[CsMain] A helping hand

[Denis Washington]

Date: Wed, 28 Oct 2009 20:05:02
Subject: Re: [CsMain] Release cycle
I agree with all these points. However I would like to point out that
I no longer have the motivation and time to work on such administrative
things like releasing and websites and so on. I would very much prefer
to have someone (or a group of people) dedicated to this task.
I of course still plan to work on Crystal Space and CEL on a technical
level.
Greetings,

Hello,

I have been steadily looking for some way to get into game programming
with open-source tools, and for some time now, I am very interested in
the Crystal Space project. I really like how it is designed
architecture-wise, and the fact that it has good support for importing
models from Blender and that it provides a complete entity-based game
engine with CEL really makes me excited about CS.

However, in the approx. 2 years I have been following CS, it has been
sad to see that the project seems to be nearly stagnating from an
outside point of view. The webpage is rarely updated, the Download page
says for months that binary installers are "not yet" available, releases
are infrequent, and in general there is not much news about developments
in Crystal Space development (even the CS planet site has new posts only
seldomly - and the "Crystal Space blog" only has a single introductory
post).

A few days ago, I played with the idea of starting a project to create a
game authoring tool on top of CS+CEL (kind of like Unity3D, but
open-source), and the Crystal Space publicity issue caught my attention
once again. So I thought: why not propose to help them out? And so here
I am - I would be glad to help you getting (and keeping) the website and
documentation up to date (and maybe - maybe - doing some coding). I have
to admit that I don't know very much about Crystal Space (essentially
what's in the - how up-to-date? - manual, and then a small bit more),
but I am very willing to learn, and for my own little project alone it
is in my very interest to make the way CS presents itself to the game
developer community as awesome as possible!

I would love to become part of your community. How about it?

Best Regards,
Denis Washington

[Christian Van Brussel]

Hi Denis,

Here are some personal thoughts on what can be improved within CS. I can
help a bit working on this, we can talk about that through this mailing
list or the crystal-develop one, through personal mails, through trac
tickets or the 'Discussion' option of the web pages.

IMO, the most important aspect is having a more attractive and usable
web site. The current site is rather complete but it is having some
problems:

* The visual aspect of the web site is rather sober and sad. When going
to the web site of a 3D engine, the visitor expect to find fancy images
etc. The impression given by the current web site doesn't reflect the
graphical potential of CS.
- We can have more images, eg a random screenshot on the main page and
images within the news.
- The graphical layout may be improved. Less importantly, the layout may
be unified between the web site, the blogs, the forum, the trac.

* The navigation is not evident. It is hard to find the information you
want when you don't know where it is.
There are three menus on the main page: on the left, at the top, and in
a box on the right. This is disturbing. All menus should be regrouped at
the same place, ie on the left. Some quick links are also missing, while
some others are outdated. The page structure may also be improved: some
big pages may be split, some small pages may be merged.

Here is a proposition of a menu layout:

About
- Home
- News
- Features
- Screenshots
- Videos

Projects
- Crystal Space Engine
- CEL
- CELstart

Community
- Forums
- Blogs
- Other

Developers
- Subversion
- Trac
- Bugs

Donations
- Contribute

Documentation
- Manual
- API
- Tutorials

Ressources
- For artists

Download
- Demos
- SDK

Links
- YoFrankie
- Crystal Core
- blender2crystal
- CrystalArchitect
- PlaneShift

ToolBox


* Some information is outdated or incomplete
- The most important page is the main page. This is where the visitor
will choose between going further or zapping to another web site. The
description of CS may be improved to reflect more the status and the
potential of CS. There may also be more news when there are events like
release candidates, binary packages, new features, new projects, things
to test, needs (like seeking for an artist for the relooking of the web
site), etc
- The second most important pages are the feature list and the
screenshots/videos. The current pages doesn't reflect the impressive
feature list and potential of CS/CEL/etc. They can be improved to be
more accurate/complete/sexy. There can also be more videos/demos on the
features and uses of CS. A win32 demo package may help.

* Another important aspect of CS that is problematic is the time between
each releases. Having some scripts to automatize the whole process can
help a lot. Having supported binary packages too.

Regards,
Christian

[Jorrit Tyberghein]

I'd LOVE to have someone work more on this. You are right. There are lots of
improvements that can be done there. Would be nice if you could get some help
on this though. You are already doing some amazing things regarding animation
so perhaps there are volunteers who would like to help Christian with this?

