[Nel] Greetings! And some questions / comments

[Sal]

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 (/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