I’ve already given my suggestions in post #29, I don’t have anything more.
No engine I’ve referenced is a beginner’s tool. Neither Unity nor Unreal with blueprints. I’m sorry but mentioning a disclaimer doesn’t undo the issues I’ve listed. The point is the engine is lacking, the manual notifying the user about it doesn’t change anything.
And I never claimed Panda has to be on par with Unreal or Unity to get more users, not at all. But it’s so far behind right now that it’s even a no-brainer for most people to go over Godot than Panda.
I’m really sorry, not trying to be an ass, but all I see in post #29 is:
And yeah, I agree on this point and expanded a bit on it in my previous post. More money can help, but again it’s not just a ‘all-in-one’ solution, cash flow needs to be enough and constant to really make a difference.
Again, I agree with you. It’s true that more paths to give money (and more practical ones) can help, but a bigger button and a PayPal account is nowhere near enough to secure a constant cash flow.
So, are your proposed solutions to just “Get more money”? If so, I’m also in par with this, but more money won’t just come because we want it to. To get more money we need more popularity; to get more popular we need more features. And back to square one.
So it’s true, instanceTo can be renamed to instanceAnimationTo, and a GPU instancing method can be added.
Then what? Other viable solutions to add more features while waiting for the money to pour in is to contribute to the open-source community, as people have already stated in this thread, and make the change you want to see. If it’s not for you, you’re welcome to give money or open an issue/feature request to allow people to work on it. If the change isn’t fast enough, other solutions are available to you in the meantime. There is no attack here; I’m just trying to state some facts.
Well, you compare all of them a lot, so sorry if I misunderstood you on this.
But one of your proposed solutions to get more users is to have an in-house editor and scene building GUI.
As already stated by others, you can use Blender for this, and Blender is one of the most used and popular software in its category. The resources for the development of Panda3D being limited, there is no point in trying to compete with Blender, and it’s not realistic anyway.
This is just not true. As you said yourself in post #22:
So, for people with those needs, going Panda3D over Godot or any other engine is a no-brainer. It’s true that most people can’t care to work with an engine without a clear UI.
As of right now, Panda3D may not be for them; we’re all agreeing on this. People who want to be in full control of what they are doing are more than happy to work around what you call limitations of the engine and implement what they need how they need it. The post #30 by serega-kkz shows just that: he made his own solutions and is more than happy to do so.
This is in par with what Panda allows its users to do: anything they want. To add to panda3d capability, everything that can be done in OpenGL has a way to be made easier in Panda.
Well, yes, but no. The disclaimer is exactly what it is: It warns people that what may be lacking in the engine can be done but has to be implemented the way you want it.
If not, resources are available on the forum to make it, and the community is happy to help make those things (if asked nicely).
If not, one of the strengths of Panda3D is that it allows you to just plug in any third-party package that suits your need. In this regard, Panda3D is much more advanced than Godot or any other ‘mainstream’ engine.
I don’t think you get Panda3D philosophy. The power is given to the developer to use it however they like; this is literally the first tile on the main page. There is no right way to do in Panda; there is only the way you want things to be. You don’t have to do things like Panda3D dev want you to do.
And this is sad because this whole thread shows that you seem to deeply care about Panda3D even if the engine doesn’t 100% suit your needs. But you have to be the change you want to see; just saying “We need more money!” without offering proper solutions or active participation won’t get us to Tahiti.
It’s unrealstic to expect an all-in-one solution from me or anyone.
I already explained what we need: start by making it clear the engine is already taking donations. I explained why it isn’t clear, I linked to several references which do it better. What’s so hard to follow here?
How about we do step one then come back to me about what the next step is. Instead of starting angry arguments here and making it personal. Does that sound fair? Because I’ve seen exactly the latter from several users here. You’ll never get anywhere if you don’t do the first step because you say it’s not enough.
“most people”. I’m not "most people
Very few of them as we can clearly see on SteamDB and the activity in this forum vs Godot. I’m not going to bet on us as the user base as a viable future for Panda.
"
This is just one of those filler responses we think about when we feel we are right but can’t actually explain it. “Philisophy”, “direction”, “point”, “purpose”, “not for you”, somehow you know what it is and your definition of these vague phrases is the correct one.
Everything you described, Unity, Unreal or Godot literally don’t limit you in any way. If you want your own editor, you can make one, if you want to write shaders from scratch or make your own shader, VFX or particle editor you can do that. The assumption that Panda is different in this regard is just false. I’ve already listed the advantages of Panda over others, this is not one of them.
This is another placeholder response: this is a discussion about the current state of a tool, not societal or spiritual change, you can’t throw phrases around to make a point about anything.
A tool is a tool, it’s not my friend or country or anything else I may be unconditionally invested in, so I’m not going to invest time changing it myself considerably just because I want it to improve. It makes zero sense since the investment/returns are very disproportionate right now. Most contribute to improving a tool because they use the tool themselves and have a personal interest in having the tool improve and be maintained, but there’s a limit to the contribution vs utility.
I personally can’t alter the Panda3D website; if it were the case, the change would have been done. I’m saying it won’t be enough until a massive influx of people comes to use the engine and donate. But, as I’ve stated multiple times: I agree with you on this point. What’s so hard to follow?
I’m sorry if it’s the way you feel about my answers; this is not my intention. Again, I agree with you on the only thing you’ve put forward. In my opinion, you seem pretty defensive for no real reason, but again, not being a native English speaker made some context hard to get for me, so here’s that.
Again, I’m gonna redirect you to the very first tile of the website: “Panda3D puts you at the helm, without getting in your way. The full power of the graphics card is exposed through an easy-to-use API. Panda3D combines the speed of C++ with the ease of use of Python to give you a fast rate of development without sacrificing performance.” This is the philosophy; it’s right there and the first thing you see when visiting the Panda3D website. What’s hard to grasp?
I’m gonna anticipate an eventual “without sacrificing performance” quote by quoting again the first page of the introduction: “One caveat, though: to get that kind of performance, you need to understand 3D cards and 3D performance optimization. It doesn’t happen automatically.”
So making a skeleton for a Minecraft clone is not that hard, as shown by the video starting this thread, but you’ll have to make optimizations that suit your needs as you want them.
An open-source tool? I don’t ask you to do anything else than embrace open-source development if you’re not satisfied with what is provided instead of:
Then,
Here I’m kinda confused. People contribute to improve things because they use it and want it to improve; you use Panda3D and state that you want it to improve but are not willing to contribute at all? So what’s the point of this whole discussion? Dismissing the “Be the change, contribute to open source” as if I just told you to “live, laugh, love” makes it seem like you just select what you’re responding to and what you deliberately ‘don’t understand’.
I asked you earlier what your improvement idea was; you were only able to direct me to post #29. I’ve already answered on this, but this is the full post:
So I guess you’re right; you didn’t just say that; you say that “We need a bigger button, easier to see to get more money.”
Again, I do agree with this point, but that’s literally your only constructive contribution in the whole thread. Everything else has been blind critics and a lot of ‘I’m not gonna make it’. Even when serega-kkz provided you with an example of a working implementation of hardware instancing, you’ve just ignored the resource.
Your reasons as to why someone may want to use any other API than Panda3D are perfectly valid:
So I guess, in its current state, Panda3D is an API oriented to users who:
Have experience altering API code
Have time and desire to alter API code
See the point in spending time fine-tuning it.
This seems an awful lot like the first page of the introduction:
“To successfully use Panda3D, you must be a skilled programmer. If you do not know what an “API” is, or if you don’t know what a “tree” is, you will probably find Panda3D overwhelming.”; “you need to understand 3D cards and 3D performance optimization.”
Panda3D is crystal clear about what it can do and what is expected from the programmer.
If after this you feel like:
Then maybe in its current state, the API is not exactly for you. If you absolutely want to use it, the community will welcome you and help you through your journey with it.
This statement may be true:
But just throwing things like:
and
Doesn’t seem like the way to go. “At contrario”, to quote you again :
I stand by what I said in my previous post:
But you’ll need to at least understand what I (and other members before me) are trying to tell you.
No, by “you” I don’t mean you personally, it’s the colloquial “you”.
And I say I disgree. “What’s so hard to follow?”. Cheap blow.
I’m sorry if it’s the way you feel about my answers
I clarified right after that quoted text that I was referring to few others here (until now, it seems)
I’m just responding to messages directed towards me and happen to disagree with them. “For no reason” - then you just don’t follow the topic.
Because it’s a generic message that any other engine uses and they are all equally correct. None of them is unique in this regard
You’re overdoing the one-upping, get over it.
Other engines do most of the optimization for you, they don’t require you to write custom shader code, that’s the point.
This is the problem with people these days: always thinking in black and white. I’m willing to contribute to anything to a reasonable degree that makes practical sense to me. I’m not going to contribute too much of my time if it makes no sense and if the engine devs and the coimmunity don’t want to help themselves first.
You changed your original quote here, yes it did sound like kumbaya in its original form. The issue is I listed what I believe has to change, how to get that change, added that I don’t have anything more to suggest, and you’re acting like I didn’t do that and asking again to make a change myself.
Don’t be patronizing if you want to be respected in return.
No. We need a button in the correct location, correctly labeled and colorized/styled, like everyone else. Seems like there’s no point to discuss this further with you specifically, you’re not able to interpret my points in their literal form and just keep claiming what I’m suggesting is not enough. As I’ve said already, It’s unrealstic to expect an all-in-one solution from me or anyone. And the cherry on top is the patronizing and insulting comments.
Be thankful when anyone contributes anything instead of complaining it’s not enough. What’s your problem? The rest of my messages is me responding to mostly pointless arguments towards me, I’ve clarified this already at least twice.
No, you’re misconstruing what I said. I’m saying all 3 conditions must be met for anyone to want to contribute, most people don’t have experience altering API code, most who can have no time and desire to do so since they can use many other engines that will save them a lot of headache and time, so there’s very tiny portion of people who will contribute anything, and this is a problem. You’re basically saying there’s few users who still have use for the engine and the engine is directed to them. Of course it isn’t, the engine has simply not had enough development resources to be usable to more people as it did in the 2000s when I first started using it.
You’re basicaly saying that not only is a bad product is not bad because few people like to tinker and fix it, but it’s actually made and intended for those people. It’s not, it’s just an outdated product nobody else but tinkerers and Python-only users would like to use.
I’ve clarified this before, this has nothing to do with me, even in your quoted text I’m talking about “most developers” not me.
Stating objective facts IS the right way to go. As I stated from the very beginning, brushing off issues does not make them go away, you all must first admit the issues exist.
Don’t be patronizing, it’s insulting. What if I told you “you need to at least understand what I’m trying to tell you”. You’re not a teacher here and I’m not your pupil. It’s insulting and a cheap way to avoid the actual arguments. Similarly, ganging up and bringing up others, insinuating like you’re some wise group and have to get me to understand your undeniable truth is extremely patronizing and a logical fallacy.
I’m done with this topic. I hoped developers would do better but all I’m seeing is almost everyone getting defensive and overprotective over something they have invested their time in and don’t want to hear that it’s not that great objectively. When I offer my two cents on how to change the situation I’m either told what i said is invalid or that it’s not good enough. Well sorry, that’s all I have. Bye.
See, this is the problem right here. Patronizing and brushing off the provided 2 cents as “instructions” and telling the OP their contribution is not “intellectual”.
Like I said, I’m done here. The topic has derailed into pointless insulting jabs and overprotectiveness of the topic at hand.
The problem is that you are annoyed by the fact that you have reached an impasse and you have nothing to answer, but this does not mean that you are being insulted.
I’m sorry that you felt I was patronizing you when I used some of your snarky comments in my answer, I wanted to illustrate/demonstrate the “defensive for no reason” part. I guess it was clumsy on my part and not that clear.
edit
I don’t understand the ‘instruction’ part but guess I’ll have to live with it, it’s probably a ‘me’ problem [edit : I didnt saw post #47 thats why I was confused about this part, my bad]
I (do think I) understood most of your points as I told you multiple times on which one I was agreeing with.
I really feel like you don’t understand what I was trying to say, and again, you’re only quoting parts while ignoring the rest, I guess I’ll just have to let a link to constructive criticism and call it a day.
I wish you to find the answers you’re looking for in this thread and a satisfying conclusion to your question.
Nope, you’re being disrespectful, a real asshole at this point. I could turn it around against you: “The problem is that you are annoyed by the fact that you have reached an impasse and you have nothing to answer to my answers”. But this is a pointless flame war at this point so I’m not going to say anything more.
“I’m sorry that you felt something and also you deserved it”. No, I don’t accept your fake apology.
I wasn’t being snarky, if you interpreted it then it’s your problem, I’m not going to even act like I’m apologizing for you interpreting it that way because I’m not pretentious like that. You interpreted it as snarky and responded tenfold.
Maybe, but I spent time typing a wall of text going through every of your points, you can’t expect more than that.
What “rest”? I feel like I’ve spend time typing a wall of text in order to respond to every point. I give up.
I don’t have any questions here since the first few messages, I’ve provided my suggestions on improving the state of Panda and then just had to mostly respond to the same defensive responses. I wish this is a satisfying conclusion for you as well.
You interpret the concept of a protective message strangely. You were politely hinted that someone is not satisfied with this, then he rolls up his shirt sleeves and makes these improvements. However, you have given a reasonable answer to this from your point of view, you do not have time for this, you have things to do and you are worried that you will not get something in return. What were we supposed to say to that?
I’m not going to respond further, this is ridiculous, I’ve literally responded to everything already which you bring up yet again. I’ve given my two cents then wasted hours clarifying it, take it or leave it. Don’t be a snarky sarcastic asshole then look for justifications for it. And there’s no “we” here, you’re not a corporation or part of a hive-mind, speak for yourself.
I think that the topic of sarcasm has not yet been revealed if Unreal Engine opens the code on a par with Panda3D. Then time will pass, and he will become so backward, but free.