Greetings,

On Fri, Feb 5, 2010 at 2:43 PM, Christian Van Brussel

Post by Christian Van Brussel
Hi Denis,
Here are some personal thoughts on what can be improved within CS. I can
help a bit working on this, we can talk about that through this mailing
list or the crystal-develop one, through personal mails, through trac
tickets or the 'Discussion' option of the web pages.
IMO, the most important aspect is having a more attractive and usable
web site. The current site is rather complete but it is having some
* The visual aspect of the web site is rather sober and sad. When going
to the web site of a 3D engine, the visitor expect to find fancy images
etc. The impression given by the current web site doesn't reflect the
graphical potential of CS.
- We can have more images, eg a random screenshot on the main page and
images within the news.
- The graphical layout may be improved. Less importantly, the layout may
be unified between the web site, the blogs, the forum, the trac.
* The navigation is not evident. It is hard to find the information you
want when you don't know where it is.
There are three menus on the main page: on the left, at the top, and in
a box on the right. This is disturbing. All menus should be regrouped at
the same place, ie on the left. Some quick links are also missing, while
some others are outdated. The page structure may also be improved: some
big pages may be split, some small pages may be merged.
About
- Home
- News
- Features
- Screenshots
- Videos
Projects
- Crystal Space Engine
- CEL
- CELstart
Community
- Forums
- Blogs
- Other
Developers
- Subversion
- Trac
- Bugs
Donations
- Contribute
Documentation
- Manual
- API
- Tutorials
Ressources
- For artists
Download
- Demos
- SDK
Links
- YoFrankie
- Crystal Core
- blender2crystal
- CrystalArchitect
- PlaneShift
ToolBox
* Some information is outdated or incomplete
- The most important page is the main page. This is where the visitor
will choose between going further or zapping to another web site. The
description of CS may be improved to reflect more the status and the
potential of CS. There may also be more news when there are events like
release candidates, binary packages, new features, new projects, things
to test, needs (like seeking for an artist for the relooking of the web
site), etc
- The second most important pages are the feature list and the
screenshots/videos. The current pages doesn't reflect the impressive
feature list and potential of CS/CEL/etc. They can be improved to be
more accurate/complete/sexy. There can also be more videos/demos on the
features and uses of CS. A win32 demo package may help.
* Another important aspect of CS that is problematic is the time between
each releases. Having some scripts to automatize the whole process can
help a lot. Having supported binary packages too.
Regards,
Christian
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[Denis Washington]

Post by Christian Van Brussel
Hi Denis,
Here are some personal thoughts on what can be improved within CS. I can
help a bit working on this, we can talk about that through this mailing
list or the crystal-develop one, through personal mails, through trac
tickets or the 'Discussion' option of the web pages.
IMO, the most important aspect is having a more attractive and usable
web site. The current site is rather complete but it is having some
* The visual aspect of the web site is rather sober and sad. When going
to the web site of a 3D engine, the visitor expect to find fancy images
etc. The impression given by the current web site doesn't reflect the
graphical potential of CS.
- We can have more images, eg a random screenshot on the main page and
images within the news.
- The graphical layout may be improved. Less importantly, the layout may
be unified between the web site, the blogs, the forum, the trac.

I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
* The navigation is not evident. It is hard to find the information you
want when you don't know where it is.
There are three menus on the main page: on the left, at the top, and in
a box on the right. This is disturbing. All menus should be regrouped at
the same place, ie on the left. Some quick links are also missing, while
some others are outdated. The page structure may also be improved: some
big pages may be split, some small pages may be merged.
About
- Home
- News
- Features
- Screenshots
- Videos
Projects
- Crystal Space Engine
- CEL
- CELstart
Community
- Forums
- Blogs
- Other
Developers
- Subversion
- Trac
- Bugs
Donations
- Contribute
Documentation
- Manual
- API
- Tutorials
Ressources
- For artists
Download
- Demos
- SDK
Links
- YoFrankie
- Crystal Core
- blender2crystal
- CrystalArchitect
- PlaneShift
ToolBox

I would propose to make Screenshots a top-level item, as that is often
the first place where people look if they encounter the page of a 3d
engine. News should be part of Home, so that they are immediately visible.

Here would be my link list:

Home

About
- Crystal Space (includes Features)
- CEL
- CELstart

Screenshots

Download

Documentation
- Manuals
- Tutorials
- API Reference

Links

Post by Christian Van Brussel
* Some information is outdated or incomplete
- The most important page is the main page. This is where the visitor
will choose between going further or zapping to another web site. The
description of CS may be improved to reflect more the status and the
potential of CS. There may also be more news when there are events like
release candidates, binary packages, new features, new projects, things
to test, needs (like seeking for an artist for the relooking of the web
site), etc

Seconded.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
- The second most important pages are the feature list and the
screenshots/videos. The current pages doesn't reflect the impressive
feature list and potential of CS/CEL/etc. They can be improved to be
more accurate/complete/sexy. There can also be more videos/demos on the
features and uses of CS. A win32 demo package may help.

Yeah. Are there any impressive demos that could be shown? Otherwise,
some would have to be written (I probably don't have the artistic and
programming expertise to do so myself, unfortunately).

Post by Christian Van Brussel
* Another important aspect of CS that is problematic is the time between
each releases. Having some scripts to automatize the whole process can
help a lot. Having supported binary packages too.

I also wanted to investigate that, especially SDK builds (it is very
unfortunate that there are no binary SDKs currently, especially on
Windows where building is not that easy).

Regards,
Denis

[Jorrit Tyberghein]

Post by Denis Washington
I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

Spam can be solved in other ways too. In the past the CS site used drupal
too. We moved away from that for a full wiki solution. I still think
the mediawiki
approach is solid. Andres recently added some extra capcha protection so
it should probably be better now.

