to do, and what you are describing will be included in future versions. The first version will support keyframed objects only, which means non-interacting cinematic objects. But at least they will be moving! When all is well, and bugs are fixed, then *boned* objects will be supported. With bone-meshes, it will be possible to add real physics to limbs to support gore and other effects. But remember that coding all this stuff takes way much time - i've now spent 5 days trying to get the terrain shadows work, and there is still a major bug...