Re: ObjC 3D engine
Re: ObjC 3D engine
- Subject: Re: ObjC 3D engine
- From: Jonathan deWerd <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:02:38 -0600
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On Jun 23, 2007, at 11:39 PM, Phil Bellalouna wrote:
Jonathan,
As an interested developer, here's my .02:
1) It's worth some level of effort to at least see what the
interest out there is. My guess is that there fairly significant
if the project addressed the right level of abstraction which you
won't know if you have unless you take a shot. The fact that
you're considering it sounds like you think what you have might be
worthwhile and not simply one-off code. Core Animation is a nice 2
1/2D (i.e. 2D objects in a 3D environment) framework but it doesn't
do what I need in a true 3D framework.
Is there another place I should be posting this? Should I go to 3D
forums, say gamedev, and post?
2) To a degree, I would. I have a set of needs re: 3D that have
been slow going as it's more of a 'nice to have, but can't justify
the effort' (3D charting being my primary need currently) so I am
chipping away at it *very* slowly and haven't even been thinking in
terms of a reusable framework. I'd be quite happy to contribute to
any project that I could leverage provided the license is right
(i.e. probably something along the lines of BSD or perhaps LGPL
which resulted in an open source framework but allow non-open
source commercial applications built using it)
Everything helps :)
I am almost certainly going with a BSD license since the mac
shareware industry is so healthy. It will be awhile before it is
ready, but hopefully we'll get there eventually :)
3) I'd go with a light cleaning (i.e. sweep out commented/dead code
and fix or document via comments any grossly convoluted code for
exposed parts of the framework) and create documentation for only
the most exposed parts of the framework that would most commonly be
needed by another developer. Many successful open source code
bases started as undocumented, tangled piles of crap that did their
job well. Over time, they were cleaned up, reorganized and better
documented (Apache is a good example of this) Most critical IMO is
that the framework is easily build-able and has at least one
example app which demonstrates what it can do. Don't worry about
whether it's pre-Alpha, Alpha, Beta, whatever... just be clear in
documenting the status of where it is and why it is at that stage
but don't apologize for it. After all, if someone could do better,
they already would have. My worst experiences have been with code
that claimed to be one thing and turned out to be something else
entirely.
Good to know. Currently the build process is very buggy (xcode isn't
intuitive at all for building nested frameworks), but I hope to have
that resolved fairly soon. And the only demo-ish app I have is my
proof-of-concept for my paper, but I could probably polish that up
and use it.
4) Stick with K.I.S.S. Use the tools that the majority of Cocoa
developers are using (i.e. the Xcode tools) which would mean
*don't* go with an alternate SCM system. It's a barrier to entry,
however trivial, that might turn off someone who's otherwise
interested. Also, don't create more work for yourself re: setting
up a website, forums, etc. If the goal is to get it out there and
see what the interest level is, everything else is misspent
effort. Stick with Sourceforge or something similar that will get
the most done with the least amount of effort and see what areas
where there's a clear payoff from putting more work into. In a lot
of ways, your worst nightmare is if it's successful: you'll be
plenty busy with feedback/patches/etc. If it goes nowhere, you'll
drop it and move on to the next thing.
Sounds good. I'll sign up for a sourceforge project once I have
things in a semi-presentable state.
If you decide to move forward with this effort, please let me know
as I would be happy to be a guinea pig ;-)
Sure thing :)
Thanks,
Phil
On Jun 23, 2007, at 8:51 PM, Jonathan deWerd wrote:
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About a year ago I was looking for a good open-source objc/cocoa
3D engine. After several days of searching, the best I could find
were a few outdated and/or abandoned frameworks (note: I could
just suck at searching, so if you are working on one don't take
offense). I decided that it would be a huge learning experience to
write my own, so I did. Or, to be more accurate, I hacked together
a bunch of classes which suited my needs. In any case, I now have
about 15k lines of cocoa 3D code that I want to put to some use. I
will say again that I *do not* have anything resembling any of the
mature C++ engines out there. I just have a start, if that. But I
would like to get some of your thoughts.
1) Is it worth turning this into an open source project at all
(who would actually like a cocoa 3D engine, or does core animation
do everything you want)?
2) Who would be willing to work on it with me?
3) If it is worth turning into a project, how much should I clean
my codebase before opening it up? Going through and presenting a
unified interface, documentation, and convention set would be
essential, but a lot of work. Should I do this before opening the
project to avoid scaring devs away or would it be best to "harness
the power of open source" and do it after? For that matter, should
I get it to a working "alpha" stage on my own?
4) What should I go with as far as SCM/forums/website are
concerned? Personally I really, really love git for SCM
(seriously, check it out. It blows svn out of the water in just
about every area, and it's really easy to compile. Just one
dependancy, which is itself a clean build on a default dev install
of OSX). Should I give up all the git goodness to conform? Should
I use sourceforge, host the dev stuff myself (then look for a
better webserver when approaching production), or do something else?
And I think that's all I can think of for now. Please tell me what
you think :)
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