Greetings,

[Denis Washington]

Post by Jorrit Tyberghein

Post by Denis Washington
I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

Spam can be solved in other ways too. In the past the CS site used drupal
too. We moved away from that for a full wiki solution. I still think
the mediawiki
approach is solid. Andres recently added some extra capcha protection so
it should probably be better now.
Greetings,

The number of spam commits is still high (there are several just today).
A somewhat drastical, but probably useful step would be to remove all
wiki users and prompt them (via e-mail) to make themselves a new
account. Then, the already exisiting spam users would be removed, too.

Regards,
Denis

[Andres Freund]

Post by Denis Washington

Post by Jorrit Tyberghein

Post by Denis Washington
I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

Spam can be solved in other ways too. In the past the CS site used drupal
too. We moved away from that for a full wiki solution. I still think
the mediawiki
approach is solid. Andres recently added some extra capcha protection so
it should probably be better now.

The number of spam commits is still high (there are several just today).
A somewhat drastical, but probably useful step would be to remove all
wiki users and prompt them (via e-mail) to make themselves a new
account. Then, the already exisiting spam users would be removed, too.

It seems that there is at least some human interaction going on. Captchas are
required for about everything now and still new pages are created....

If somebody is interested working on this... I am not really involved in CS
anymore and wont be in the nearer future...

Andres

[res]

Post by Denis Washington
I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

We changed CMSes in the past multiple times. (Drupal I don't even recall
any more, but before MediaWiki, it was TikiWiki.) It's _always_ a hassle
- setting up, testing, and, last but not least, content migration.
Besides, the way we use MediaWiki is more or less like a CMS. Some of
the reasons we choose MW was, I think, easy editing (everyone knows how
to edit a wiki), with the thought that an easy way to add content to the
home page would result in some community-driven tutorials, information
etc. over time. (That this now resulted in the spam problem really blows.)
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

There is also a bit of a "division of labor" between the Wikis: the Trac
wiki is more of a "development wiki" were ideas, notes etc. regarding
development are collected. The MediaWiki part, on the other hand, is
more thought for "end-user" content.
It's too bad that both have desireable features which don't overlap
(MediaWiki is somewhat more versatile, but Trac + it's Wiki have the
ability to directly link to SVN revisions, source code etc. which can be
kind of neat - e.g. see the list of changes to merge into 1.4...)

Post by Denis Washington
I also wanted to investigate that, especially SDK builds (it is very
unfortunate that there are no binary SDKs currently, especially on
Windows where building is not that easy).

Really? I always kind of thought building on Windows was comparatively
easy ... no scratching together all dependencies (there's a single
package for that), and either open up the VC project and hit it or, in
case of MinGW, 'configure' etc. (what you have to do with about every
other open source project).
I know some projects/dependencies which are a _much_ bigger hassle to
set up ;p


-f.r.

[Mike Gist]

Post by res

Post by Denis Washington
I also wanted to investigate that, especially SDK builds (it is very
unfortunate that there are no binary SDKs currently, especially on
Windows where building is not that easy).

Really? I always kind of thought building on Windows was comparatively
easy ... no scratching together all dependencies (there's a single
package for that), and either open up the VC project and hit it or, in
case of MinGW, 'configure' etc. (what you have to do with about every
other open source project).
I know some projects/dependencies which are a _much_ bigger hassle to
set up ;p

Yeah, building on windows is a piece of cake.
We don't have SDK builds because nobody does them, not because it's
difficult :P

[Denis Washington]

Post by res

Post by Denis Washington
I also wanted to investigate that, especially SDK builds (it is very
unfortunate that there are no binary SDKs currently, especially on
Windows where building is not that easy).

Really? I always kind of thought building on Windows was comparatively
easy ... no scratching together all dependencies (there's a single
package for that), and either open up the VC project and hit it or, in
case of MinGW, 'configure' etc. (what you have to do with about every
other open source project).
I know some projects/dependencies which are a _much_ bigger hassle to
set up ;p
Yeah, building on windows is a piece of cake.
We don't have SDK builds because nobody does them, not because it's
difficult :P

For people who just quickly want to try out Crystal Space or run a few
demos, building from source is still a pretty high overhead. Even if it
is as simple as hell, the compilation time alone might turn a lot of
potential Crystal Space users off. This might also be a reason why
Ogre3D, with their supplied all-in-one binary SDKs, has such a big
following of users.

Regards,
Denis

[Denis Washington]

Post by res

Post by Denis Washington
I too think the webpage layout should be revised. It should be
considered to change from the current Wiki to a CMS like Drupal; as the
Trac developer page is already a wiki, I don't see much of a reason of
making the main page a wiki too. In its current state, it only
accumulates spam that way; just see "Recent changes" for evidence. This
doesn't make a good impression.

We changed CMSes in the past multiple times. (Drupal I don't even recall
any more, but before MediaWiki, it was TikiWiki.) It's _always_ a hassle
- setting up, testing, and, last but not least, content migration.
Besides, the way we use MediaWiki is more or less like a CMS. Some of
the reasons we choose MW was, I think, easy editing (everyone knows how
to edit a wiki), with the thought that an easy way to add content to the
home page would result in some community-driven tutorials, information
etc. over time. (That this now resulted in the spam problem really blows.)
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

Ok, I haven't known that. So staying with MediaWiki for the time being
might be the best option.

Post by res
There is also a bit of a "division of labor" between the Wikis: the Trac
wiki is more of a "development wiki" were ideas, notes etc. regarding
development are collected. The MediaWiki part, on the other hand, is
more thought for "end-user" content.
It's too bad that both have desireable features which don't overlap
(MediaWiki is somewhat more versatile, but Trac + it's Wiki have the
ability to directly link to SVN revisions, source code etc. which can be
kind of neat - e.g. see the list of changes to merge into 1.4...)

Post by Denis Washington
I also wanted to investigate that, especially SDK builds (it is very
unfortunate that there are no binary SDKs currently, especially on
Windows where building is not that easy).

Really? I always kind of thought building on Windows was comparatively
easy ... no scratching together all dependencies (there's a single
package for that), and either open up the VC project and hit it or, in
case of MinGW, 'configure' etc. (what you have to do with about every
other open source project).
I know some projects/dependencies which are a _much_ bigger hassle to
set up ;p

I was referring to Windows to being a bit of a hassleful build and
development environment in general, in comparison to e.g. Linux. For
instance I wanted to build CS with MinGW 4.4 (to make it interoperable
with Qt, which only builds on gcc 4.x), but read that the binaries in
cswin32libs are built with 3.4. Clobbing the sources of the supporting
libraries together and building them in Windows is somewhat more tedious
in Windows than in Linux (this is my perception, at least - probably
because Linux has such a nice shell abd decent handling of shared
libraries, but I suspect MSYS can provide roughly the same).

Regards,
Denis

[res]

Post by Denis Washington
I was referring to Windows to being a bit of a hassleful build and
development environment in general, in comparison to e.g. Linux. For
instance I wanted to build CS with MinGW 4.4 (to make it interoperable
with Qt, which only builds on gcc 4.x), but read that the binaries in
cswin32libs are built with 3.4.

The latest winlibs (1.9something, anyway) also have libs for gcc 4.4.

-f.r.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by res
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

Another measure would be to make the changes needing validation from an
admin before getting public. It would need more admin work but this can
be spread among several admins (I can be one).

Kicking the user accounts doing spam may also help since robots won't be
able to create new accounts thanks to the Captcha protection system.

[res]

Post by Christian Van Brussel

Post by res
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

Another measure would be to make the changes needing validation from an
admin before getting public. It would need more admin work but this can
be spread among several admins (I can be one).

What's your crystalspace3d.org account name?

-f.r.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Here is a proposition for the description at the main page of the web
site. This page would contain only this text, then the news.

I tried to made it sexy/attractive, ie no(t too much) complex words and
focus on sexy features. I may have forgot some important features/links.
It is also obviously missing hyperlinks.

Here it is:

"Crystal Space is a very mature and complete software development kit for
real-time 3D graphics and high-level applications like games and virtual
reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows, GNU/Linux, OSX).

Crystal Space is actually split in two main sub-projects:
- Crystal Space: component-based rendering engine on top of OpenGL, with
many features such as advanced shaders and lighting systems, physics, 3D
sounds, animation blending trees, terrains, XML loading, virtual file
system, handling of physical peripherals, and many many other things.
- CEL: entity system providing support for higher-level functionalities
like runtime package environment (CELStart), generic event system, avatar
and camera management, artificial intelligence (path finding, steering
behaviors, neural networks and genetic algorithms), cars and hovercrafts,
networking (experimental), etc.

Crystal Space is also closely linked to other projects like Planeshift,
blender2crystal, CrystalArchitect, YoFrankie and CrystalCore."

[Eric Sunshine]

Post by Christian Van Brussel
"Crystal Space is a very mature and complete software development kit for
real-time 3D graphics and high-level applications like games and virtual
reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows, GNU/Linux, OSX).

Rephrase: Crystal Space is a mature, full-featured software development
kit (SDK) providing real-time 3D graphics for applications such as games
and virtual reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows,
GNU/Linux, Mac OS X).

Post by Christian Van Brussel
- Crystal Space: component-based rendering engine on top of OpenGL, with
many features such as advanced shaders and lighting systems, physics, 3D
sounds, animation blending trees, terrains, XML loading, virtual file
system, handling of physical peripherals, and many many other things.

Rephrase: A modular, configurable, and extensible rendering engine
supporting OpenGL and advanced features such as shaders and lighting
systems, physics, 3D sounds, animation blending, foliage, terrain,
virtual file system, physical peripherals, and more.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
- CEL: entity system providing support for higher-level functionalities
like runtime package environment (CELStart), generic event system, avatar
and camera management, artificial intelligence (path finding, steering
behaviors, neural networks and genetic algorithms), cars and hovercrafts,
networking (experimental), etc.

Rephrase: Entity system supporting higher-level functionality, such as
runtime package environment (CELStart), generic event system, avatar and
camera management, artificial intelligence (path finding, steering
behaviors, neural networks and genetic algorithms), vehicles, and more.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
Crystal Space is also closely linked to other projects like Planeshift,
blender2crystal, CrystalArchitect, YoFrankie and CrystalCore."

Rephrase: Related projects: YoFrankie, PlaneShift, Blender
(blender2crystal), CrystalArchitect.

(I omitted CrystalCore because it appears to be mostly dead.)

-- ES

[Matthew Lagoe]

Even more important then a good writeup is a page that -looks- good, the
number of people that really are going to read all that is small (however a
clear writeup is important) A nice design is more important then anything
else really, some people will use the engine because it looks like its a
good engine, not that it may be the best for them.

Post by Eric Sunshine

Post by Christian Van Brussel
"Crystal Space is a very mature and complete software development kit for
real-time 3D graphics and high-level applications like games and virtual
reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows, GNU/Linux, OSX).

Rephrase: Crystal Space is a mature, full-featured software development
kit (SDK) providing real-time 3D graphics for applications such as games
and virtual reality. It is free (LGPL) and cross-platform (Windows,
GNU/Linux, Mac OS X).

Post by Christian Van Brussel
- Crystal Space: component-based rendering engine on top of OpenGL, with
many features such as advanced shaders and lighting systems, physics, 3D
sounds, animation blending trees, terrains, XML loading, virtual file
system, handling of physical peripherals, and many many other things.

Rephrase: A modular, configurable, and extensible rendering engine
supporting OpenGL and advanced features such as shaders and lighting
systems, physics, 3D sounds, animation blending, foliage, terrain,
virtual file system, physical peripherals, and more.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
- CEL: entity system providing support for higher-level functionalities
like runtime package environment (CELStart), generic event system, avatar
and camera management, artificial intelligence (path finding, steering
behaviors, neural networks and genetic algorithms), cars and hovercrafts,
networking (experimental), etc.

Rephrase: Entity system supporting higher-level functionality, such as
runtime package environment (CELStart), generic event system, avatar and
camera management, artificial intelligence (path finding, steering
behaviors, neural networks and genetic algorithms), vehicles, and more.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
Crystal Space is also closely linked to other projects like Planeshift,
blender2crystal, CrystalArchitect, YoFrankie and CrystalCore."

Rephrase: Related projects: YoFrankie, PlaneShift, Blender
(blender2crystal), CrystalArchitect.
(I omitted CrystalCore because it appears to be mostly dead.)
-- ES
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[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Eric Sunshine
Rephrase: Related projects: YoFrankie, PlaneShift, Blender
(blender2crystal), CrystalArchitect.

Probably Peragro Tempus can be added too (http://peragro.org/)?

[Christian Van Brussel]

The new description is online :)

[Lirrec]

kick the user accounts doing spam may also help since robots won't be
able to create new accounts thanks to the Captcha protection system.

As http://crystalspace3d.org/main/Special:Statistics tells, there are
15.480 registered Users. Some kind of database cleanup is definitely
needed ;)

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Denis Washington
Yeah. Are there any impressive demos that could be shown? Otherwise,
some would have to be written (I probably don't have the artistic and
programming expertise to do so myself, unfortunately).

Phystut has recently been made more fun/usable. Avatartest is using good
quality models and looks good.

I'm toying with CEL's evolvecraft since more than one year and I'm
starting to get descent results. I'll commit it in some time.

We are working with a friend (his pseudo is Korbak, he made a big part of
the Krystal model) on the concept of a car for Frankie. We would like to
make a level using the assets made within the YoFrankie project, with a
terrain2, CEL's cars, foliage, maybe even impostors, ocean, water, clouds
and fauna.

Some other demos may also be great, like something fancy about the shaders
and lighting. A level with many dynamic lights would be great. A shader
node editor may be either useful and fun.

I also thought about doing a general C++ class for the demo's. Its purpose
would be to ease the development of future demo's, unify the layout of the
demos, provide common advanced functionalities, and simplify the actual
demos to let them focus on the particular thing they want to
test/demonstrate, being more pertinent.
The functionalities of this class may include:
- all common management of main engine objects (g3d, g2d, etc)
- basic display of text (like the omnipresent Write/WriteShadow methods)
- display the logo of CS
- display general infos like FPS, triangle count, etc
- 'Info' menu: description of the application
- 'Help' menu: available keys & commands
- screenshots, video recording

All of this can be made cooperatively. For example, the big "Frankie's
car" level can be fun to set up all together.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Christian Van Brussel

Post by Denis Washington
Yeah. Are there any impressive demos that could be shown? Otherwise,
some would have to be written (I probably don't have the artistic and
programming expertise to do so myself, unfortunately).

Phystut has recently been made more fun/usable. Avatartest is using good
quality models and looks good.

I was talking about the last improvements, there is also the castle and
terrain levels which look good, as well as most CELStart apps (see
http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/CELstart#Xml_Based_Example_Demos.2FGames)

[Jorrit Tyberghein]

Post by Christian Van Brussel
Phystut has recently been made more fun/usable. Avatartest is using good
quality models and looks good.

Phystut and avatartest are indeed very nice demos now they they have been
enhanced.

What is the status on Krystal atm? How many animations are done and
what is left to be done? I think that a fully functional demo around Krystal
is still something we should try to make. Perhaps even a small game.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
I'm toying with CEL's evolvecraft since more than one year and I'm
starting to get descent results. I'll commit it in some time.

