Topic: A bit confused about iB3D

Hi eveyone.
I've been searching around for a good 3D engine for BlitzMax that was simply to use for a while now and iB3D seems perfect for me.
But... i simply can't understand the philosophy of the engine itself.
Is iB3D a complete port of all the Irrlicht.Core commands to they're Blitz3D equivalent (adding the functions missing), or it is simply a Blitz3D-inspired engine for BlitxMax (so no shaders, no soft shadows etc) like miniB3D?

Thanks.

Re: A bit confused about iB3D

greetings smile  iB3D has had an interesting history.  my original goal was to be 1 to 1 match with B3D but add new functions specific to Irrlicht that are not available in B3D (ie shaders).  in practice though, i found there are many differences between the two that would make being able to simply swap rendering engines not feasable.  once i realized that, my focus became giving folks a familar function set to work with.  for example, if you are familiar with B3D and know that you would use EntityFX for a task, you can find EntityFX in iB3D but the parameters are going to be different.  underneath, iB3D is Irrlicht so you have access to all the goodies Irrlicht provides via references to the video, scenemanager, guimanager, etc objects... just not from B3D-esque functions.

iB3D unfortunately lost steam when i decided it was finally time for me to start using the 3D knowledge and make a game with the limited time i have instead.  someday i would like to return to it as i have had several positive comments about it, but i need to find time.  i would love to have someone pick up where i left off and i would be more than willing to provide Irrlicht knowledge assistance to help it along.

any takers? wink

3 (edited by Yanez 2008-11-27 01:50:09)

Re: A bit confused about iB3D

Gman, please continue man! Its very valueable idea to create the engine like B3D+Irrlicht.

cool

Re: A bit confused about iB3D

Gman, where can I download it (even though I know it's not complete)? THANKS!

Re: A bit confused about iB3D

greetings smile  the iB3D mod is now included in the normal download of the mod.  you need to include the module Irrlicht.B3D to gain access to it.

Re: A bit confused about iB3D

Ah alright, found it. Thanks. Did you have any special difficulties convert B3D commands over to Irrlicht?

I plan to build a complete game engine based on Irrlicht, IrrKlang, Bullet Physics and RakNet (or ENet) with the command set of BlitzBasic. As far as I know it would be the first real cross platform engine then with a B3D command set if I succeed. smile