[Nel] Greetings! And some questions / comments

[Vianney Lecroart]

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 (/docs/doxygen/nel/general.html)
that we plan to develop.

> 5)  What are the capabilities of the current codebase?

hum... good question :-) today, the code is not able to do lot of things but
it'll change in few weeks. the misc component contains lot of really cool
tools like serializable system, input events system, internationalization,
math classes, etc...
there's only the skeleton of the 3d engine but, low level layers start to
work
and it'll display polygons in few days :) the low interface font manager is
ready
to display text and we work hardly on tools for the graphics team (but
theses
tools are still private cause of 3ds max sdk).
for the network components, all communication layers are available.
the service based class is ready too and will be extented in the futur.
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 :)

> 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.

> 8)  Would it be possible to get a brief description of what Nevrax will
use
> in the following areas:

is the whitepaper not enough? ok , we ll add some stuffs on it :)

>                 - Protocol (UDP? TCP/IP?)

for now, we only manage TCP/IP and plan to use UDP only the visual effect
like
smooth dead reckoning (the standard dead reckoning will be in TCP/IP for
some
cheating reasons)

>                 - Mapfile format (Custom? XML? Binary? Database-Driven?)

we use a generic streamable and serializable system so we don't have any
file format :-)
it's a really powerful system!!! and so easy to manage!

>                 - Mapfile editors (What existing tools will be used, if
> any?)

we use 3ds max only, and we create plugins for our needs.

>                 - Model format(s)

same as mapfile :)

>                 - Texture format(s)

we use .dds format for pre-compressed texture format (DXTC*) and
pre-computed mimap.
we also use .tga for normal texture/image :-)

> 9)  How the heck do you guys manage to pay a full development team off of
> free software? :-)

we are paid, i can confirm :-)

>     Thats about all I have for now.  I'm sure more will come up in the
> future.  You might want to put a few of those in the FAQ, I've noticed its
> in need of some fulfilling... and other people may have similair
questions.

yes, we'll add these questions in the FAQ!

>     Anyhow, thanks in advance, and Congratulations and Good Luck in your
> efforts.  Its a challenging and rewarding goal that we are working
towards.
> I look forward to exchanging thoughts and ideas in the near future!

thanks

Vianney Lecroart
---
lead programmer / nevrax.com
icq#: 6870415
homepage: http://ace.planet-d.net
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