Aha! Looking forward to seeing that.

Post by Christian Van Brussel
We are working with a friend (his pseudo is Korbak, he made a big part of
the Krystal model) on the concept of a car for Frankie. We would like to
make a level using the assets made within the YoFrankie project, with a
terrain2, CEL's cars, foliage, maybe even impostors, ocean, water, clouds
and fauna.

NICE!!!

Post by Christian Van Brussel
I also thought about doing a general C++ class for the demo's. Its purpose
would be to ease the development of future demo's, unify the layout of the
demos, provide common advanced functionalities, and simplify the actual
demos to let them focus on the particular thing they want to
test/demonstrate, being more pertinent.
- all common management of main engine objects (g3d, g2d, etc)
- basic display of text (like the omnipresent Write/WriteShadow methods)
- display the logo of CS
- display general infos like FPS, triangle count, etc
- 'Info' menu: description of the application
- 'Help' menu: available keys & commands
- screenshots, video recording

Yes, something like that could be very helpful.


Greetings,

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Jorrit Tyberghein
What is the status on Krystal atm? How many animations are done and
what is left to be done? I think that a fully functional demo around Krystal
is still something we should try to make. Perhaps even a small game.

To summarize the status of Krystal, I would say it is just a beginning :)

What we aimed with Krystal was having a good-quality test model for every
current and future development of CS & CEL, including things like general
movements and actions (run, jump, etc), interaction with environment
(inverse kinematics, physics), facial animation, LOD management, whatever.

Korbak is working on small improvements of the mesh, then he will work on
the weight map. There will be more bones in the skeleton, mainly for the
hands. The texture should be improved, and normal + specular maps
generated. We will have to study why the FPS drops down from 500 FPS to 20
FPS (on my PC) once the animations are played.

I'm working on adding the animation of the hairs using the ragdoll plugin.
Everything is almost settle down for that.

I'd also like to animate the skirt of Krystal by adding support for soft
bodies in Bullet (ie a mesh that can be deformed procedurally), but it is
not easy to determine where we can implement that in a CS mesh, inside
animeshes? Btw, are animeshes intended to replace genmeshes at long-term?

On the animation side, there is a lot to come. I first need to manage the
transitions of the animations, it will be from the Blender's script inside
the 'Krystal.blend' file (ImportMocap.py).

Then I'd like to work on more animation nodes:
- 'movement node', ie a node updating the mesh position from the animation
data
- Inverse Kinematics. I'll start with a basic CCD algorithm, then see for
other possibilities.
- custom movements (direction and speed)
- Walking on uneven terrain, using the Inverse Kinematics.

One problem will be finding animations for all base movement we want.
There are a lot of motion capture data on the web (see
http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/search.php?subjectnumber=%&motion=% for example)
but it is not easy to use them as is. I used the package 'Female1_bvh.zip'
from http://accad.osu.edu/research/mocap/mocap_data.htm and Krystal was
made with a skeleton close to the one of this data package. Using other
mocap data will most likely need work in order to adapt it to the skeleton
(mainly constraining from Blender the skeleton to the mocap data).

Other problems with mocap data are that they need to be cleaned, like
applying selectively a low-pass filter to attenuate the noise of the mocap
process, or adjusting eg the foot going suddenly through the roof. The
data is also not adapted to real-time rendering, as the bone's parameters
are defined for each frame (24 FPS for now) while they should be optimized
through well chosen keyframes. Blender does not have functionalities for
that. Commercial software like MotionBuider and 3DS Max's Character Studio
can work on it, but the support for that kind of functionalities is
currently rather poor.

[Jorrit Tyberghein]

Post by Christian Van Brussel
I'd also like to animate the skirt of Krystal by adding support for soft
bodies in Bullet (ie a mesh that can be deformed procedurally), but it is
not easy to determine where we can implement that in a CS mesh, inside
animeshes? Btw, are animeshes intended to replace genmeshes at long-term?

Hmm no. I think genmeshes will always remain useful for static geometry.

Greetings,

[sueastside]

If you're looking for more demos, there is always Project Bias

The game was hacked together in one week though and the code is
extremely ugly, so i'm not just releasing it into the public. However if
someone promises to clean it up (read rewrite from scratch) I'm willing
to give them all resources. (art is CC-BY-SA)


Another is Clock Tower, something smaller that showcases what can be
done with CS sequences/triggers

Art sources(CC-BY-SA) at:
https://cyanox.nl/ptart/3d_art/buildings/oro/clocktower/interior/


A while back there was an attempt at a shader node editor at
https://crystal.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crystal/CSExtra/trunk/apps/weaverbeaver/
I can't say anything about it's state though.

Post by Christian Van Brussel

Post by Denis Washington
Yeah. Are there any impressive demos that could be shown? Otherwise,
some would have to be written (I probably don't have the artistic and
programming expertise to do so myself, unfortunately).

