A joined Panda3D project ?

General Discussion
1

A joined Panda3D project, thats the idea that hit me a while ago. A project where a bunch of the people here can work together on producing something thats bigger then individualistic smaller projects.

I know it sounds ambigious, and that most of the people here are here because they want to realize their own visions and idea’s. But I also know that working alone can be tiresome and you’re always missing some expertice in an area.

Thas why I thought about creating a community project, something that can showcase Panda3D’s capabilities and a game thats stunning to play and see.

So my question is… Would you like to join in on this? What would you be interested in producing?

If you’d like to discuss any of this, leave a msg here in this thread or just shout at me on IRC ( irc://freenode.net/panda3d).

Joined so far:


* Martin
* Bigfoot29
* Artofwot
* lvraab
* Yellow

* Chombee - ?
2

A big game is a good idea :slight_smile:
Of what kind of game do you think?
I would like to join you. I have not much time but if you have some work for me I would be proud do help you

3

Good to hear you’re interested :slight_smile:

I have some ideas about posible games, but it depends on how many people I can attract and what you / they would like to make.

One of my ideas is a decentralized virtual world, where players can add to the world by hosting their own server which contains an area of that world. (ie we start with a single town in the country side, and someone else adds a server which contains a City. Then players would be able to walk from our server to the other, the world map would be extended.)
Think of it like hosting a web page, but then your webpage would be part of a 3D world instead of the web.

But again, thats just an idea (a rather extensive one at that), depending on what others would like, a smaller project, another genre, we’ll pick one.

4

Sorry but I’m not interested in a virtual world now. Because im writing on a virtual world too :slight_smile:
and i think its not good to do two nearly equal projects.

5

I am also working on some virtual world software.

I’d be interested in collaborating with others.

Martin - if we are all working on virtual worlds already, that might be a good reason to collaborate!

We would want to identify the different components that need to be developed, then we can develop each component either individually or together and release the code on this forum under a Free Software license.

That way each of us can take our own code, others code, and others improvements to our own code, and use it for our own projects as we want. At the same time, everyones code can be combined into one big virtual world project if there are people that want to do that.

My current project involves creating a medium-sized fairy tale world to be used as a setting for interactive stories for children. I’m hopefully going to be doing this for my PhD. Before I can start on interactive storytelling code, I require a number of basic components to be programmed for Panda3D:

  • Efficient, patch-based LOD terrain (which I have already begun working on and made some good progress).

  • An avatar class for computer-controlled characters which implements a variety of steering functions and a pathfinding ability, handles playing animations and allows high-level control via Finite State Machine.

  • An avatar class for a human-controlled character, implementing keyboard controls to move the character around, mouse controls to look about, a 3rd person camera that follows the avatar, and handling animations (this class is pretty simple with Panda3D).

  • A 2D interface to allow the player to have conversations with computer characters and to interact with objects in the world.

I’m going to release each component of my code as I develop it anyway, because it’s just the right thing to do.

My only major reservation about starting some sort of collaborative project with Panda3D is the status of Panda3D’s license, which though permissive, does not currently qualify as a Free Software license according to the GNU definition and (perhaps worse) is not compatible with the GPL.

I don’t know if Panda3D would qualify as Free Software according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, that would be something worth looking into.

I want any work I do for my project to be a contribution to society, in particular to computer game technology for schools and for academic environments, and for these purposes it will be really desirable to get Panda3D into a major Free Software project such as Debian or Ubuntu. That isn’t going to happen if the Panda3D license is not compatible or not considered up to scratch, a fact that in my opinion will limit the value of any contribution based on Panda3D, both to society and to research.

  • Sean
6

Martin:

Thats just an example, not the real subject, what kinda of project should be decided together if and when such a group forms. Might aswell be a firstperon shooter, isometric, strategy or whatever else comes to mind.

chombee:

I dont know much of the license ingredients or ethics, but if we can work that out, I’d love to work with you.

7

Yeah your ideas are good.
So whats up with the other guys here no one else intressted in developing a game with a team.
Is there anyone who is intested so come on Yellow has good ideas for games and it would be a good publicity for Panda if there is a big game

8

I’d be willing to help, it would just depend on the time commitment, because I have other Panda related projects I’m working on that are a bit more important to me.

9

Work will be devided based on expertice and available time.

I’ll add a list of interested people to the first post, if you feel I put you there wrongly, let me know. I’ll give it a few more days, then its time to pick a project. If anyone has interesting idea’s, dont hesitate to post them :wink:

10

I would like to help too, but I’m absolutely not a good prgrammer yet.
I can help with some art (Concept, or maybe 3D if you can’t find a modeler), but I’m not sure I have much time, I have another project, also a virtual world (in Panda3D) :slight_smile: .

-Fenryl

11

Hmmm… I like the idea of being “extendable by adding new servers” like mentioned above. Its something I try with my software as well, but never found the time to develop it (next to the lack of knowledge)
The Distributed Object might get come in handy here, but however, a nice smooth tut is still missing (to the producer of the chat tut: Don’t feel hurt, but your tut wasn’t that good…)
However, if there is a way to get that stuff sorted (and being really documented (with some small examples?) somewhere outside the source code) I would be up for this. Otherwise I think I will have to idle until I find a way to be usefull :slight_smile:

Regards, Bigfoot29

12

Yeah thats true. Is there anyone who knows how to use DirectObject
If yes please tell us or write please write the manual
It would be very helpful
What are that methods of DistributedObject

b_setLocation
d_setLocation

?
What is this *.dc file or is this not related with DistributedObject?
Which Distributed class for what?

Thanks Martin

13

Actually, since online games need to be programmed to prevent lag as much as posible, I feel its best to write your own server code in C++ or another lower level language. The client part could be done in python, atleast large parts of it. Perhaps distributed objects could be nice there :slight_smile:

Anyway, Fenryl, welcome to the club! :slight_smile: Either development and modeling would be great.
On the modeling part, I can work on that aswell (static meshes).

We now have 5 or 6 people in, should be more then enough to get started. Imo it would be best if we meet on IRC. I’ll install a web based IRC client so people who don’t have a client can join through your web browser. I’ll post the link when its there.

Please post when would be the best time, since we’re prolly all in different time zones somewhere in the evening (GMT +1) would be best. should be somewhere in the afternoon in the US.

In the mean time, I’ll try to get a few more people from outside to this project.

14

IRC doesn’t work for me on my school network (even Java based clients, the entire protocol has been disabled), so I won’t be able to participate in the IRC meetings.

15

and thats the funny thing: there are clients out there that are NOT java based and running server side… so all you need is a browser that can do JavaScript and a free Port 80 outwards :smiley:

Regards, Bigfoot29

16

Allright, I installed the web based client, might want to give it a shot since all traffic go’s through the webserver on port 80 as Bigfoot said. Please let me know if it worked.

Web Client:
http://yellow.g0dsoft.com/irc/

This client does requere the Java Virtual Machine installed though: JVM 1.2

For mIRC users: irc.freenode.dev/panda-dev

Yeah bad channel name, but it works for now :wink:

17

Hmmm… you might want to look for a cgi-based system… means a REAL server side system. Following artofwot there is no java available. So your system isn’t available for all. :frowning:

Regards, Bigfoot29

18

/me slaps his forehead

I gues I missed that part :laughing:

I’ll look into a cgi based client then.

19

I’ll be happy to help too. Gives me a good reason to get into Python more. :slight_smile:

20

Good to have you, welcome to the club lvraab. :slight_smile:

artofwot: you have a PM :wink: