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[leuat]

So. Noticing how some people might be eager to try out the Polly engine whenever it will be released, I decided to start this new thread in order to set up som commuication between the omnipotent coder (yours truly) and  eventual future users.

For those of you who are yet blissfully ignorant, Polly is a home-brewed OpenGL 3D terrain engine written in C++ by a disgrunted PhD student who really should get some proper work done soon. Some screenshots can be found at a preliminary site here : http://www.irio.co.uk/index.php?page=polly

Now, Polly currently uses .an8-files to populate the world with monsters, forests, houses, more monsters and mushrooms. Unfortunately, the author of Polly is *not* an adept 3d modeller, so the game world is currently populated with (free) .3ds-objects from turbosquid and a couple of eggplant forests / badly designed monsters. However, Polly employs various anim8or object propertes such as bump mapping, specular lightning, ambient etc etc, but does not yet support object animation. I have a todo-list from hell, and will hopefully release version 0.10 for public download within this very summer (which will be very very user friendly + support object animation + opengl sound and other usefull stuff)

Until then: if you have questions, wishes, ideas, comments, tips, requests or women to share, please do so in this thread.

[hihosilver]

You said in a previous post that one of the models included a normal map.  Did you mean bump-map or is there actual normal map implementation in this engine (that would be great!).  This seems like a great engine, and I'm looking forward to seeing what people can do with this release.  I'll also dig around and see if I have some models I can contribute to you for testing.

[spicy]

The Polly engine looks ace! I can't wait for it to come out ready for download, I am definatly gonna give it a try

[leuat]

Ëh. Sorry for abusing the notation. Right now, I mean bump mapping. That is, adding a normal texture that will bump the polygons + added specular / diffuse light. But I'm planning on (hopefully) being able to create a normal-map-converter later on. In theory it's not that hard. And that would be thoroughly sexy.

But proper normal mapping is not yet a priority: implementing a solid, simple working 3D engine is.
^L

[robot cr8]

hey do you want some models? i could make some for you tell me what you want:
 about how many polys, animated, transparent, scifi, fantasy, whatever you want

i can't claim to be superdude model maker but tell me if you want/need anything modelwise and i'll get it to you asap

and i'm not just some goofus i mean it i'll make you some stuff...

and thank you for making polly thank you thank you thank you

thank you   

[robot cr8]

yeah i'm no programmer so if i had a wish for polly i would wish for easy to use gui and tutorials (not a forum) explaining simply and specifically how to add content using polly... a really cool engine is great but if i cannot find solid information (tutorials) on how to use it im stumped.... forums are not so good for getting information you have to find your topic or post a new topic then you get just written text responses... now if you look up photoshop tutorials on the internet you can find tons of pictures that show you which menu to go to and what setting to use to get a desired effect ...

also i checked out the polly site and the other programs you made and they are cool fun to play with just got them .... i thought jaffengine was really cool looking like i said i know nothing about programming so i don't know if it's possible but i would love to play a demo game with jaffengine

remember if you want any models, anything at all, just ask   

[leuat]

The stuff with the tutorials is a pretty good point. A software bundle is crap if there isn't any good documentation / tutorials. During the summer, I'll make a dedicated web page crammed with tutorials and how-to's. At least that's the plan =) . Anyways, I'm always interested in models, but right now models are not a priority - making sure the code works & implementing new features are.

[robot cr8]

wow has anybody seen the pics for this game engine??

 please when you release this give us some sample levels like in the pictures they look awesome just to walk around in....

please make this polly thing easy for one person with no programmming experience to use and create games in.... i could put something in a game for you if you want

waitng for october

[Tanzim]

I know you to make this really easy to use, but don't make another Gamemaker, people spend a lot of time on it and get nowhere, all they do is make some little games and done!
Polly seems really good, and it may be used by people that may one day work in the computer games industry, you should tell them what's it's all about instead of giving them an illusion that 'this is how it all works, it's so easy', only for them to find out it's nearly impossible for them because there use to something easier.

But like robot cr8, I would also like to help you.

Code: (Here's a link to my 'resume':) [Select]

http://tanzim101.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!46F64FD997DEC99F!182.entry

[Dosser]

As a programmer, I for one would rather see a good engine than one that is easy to use (eg more customisable). Perhaps you could make the tutorials and editors but release the source too, so that we can fiddle if we want. Obviously write a license to give you credit or what-not, but I think it would be far more useful with source.

But best of luck, I'm trying to write an OpenGL game engine to load Anim8or model files. I haven't even started yet and it already seems extremely complicated

[xalener]

Will transmaps be supported?

Physics engine?

UV coordinates?

What about characters?

Is there any information or updates?

[leuat]

The recent months, I have been unable to work on Polly due to PhD work. However, I'm thinking about competing in http://www.gameawards.no, and I'm therefore continuing working on Polly. However, there will be some changes:

One of the reasons why the development of Polly was paused was due to a laptop crash. Now, with a new laptop, even a Mac, Polly runs even smoother (will still support Windows, naturally). However, I will be focusing on bug fixes, user friendliness, stability, the editors and tutorials and such instead of features, for a while. Hopefully, a beta will be released within march 2008.

Anyway. For the following version (that is, after the user-friendly-beta-version), I will focus on the following features: physics engine, animated (skeleton-based) characters, normal mapping & shaders

information and updates can be found at http://www.irio.co.uk/polly , but still a bit sparse.. the site will be heavily updated when I *really* get to start with the development in mid-december.
 

[Francesco]

March 2008? You'd be a bit late for that deadline ;-) Of course you meant 2009 just like the website states.

Keep on, I'm looking forward for Polly, and good luck for the competition!

[leuat]

ehm yeah. the competition is called "NGA08", so ehm, confused. I'm not too good with numbers you see =)

[Francesco]

Man, you're not good with numbers and you're developing a game engine... sound promising ;-)

Just kidding of course, I'm a coder myself, calculator-dependent... this recalls me of H2G2... it was Ford Prefect who started counting for intimidating a computer? Well, that's a divagation.

Have fun coding Polly, and good luck again.