Phystut has recently been made more fun/usable. Avatartest is using good
quality models and looks good.
I'm toying with CEL's evolvecraft since more than one year and I'm
starting to get descent results. I'll commit it in some time.
We are working with a friend (his pseudo is Korbak, he made a big part of
the Krystal model) on the concept of a car for Frankie. We would like to
make a level using the assets made within the YoFrankie project, with a
terrain2, CEL's cars, foliage, maybe even impostors, ocean, water, clouds
and fauna.
Some other demos may also be great, like something fancy about the shaders
and lighting. A level with many dynamic lights would be great. A shader
node editor may be either useful and fun.
I also thought about doing a general C++ class for the demo's. Its purpose
would be to ease the development of future demo's, unify the layout of the
demos, provide common advanced functionalities, and simplify the actual
demos to let them focus on the particular thing they want to
test/demonstrate, being more pertinent.
- all common management of main engine objects (g3d, g2d, etc)
- basic display of text (like the omnipresent Write/WriteShadow methods)
- display the logo of CS
- display general infos like FPS, triangle count, etc
- 'Info' menu: description of the application
- 'Help' menu: available keys & commands
- screenshots, video recording
All of this can be made cooperatively. For example, the big "Frankie's
car" level can be fun to set up all together.
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[Mike Gist]

On 9 February 2010 00:43, Christian Van Brussel <

Post by Christian Van Brussel

Post by Denis Washington
Yeah. Are there any impressive demos that could be shown? Otherwise,
some would have to be written (I probably don't have the artistic and
programming expertise to do so myself, unfortunately).

We are working with a friend (his pseudo is Korbak, he made a big part of
the Krystal model) on the concept of a car for Frankie. We would like to
make a level using the assets made within the YoFrankie project, with a
terrain2, CEL's cars, foliage, maybe even impostors, ocean, water, clouds
and fauna.

The problem with demos is that it's hard to find people (mostly artists) who
want to
work on them. There's a lot of stuff in CS which has simple demos of a
single thing
but not of multiple things, so a level containing a lot of this stuff would
be pretty nice.
I'd be happy to help with it if/when you do want to start working on it.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Mike Gist
I'd be happy to help with it if/when you do want to start working on it.

We can start slowly.
A first step can be to use the assets from YoFrankie as foliage in
'terrainf' (which appears broken). There are a lot of rocks, trees,
flowers, that could be great. We can start with the current terrain then
see later what we will do exactly.

I can upload the foliage assets to the CS/data svn, it should be a zip
file of maximum 7.5 Mb. It is in binary XML. Let's play with that.

[Matthew Lagoe]

I can make music for it if you want, just let me know.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 12:10 PM, Christian Van Brussel <

Post by Christian Van Brussel

Post by Mike Gist
I'd be happy to help with it if/when you do want to start working on it.

We can start slowly.
A first step can be to use the assets from YoFrankie as foliage in
'terrainf' (which appears broken). There are a lot of rocks, trees,
flowers, that could be great. We can start with the current terrain then
see later what we will do exactly.
I can upload the foliage assets to the CS/data svn, it should be a zip
file of maximum 7.5 Mb. It is in binary XML. Let's play with that.
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[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Matthew Lagoe
I can make music for it if you want, just let me know.

It could be great. Another great thing may be sounds for the environment +
collisions of Frankie's car.

But it is probably better to wait a bit that the demo is effectively made,
so that we can see what we mostly need.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Christian Van Brussel
I can upload the foliage assets to the CS/data svn, it should be a zip
file of maximum 7.5 Mb. It is in binary XML. Let's play with that.

Hum, well, hu, I just forgot about a little thing: the textures...
The whole package weights in fact its 47 Mb.

I uploaded all the 'YoFrankie' assets (binary XML factories + DDS
textures) in the CSAssets rep of the svn:
https://crystal.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/crystal/CSAssets/trunk/yofrankie/yofrankie.zip
I'm not sure this is a good idea since the file is pretty big.

Once sorted, the package can probably be put in the CS svn as it can be
used in some of the tests/demos apps.

There are some nice stuff in the package, nice trees, flowers, rocks, etc.
Combined with terrain2 & foliage it can be very interesting.

[Lirrec]

There are also some other Websites/Pages which should be mentioned and
need an Update, e.g. the
http://www.indiedevguide.com/wiki/index.php/Crystal_Space page and
Wikipedia.
The Homepage is also updated on many pages which should be revised, e.g
the "Projects using Crystalspace" page (most of the links are dead).
What about creating a wiki-page to note all suggested changes and
outdated pages, so there's a kind of checklist we can work on?
I'm still a pretty decent c++ programmer and my english is not really
good, too, but i'd love to help cleaning up and renewing the homepage
and documentation (as far as i'm able to).
Maybe i could provide some German translations for the Homepage or
Documentation if the Wiki supports translations?

I think the first (and second) impression of Crystalspace is very
important as people won't even start looking at code and deprecation
warnnings if the project looks like there is now community and now
progress at all (the whole cs-forums look like that, too)
It would be great to see Crystalspace arise from its sleep (that way it
looked for me the first half year i followed the mailinglist and irc)
and get new people using and supporting it. Maybe an announcement on the
hp and more than 2 news a year would be a good start ;)

Regards,
Sebastian Thomeczek

[Mike Gist]

Oh, and a general comment on the whole subject;

Basically we need people to just do stuff, that's how things tend to happen
here.
There's no real structure of having to ask permission etc. (though
discussion is good of course) :)
If you want to do something, you're most likely on your own to do it (else
it'd have already been done),
so if you need a login or anything just ask here then get on with whatever
it is you want to do.


