I would not want to see the Blitz3D command set. I think it should be a sucessor to BlitzMax like someone said, a `Blitz3D MAX`, with the BlitzMax language as a base.
Features? Well...
Safe threading (I agree everything is going to get more parallel in future and only being able to use half the cpu power of a dual core machine is very limiting). If you told someone with a single-core CPU machine that they are only allowed to use half of their CPU power they'd sure as heck want to know why.
A shading language based on BASIC/Blitz rather than C (I still don't like C syntax) - make shaders easy to write.
Top notch 3d features, the stuff people have talked about - lighting, shadows, level of detail, landscapes, bones, animation, physics, all that - must be OpenGL at least, DX optional.
Treat 2D graphics as a subset of normal 3D engine features, which is what they really are, allowing 3D stuff like rotating in X and Y, move sprites in perspective, some kind of texture polygon thing, wrap sprites onto 3d objects with all the shader gubbins etc.
Highly efficient massive advanced particle system (in 3D but also able to act as though 2D). I want to throw around 10's of thousands of particles at least - with physics/scripting/AI.
Ideally some game editing/production tools (looks like Mark is aiming to generate a solid `game library` at the code level and then branch out into making editors with it later?)
Various shadowing/lighting systems. Would be nice to see it include realtime radiosity in some form, decent soft shadows, various shadowing techniques - projected, stencil, etc, and some efficient special-case techniques for spot effects. Shadows should be either precalculated and/or realtime.
Advanced terrain system - multitexturing, bump mapping/normal maps, paged file data spooled from disk/ram, levels of detail, realtime landscape modification, good collision stuff, vegetation, etc.
Post-processing effects - various fullscreen filters.
Support for multiple texture/buffer formats - make use of buffer objects and rendering to textures, and let us use floating point HDR buffers easily.
Lots of cool animation commands, bones, morphing, tweening, physics-based, cloth simulation, key-framed, etc
I think it should be able to target mid-range machines with no shader support, and then also extra features which become activated if shaders are supported - or at least allow detection of what is supported so the developer can downgrade stuff.
I did like the `Blitz3D Max` name a lot, it's a good idea, and would like to see this new system named that. I think it should be packaged as a single system, including the BlitzMax language, MaxGUI, and the 3D/game engine module(s). As such MaxGUI should be updated to a better system - Mark was working on something faster/better. MaxGUI apps have access to the basic user interface stuff but certainly not the full diversity of what's available, like the use of core abilities on OSX.
Support for various file formats, anim/video formats, texture/model formats, compression etc.
Features? Well...
Safe threading (I agree everything is going to get more parallel in future and only being able to use half the cpu power of a dual core machine is very limiting). If you told someone with a single-core CPU machine that they are only allowed to use half of their CPU power they'd sure as heck want to know why.
A shading language based on BASIC/Blitz rather than C (I still don't like C syntax) - make shaders easy to write.
Top notch 3d features, the stuff people have talked about - lighting, shadows, level of detail, landscapes, bones, animation, physics, all that - must be OpenGL at least, DX optional.
Treat 2D graphics as a subset of normal 3D engine features, which is what they really are, allowing 3D stuff like rotating in X and Y, move sprites in perspective, some kind of texture polygon thing, wrap sprites onto 3d objects with all the shader gubbins etc.
Highly efficient massive advanced particle system (in 3D but also able to act as though 2D). I want to throw around 10's of thousands of particles at least - with physics/scripting/AI.
Ideally some game editing/production tools (looks like Mark is aiming to generate a solid `game library` at the code level and then branch out into making editors with it later?)
Various shadowing/lighting systems. Would be nice to see it include realtime radiosity in some form, decent soft shadows, various shadowing techniques - projected, stencil, etc, and some efficient special-case techniques for spot effects. Shadows should be either precalculated and/or realtime.
Advanced terrain system - multitexturing, bump mapping/normal maps, paged file data spooled from disk/ram, levels of detail, realtime landscape modification, good collision stuff, vegetation, etc.
Post-processing effects - various fullscreen filters.
Support for multiple texture/buffer formats - make use of buffer objects and rendering to textures, and let us use floating point HDR buffers easily.
Lots of cool animation commands, bones, morphing, tweening, physics-based, cloth simulation, key-framed, etc
I think it should be able to target mid-range machines with no shader support, and then also extra features which become activated if shaders are supported - or at least allow detection of what is supported so the developer can downgrade stuff.
I did like the `Blitz3D Max` name a lot, it's a good idea, and would like to see this new system named that. I think it should be packaged as a single system, including the BlitzMax language, MaxGUI, and the 3D/game engine module(s). As such MaxGUI should be updated to a better system - Mark was working on something faster/better. MaxGUI apps have access to the basic user interface stuff but certainly not the full diversity of what's available, like the use of core abilities on OSX.
Support for various file formats, anim/video formats, texture/model formats, compression etc.