Wintermute Engine Forum

Wintermute Engine => Feature requests, suggestions => Topic started by: FogGobbler on November 18, 2009, 09:58:03 PM

Title: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: FogGobbler on November 18, 2009, 09:58:03 PM
Hi!

Any news about the WME 2.0 ? How are things going on?

Best regards,
Oli
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 18, 2009, 10:14:48 PM
Steadily but slowly. Nowhere near anything releasable yet.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: xelanoimis on November 24, 2009, 07:01:44 PM
Can you list some of the wme 2.0 new features or improvements?
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 26, 2009, 09:56:55 AM
Well, I'm hesitant to talk about it too much, since I don't want to generate any unrealistic expectations. Since wme2 will be rebuilt from the ground up, in the first phase it would be nice if it supported roughly the same feature set as wme1 (through the years wme got to support everything and a kitchen sink...).

Of course, there will be many improvements to remove weak points of wme.

The most obvious is a new renderer, based on Ogre3D. This brings support for Ogre .mesh format for models, i.e. a more comfortable content creation pipeline for many 3D modelling applications (.X format is a PITA). Also there is a robust material system, replacing the .fx files used by wme1.9.

The scripting engine is rewritten. Although the language stays approximately the same (similar to ECMA Script), some annoying limitations and bugs have been removed.

The engine is written with portability in mind, unlike wme1 (Ogre is a major factor in this).

The tools should be completely redesigned, however I haven't touched that at all yet.

Regarding 2.5D / 3D scenes, both are to be supported eventually, although I don't know if both in the initial release (those two systems are quite different, perhaps more that I initially thought). Plain 2D scenes are just a simplified case of 2.5D.

And of course, tons of small things.


I gathered you're working on a new engine as well...? How is your progress/goals?
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Zit on November 26, 2009, 11:27:31 AM
Quote
The scripting engine is rewritten

what about multilanguage? JavaScript and LUA already known to many people and have a ready-made virtual machines (v8, etc.)

// I apologize for my bad English
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 26, 2009, 11:34:37 AM
The virtual machine is too tightly tied to the engine (it requires some functionality from game objects and the entire VM must be able to (de)serialize itself with the rest of the game state). So multiple scripting language would only be possible by adding more script compilers, that would be able to generate wme bytecode. It's definitely NOT my priority, though.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 26, 2009, 11:36:45 AM
Also you said JavaScript, which is actually ECMA Script, so that one is covered :) I realize Lua is very popular nowadays in gamedev circles, but IMO whoever is capable of Lua scripting can easily adapt to JavaScript.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Zit on November 26, 2009, 11:57:44 AM
logical. thank you for your comments.

how similar language to ecma? and what version of the standard? I work with JS and it varies as to version, and the realizations. we should expect nested, setters+getters, arguments.caller, prototyping, closures+call/apply (for "inheritance" with private variables)? :)

in any case, thank you
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 26, 2009, 12:07:36 PM
Ok, you got me there. I didn't mean it would be ECMA script implementation, just that it's syntactically similar. The functionality will remain approximately the same as in WME 1.x. The most significant change will be that the event handlers are replaced with methods.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Zit on November 26, 2009, 12:30:54 PM
ok, thank you for your comments.
imho: scripting without nested (obj.p1.p2 and array[1][2]) is not very flexible, this feature would be very useful... and, seems, does not require significant architectural changes
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on November 26, 2009, 12:35:25 PM
WME2 will support nesting. Also ++ and -- operators. Those are some of the "annoying limitations" I mentioned above :)
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Zit on November 26, 2009, 12:46:07 PM
great! thanks!
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: xelanoimis on November 26, 2009, 10:15:44 PM
I gathered you're working on a new engine as well...? How is your progress/goals?

I'm pretty much in the same situation, except I don't have in mind to produce an engine for everyone to use and I have to find a way to start working on a game of my own.
But since I don't have a specific game in mind I was playing with the idea of supporting a more of features.

I'll send you an email with more details, maybe we can inspire each other.

I have to thank you for releasing the sources of Wme.
It always is a good point of inspiration to look at other people's engines, or into game's data or scripts.

Alex
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: DocBass on March 25, 2010, 12:30:13 AM
Interesting stuff Mnemonic. Just out of curiosity, do you even have a guess, such as a quarter of the year when you might put out 2.0? Like Q2, 2011 etc? Simply a matter of curiosity.  ;D
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on March 25, 2010, 07:56:37 PM
Not yet, not yet.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: whitefantom on June 29, 2010, 03:40:21 AM
Since Wintermute 2.0 is being rebuilt from the ground up, is there any chance of it supporting 360 degree rotation in first-person view? I know this feature has been requested multiple times in the past, and as of now it's sitting in the "Won't Implement" section of the suggestion forum because it would be too difficult to make work within the current Wintermute framework, but that was before 2.0 became essentially a total rebuild.

I'm just getting started with Wintermute and I very much would prefer to create a first-person game in which the player has a full 360 degree rotational view at each node; if this actually might be a feature of 2.0, I'll just hold off a while until it's released and start from there. If there no chance this will be a feature, though, I might as well go ahead and get started with the current version of Wintermute and go from there.

--Jennifer
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Darky on June 29, 2010, 03:52:43 AM
Hi Jennifer,

Mnemonic may correct me if my information is incorrect but based on what we can see on Mnemonic's development blog (http://wme2.dead-code.org/) i'd say WME2 still is in it's early stages of development and will take quiet some more time to complete. Because of that waiting for it's release may not be the best option for you. Your idea should be a breeze to realize with WME2 as it is powered by a full 3D engine and 360 degree could be done in so many ways and feels through that, but with the waiting time involved it's my opinion you really better start ahead by hacking something together in WME1 (the latest Dark Fall game did a good job but don't ask me how it was done) or find a more suitable engine. Be advised though that if you choose WME1 and WME2 comes out at some point of your development, it would be unlikely that there is a easy way (or a way at all) to import your progress from WME1 over to WME2. I have no proof for that, but since as you said its rebuilt from ground up it would seem likely to me.

Hope that helps somehow.
Title: Re: WME 2.0 - news?
Post by: Mnemonic on June 29, 2010, 05:53:44 PM
Darky is right (except I'd like to think wme2 is not in early stages, but, let's say, intermediate stages:) ).
Dark Fall 3 did great job faking the 360 degree view by rotating the scene around camera (since WME doesn't support scripted camera movement).