On Mar 14, 2005, at 9:21 PM, Nick Lockwood wrote:
Right now, what's stopping REALbasic becoming the dominant games
development tool has more to do with limitations in its Quesa
implementation than it does with its compiler optimisation.
Oh, yeah! :-) We really need to have access to more Quesa functions as
well. I've heard the theory why Quesa is a good thing for years now. I
understand that without it, RB would probably never have any 3D engine.
It's extremely doubtful that one would have been written from scratch,
given what I know about the early days of RB3D. That said, RS has
rested on its laurels too long as far as RB3D goes. And while wrappers
and declares add to the functionality, that is no excuse for not add
SOME direct functionality to the API every release.
I believe its a chicken and egg thing: RS wants to see a killer app
before it puts time into continued serious development of the API and
the API's limitations are a big (but not the only) factor in why there
are not killer games out there.
I know that I (as someone who has been pushing the use of the RB API
for years) am considering moving A-OK!'s graphics to OpenGL, even
though, I don't like limiting myself to OpenGL on the Window platform,
when Direct3D is there and very good.
The mantra has been: We could theoretically switch renderers. Well, if
we haven't made a significant addition to the API since the light
class; had to endure Quesa issues for months on end; there's very
little chance that RS will ever take ownership of Quesa and add
multi-rendering.
<vent>
I've been silent on this for a couple of years, but recent events in my
business demand, and I mean demand, a much better situation with RB3D.
Joe, what do we do here? I plan on bending Geoff's ear on this at MW
and beyond, because it's now a question that possible venture angels
are asking (talk about detailed due diligence!): why use REALbasic and
why use this Quesa thing if no one else is using it?
It's a problem because they view Quesa as an extremely obscure 3rd
party open source library that no one outside of RB knows anything
about. Would you pump $2-300k into a company using such an obscure
building block?
If I could point to a steady improvement of the API, it might help, but
that has not happened.
If you guys think debating Quesa issues is a pain on this list, try
explaining it to a roomful of Chinese programmers and 3D modelers who
know are using your visit as a chance to practice their English: a real
interesting experience. They are fully on board (after a good attempt
to sell me on using Direct3D via declares - not possible since I have a
strong Mac edu market), but that was the only meeting I walked out of
without a high level of confidence that I was leading them in the right
direction.
Not happy.
</vent>
--
Joseph Nastasi
Pyramid Design - a software development firm
http://www.pyramiddesign.us
Voice 609 601-0814 Fax 609 601-0815
Products:
A-OK! Spacecraft Simulation System - http://aok.pyramiddesign.us
A-OK! The Wings of Mercury
FTP Suite for REALbasic - http://ftpsuite.pyramiddesign.us
Proud Sponsors of REALbasic Olympics 2005
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
|