Crystal Space

[Blake]

I think that Crystal Space SDK is also a good candidate for building the graphics engine. It can do a lot and thanks to the plugin structure looks quite flexible.

http://crystal.sourceforge.net/

[DJ]

I've read about that and yes, it's awesome! A lot better then Genesis3D and Fly3D I must say!

[Kurilka]

I've tried it and got not very good impression from code stability (it was a snapshot, so maybe that was a problem...)

[Kurilka]

So if you want this kind of engine, you can try OGRE also:

http://ogre.sourceforge.net/

[targon]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but CS is in fact BSP-driven engine, in great tradition of Doom, Descent, Quakes and any other first person shooter on this planet. This thing consists of two main (and generaly orthogonal) parts: 1) BSP walls/ceiling/floor renderer (BSP is _very_ good for rendering indoor scenes) and mesh renderer for any non-statical object (because BSP and light map generation may consume several _hours_ even on fast machine). While mesh renderer is Right Thing for us, indoor-oriented BSP engine was't designed for rendering landscapes, for example, or any other than convex level from inside. If you ever use "noclip" in any shooter you should know how messy is the screen while outside BSP tree (as BSP engine is really desperate if it can't find player position in the tree). So most of CS jumbo is simply not ours. Again, correct me if I miss something.
And, Kurilka, you're right. This thing crashes like mad.

[Blake]

Well Crystal Space does way more than just graphics, like I see it has it's own Virtual File System which would be ultra useful.
This is a no particular order feature list, from the user manual

# 2D and 3D vectors

# quaternions

# 2D and 3D polygons

# splines

# 2D and 3D matrices (and transforms)

# Shared Class Facility SCF. See section 6.4 Shared Class Facility (SCF).

# plug-in system

# archival (ZIP files)

# configuration files

# command-line parsing

# events (queues, cords, outlets)

# user input

# MD5 signatures

# random number generator

# virtual clock and scheduler

# strings

# storage vectors (not geometry vectors)

# data streams

# hash maps

# progress meters and pulses (in text)

# screen FX (fading, whiteout, etc)

# procedural textures

# 2D animations

# sprite building

# two different windowing systems

# 2D canvases (OpenGL, DirectDraw, X11, CoreGraphics, Cocoa, null, memory, line)

# 3D renderers (OpenGL, software, null, line)

# AVI streams (RLE, DivX 4, OpenDivX)

# image loaders (BMP, GIF, JPG, PNG, SGI, TGA, WAL)

# portals and sectors

# lighting (static, pseudo-dynamic, dynamic, halos, shadows, radiosity)

# bezier curves

# visibility culling

# multiple cameras

# textures and materials

# isometric engine

# a virtual file system

# sound drivers (CoreAudio, OSS, and WaveOut)

# sound renderers (software, DirectSound 3D, EAX, aRts)

# sound loaders (WAV, AU, IFF, AIFF, MOD, MP3, OGG)

# thing and mesh objects

# 2D and 3D sprites

# terrains

# metaballs

# particle systems (fire, explosions, rain, snow, spirals, fountain)

# haze meshes

# mesh builders and sprite factories

# volumetric light

# pull-down console

# network sockets

# collision detection (using RAPID or OPCODE)

# bitmapped and vector fonts

# map file loader and converters

# scripting engine

# performance statistics

# skeletal animation

# object movement

# Dynavis visibility culling system

# debugging system

Cool

And from reading the user manual, the documentation is impressive. It even includes a full guide on compiling the library under the MingW compiler system for Windows. Handy for those who are using windows and only free development tools.

The only real problem is it is rather large, at around 16meg, but that shouldn't be a problem seeing how much it does.

Anyway I'll download the latest snapshot (over my crappy modem connection :P ) and give it a whirl.

[targon]

Blake, it may be good, it may be cool, but it's simply form other world, First Person Shooters it's name. Can't you see major difference between rendering BSP of wall-enclosed volume and terrain/space scenes? Read CS docs more carefuly, skip advertizing and hype, move to plugins/3D renderer. Yep! Umm... "Basically sectors define a region of space that can contain several geometrical objects... ...Theoretically a sector is infinite although in practice it is usually logically bounded by sector walls or a sky object."
OK, another one: "...the idea is that sectors are normally totally independent regions of space unless you connect them through portals. Portals are implemented inside the Thing Mesh Object. There you can assign a portal to some sector to a single polygon."
This thing is called Portal BSP engine. That means it represent the world as 3D Binary Space Partition tree dividing map into simple convex slices occationaly interconnected via portals. It may appears to be fun while inside, but you can't in general render arbitary big spaces (any Quake/Unreal/add your favorite map is in fact closed and not especialy large. Map designers avoid big open places as most renderers hate it.) So CS is simply not applicable for terrain/space scene rendering.
Concerning rich auxilarity feature set, CS is open source, is't it? So feel free to "steal" as much of features as you can handle.

[Blake]

I think (hope?) you are wrong. Yes, one major component is the whole portal thing (heck, CS started as a portal engine), but CS is much larger than that.

Looking at the screenshots, I see nothing to indicate that CS cant handle "wide open" worlds. In fact I see much evidence to the contary.

And wherever did you get the idea we would be rendering all of space in it's infinite glory ? Usually the "scenes" will be finite and bounded by skyboxes (or the edge of the world)

Obviously some stuff is useless, the ability to work with Quake maps, for example. And even if only used for stealing stuff, CS would still be useful.

[targon]

Yes, you're right, but it will limit us somehow (no realistic space scenes BTW). OK, it's your duty, it's your feat. Just make sure CS can reload scene really quick (as we surely need some quick translations between game locations). Most BSP engines need a hell of time to load/reload stuff. IG2 may be viewed as a horror story of "braked" orbit/space changes. It is't BSP either, but there are in fact to distinct engines for surface and space views...

[targon]

I've taken a review of CS screenshots. Space ones are neat. I even know what editor was used for drawing of lens flare parts. I still hope you'll think twise before actualy linking fate of StP with some 3D toolkit.

[targon]

Originally posted by Blake
The only real problem is it is rather large, at around 16meg, but that shouldn't be a problem seeing how much it does.

Blake, trash you ancient archivers, use bzip2 instead. bizp'ed CS weights around 13mb

[carbaher]

Mmmh, I've read this post and I can only say one thing... PLEASE NO!!! Do not chose Crystal Space 3D engine. I know it has a lot of features, and it can looks very attractive, but I've worked with it a lot in recient projects, and my experience says me, that it is still a "hell" of bugs, and incorrect function. I know that Jorrit Tyberghein, who is the guy at the front of the project, is a full-skilled developer at 3d engines, and I think that with time, he will release an excellent version of Crystal Space, but my personal experience with this engine was very bad for now (versions 0.94 0.95 and 0.96). Simply I cannot test Crystal Space code, because most of the times, the engine crashes.

You just have to download the source, compile it in debug mode, and try to run the demo "walktest" which is the most complete demo of the engine. I think most of you wouldn't even see the first frame because the engine crash before.

So this is my opinion about Crystal Space, I vote no using it!

[Blake]

Okay. Well I couldn't get CS to compile, so I'll cede that CS is unusable - for now anyway.

[targon]

I do forced CS to compile on my mashine and bring up some testing applications. Blake, you're lucky one if you did't watch it. How this guys managed to obtain some nice screenshots with _that_? Yep, I can draw lots of StP screenshots even now...