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Blog at http://www.brainfold.org/blog/.
Visit #python3d on the Freenode network.
  Web site | 
Posted - 5/30/2007 11:38:47 AM | I haven't programmed for a couple of days now as I've been working on the new Spineless web site. At first I tried using Wordpress, which looked really nice, but its non-blog features were severely lacking for my purposes. Next, I tried Bitweaver because it looked nice too. After trying it for a bit though, I decided it was too complex and hard to use, especially since its documentation is almost non-existant.
I'm now trying Joomla since it was next on my "to try" list and seems good also in practice, not only in theory. It has lots of nice plugins available too, which is nice. As I said earlier, I will also set up a separate Trac page as a development wiki for Spineless. I will keep you updated.
UPDATE: Switched from Joomla to Drupal now, thanks to ukdm for the suggestion! Feels much easier to work with than Joomla. :)
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| Business as unusual | |
Posted - 5/25/2007 7:42:11 PM | I've been steadily driving Spineless forward, (re)implementing basic stuff and/or copying code from the old implementation. I fixed a problem with the way pluggable components were being loaded and started working on the scene graph renderer. As I said earlier, it will be more or less the same as the "old Spineless", but reimplemented to be better, cleaner, faster and, of course, sexier! 
Unfortunately, I haven't heard from my hosting company for over a day now, and they still haven't enabled my MySQL databases... so that's a "no" for installing Bitweaver (which I'm going to try first of the wiki/cms options I have). I couldn't get Python scripts working on the web server, so I couldn't install Trac either. *sigh* Well, I guess things will get sorted out. Or else I'll have to find another hosting company...
Last, but not least, I might as well announce the slight name change I was talking about earlier. The new name of Spineless game engine will be Spineless Jelly game engine, or just Spineless Jelly. I can already imagine a logo for the engine. The "unix name" will still be spineless, and I will continue version numbering as is. So the next release of Spineless will be Spineless Jelly game engine 0.3.0.
Keep your fingers crossed for my new web site, I might give you a cookie or a cool screenshot in return! 
PS. I will start (or rather continue) a game project as soon as the scene graph renderer and COLLADA loader are in a usable state. Tentative project name for the game is Red Nebula.
EDIT & PPS. 11000 views, yay.
EDIT 2: is anyone interested in detailed explanations of the engine and its implementation, like I did in May? If I get at least a couple of answers which evaluate to True, I promise I'll do it.
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| COLLADA et al. | |
Posted - 5/21/2007 4:57:18 PM | Sorry, still no awesome new screenshots.
COLLADA
Basic model loading has been working for a while now, though I still need to finish material loading and clean up the code. I'll add support for more COLLADA features as I need them, to avoid spending too much time on this alone. Though it was initially a bit confusing, I'm starting to like the format more and more, especially since it looks like it's getting widely adopted. Which hopefully means better tools and documentation. I also noticed they're working on a run-time file format (COLLADA is only meant as an interchange format). I hope it'll turn out good.
After that, next on my internal (as in, in my brain) todo list is the scene graph. I'm not sure how it'll turn up, but the old implementation was getting quite messy and I want to remedy that. I will keep the basic ideas and structure however, as I really like its ease of use.
I want to stress that this is not a complete rewrite of Spineless, as I'm cut-and-pasting large chunks of code from the old implementation and keeping a lot of things the same in general. I just thought that starting with a clean slate would be the best way to address the biggest issues I had with the engine. So far, it seems I was correct. style-wise, the biggest difference is the change from mixedCaseAttributeNames to lower_case_with_under_scores.
Web site
I got my domain today: it's www.brainfold.org, though there's nothing to see there yet. Spineless will probably get a new home at spineless.brainfold.org. I forgot to ask them to enable MySQL support since it's not enabled by default, so I can't start working on the new page until tomorrow. I want to build the new site on wiki / CMS type software as I'm tired of updating HTML pages manually. I think I'll also add a separate developer site based on Trac, since it should interface nicely with Eclipse. Two different wiki engines might seem silly, but my personal opinion is that Trac is good for managing development, but not for sites meant for the general public (even if the general public consists of other developers).
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| Progress report | |
Posted - 5/18/2007 7:56:32 PM | In the last couple of days, I've (re)written, in alphabetical order:
- Event management
- Main loop
- Tasks
- Window management
I've also almost finished with the rewritten Collada importer. After that, it's time for the scene graph and renderer.
The biggest difference to "old" Spineless is that everything's much more generic and flexible. For example, it should be, at least in theory, much easier to support wxPython instead of Pygame, or even DirectX instead of OpenGL. This is a huge change. The old Spineless had this level of flexibility only in the audio package. I'll probably write details about the new system in a future entry.
I've ordered web hosting and already got the account on their computer. I'm now waiting for them to confirm my domain name. Then it's time to install a wiki (or something) and build the new Spineless web site.
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| BOO! | |
Posted - 5/16/2007 7:49:21 PM | I'm not dead yet, and neither is Spineless.
I just ordered a domain and web hosting (been meaning to do it for at least a couple of years now) to act - among other things - as the new web home of Spineless. Code, downloads, issue tracking etc. will stay on Sourceforge, but the new web site will begin its life on the new domain. I've yet to decide what I'll build the website on, since I'm tired of manually updating HTML code, but I have a few (wiki-based) options I want to try out.
I've also started programming again. I know it's been too long since I got anything real done on Spineless (or any other project for that matter), but my brain hasn't been completely idle in the meantime. I have even scribbled some notes on engine and game design on ye olde paper (as opposed to ze computer). A good sign of progress: the old Spineless code and design doesn't look too good to me anymore, at least not all parts of it.
If enough of you fellow developers cross fingers, I might do a Real Journal Update (you know, with something to do with engine or game design and/or programming instead of the supporting fluff) in the near future.
Ps. there will probably be a slight name change for the engine.
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