[Nel] Greetings! And some questions / comments

Mon, 13 Nov 2000 16:40:01 -0500

Hello Vianney,  I'm glad to have made acquaintance with the lead programmer
+of this amazing effort!
+
+> Hello sal!
+>
+> > 3)  What features/goals are there for the 3d engine?  What's being
+> targeted
+> > (high end/low end hardware)?  What rendering APIs?  Software mode?
+>
+> you can take a look on the nel whitepaper, it explains (briefly) all
+> features
+> of the 3d engine (http://www.nevrax.org/docs/doxygen/nel/general.html)
+> that we plan to develop.
+
+    Thanks for your time in answering my questions.  I took the time the
+other day to read all the documentation, and look at the source code.  I
+must say, it is well structured, easy to understand, and well commented.
+And its good to see that the code is being documented well at such an early
+stage. Good work, and I hope it keeps it up like this!
+
+> few services run too, so you can compile our first service executables :)
+> we'll work on a "client" exectuable to explains how to use nel and
+> perhaps, display someting :)
+
+    A client executable would be nice, I'm interested in playing with all
+this neat stuff!  This would logically be needed for testing and developing
+new features, also.
+
+    Btw, I noticed that the OpenGL renderer is well abstracted, and it seems
+to me that a Direct3D renderer would not be very hard to create.
+Coincidentally I'm working on a new DirectX 8/d3d renderer for xclient. If
+theres interest I could help create a Direct3D implementation of your
+rendering interface in the future. Or is one already in progress?   ( I have
+nothing against OpenGL, its just that I have experience in d3d that might be
+of help, and Direct3D performs well on my system. )
+
+> [...] and we work hardly on tools for the graphics team (but
+> theses
+> tools are still private cause of 3ds max sdk).
+
+    This raises a question I've been pondering myself.  I've also recently
+created MAX plugins for xclient, for exporting skeletal animated characters
+from character studio.  Do you (or anyone) know offhand if the sources to
+these are distributable? Or does the sdk licensing prohibit it?  I wasn't
+able to resolve this from the documention included.  I know that the sdk
+itself isn't distributable, but I had hoped that derivative works were
+o.k...
+
+> > 6)  Is development open to outside influence? Or are you following an
+> > internal-only plan, and just opensourcing the results?
+>
+> We Want You! :-) of course we hope to work with the free software
+community.
+
+    Thats great to hear.  I (and I'm sure many others) would like to see
+this operation become a success, and would like to help it do so.  As is
+evident with the existance of projects like Worldforge, one can see that a
+GPLish mmorpg system is very desired by many people.  I also think it would
+be cool if Nevrax showed the world that Free Software works, even in the
+commercial market... and maybe help encourage other companies to do the same
+in the future.
+
+Thanks again for the info!
+- Sal
+
+
+