On the subject of SDK binaries again; I'm happy to make the windows ones.
Is there any preferred method of packaging them? We want them shared-libs
non-static?
What should the SDK contain? All CS apps?

[res]

Post by Mike Gist
On the subject of SDK binaries again; I'm happy to make the windows ones.
Is there any preferred method of packaging them? We want them
shared-libs non-static?
What should the SDK contain? All CS apps?

See http://www.crystalspace3d.org/trac/CS/wiki/PackagingIdeas for some
ideas.

There's also already some stuff (scripts to generate MSIs) in scripts/msi/.

Even if you frown upon MSIs for distribution take a look at what
packages this would currently generate. I don't think the division was
too bad ;)
Furthermore, check out the "file list" stuff, as that should help
splitting up the CS data/files into separate distinct groups (such as
"runtime data" which is likely needed by about every client app and
"demo data" which is only needed by CS demos) instead of having
mumble-jumble of everything (which the CS source tree is). So even if
you end up saying "I just rather zip everything up" these file list can
give you _what_ should go into a specific zip.

And wrt binary creation: I think it's good to aim for having some
scripts for easy-as-pie binary SDK generation. Less complicated means
more likely it's done; also, it helps with splitting the load (eg not
one person having to build all SDKs, but one can take MSVC 8, one MSVC
9, yet another MinGW and so on).

-f.r.

[Christian Van Brussel]

Post by Lirrec
What about creating a wiki-page to note all suggested changes and
outdated pages, so there's a kind of checklist we can work on?

I created a 'Whiteboard' page for the web site of CS:
http://trac.crystalspace3d.org/trac/homepage/wiki/Developer%27s%20Whiteboard

Feel free to add comments or pick something to do.

[res]

Post by Denis Washington
A few days ago, I played with the idea of starting a project to create a
game authoring tool on top of CS+CEL (kind of like Unity3D, but
open-source), and the Crystal Space publicity issue caught my attention
once again. So I thought: why not propose to help them out? And so here
I am - I would be glad to help you getting (and keeping) the website and
documentation up to date (and maybe - maybe - doing some coding). I have
to admit that I don't know very much about Crystal Space (essentially
what's in the - how up-to-date? - manual, and then a small bit more),
but I am very willing to learn, and for my own little project alone it
is in my very interest to make the way CS presents itself to the game
developer community as awesome as possible!
I would love to become part of your community. How about it?

Of course, we always welcome help! One reason for the 'stagnation' is
that we are (compared to other projects) not that many people, and we
basically like to write code more than documentation ¬.¬ ...

Well, to actually contribute something, there's a bit of stuff required:
- Web site editing (Main page/trac wiki): you need a website account.
Once you have it, you should be able to edit most pages (it's a wiki,
after all). Some pages are protected due their importance and/or
previous vandalism (eg the front page), you need some special
permissions to edit them: to get them, ask someone with Wiki admin
status (such as me, Jorrit, Mårten/thebolt, andres, Eric Sunshine).
- Manual/Code documentation: the sources for these are actually in the
source code repository (the manual is generated from texinfo sources,
the code documentation is generated from special comments in the headers
etc. themselves). To edit these, you need (a) an account on
SourceForge.net (b) write access to the source code repository, which
can be given by someone with SF project admin status (me, Jorrit,
Mårten/thebolt, Eric Sunshine) - we need your SF.net username for that tho.

-f.r.

[Eric Sunshine]

Additional recent discussion of project shortcomings can be found here:
http://old.nabble.com/Release-cycle-to26085051.html

We welcome contributions. If you (generally speaking) have ideas which
you would like to implement (website, documentation, release strategies,
bug fixes, automation, general improvements) please let us know what we
can do to help make those ideas reality. As Frank (res) noted, it's
pretty simple to attain necessary permissions for such changes: just ask
for the permission you require.

It would be great to see people take the reins and improve the project
in (at least) the following areas:

- A more regular release schedule: every few months rather than every
few years. Improve release automation.

- Improve bug/problem report responses. Many bug reports are never
addressed.

- Improve documentation (website, user manual, API).

- Resolve compilation/build diagnostics. Compilation warnings make the
project look sloppy, especially in a "stable" branch.

- Unification and cleanup of the website and related resources.

- Publicity/exposure.

Although some of the project administrators and long-term developers may
no longer have sufficient time to devote to the project, that does not
mean that we no longer care about the project. On the contrary, we would
be very happy to have people step up and adopt significant roles to move
the project forward.

-- ES

Post by res

Post by Denis Washington
A few days ago, I played with the idea of starting a project to create a
game authoring tool on top of CS+CEL (kind of like Unity3D, but
open-source), and the Crystal Space publicity issue caught my attention
once again. So I thought: why not propose to help them out? And so here
I am - I would be glad to help you getting (and keeping) the website and
documentation up to date (and maybe - maybe - doing some coding). I have
to admit that I don't know very much about Crystal Space (essentially
what's in the - how up-to-date? - manual, and then a small bit more),
but I am very willing to learn, and for my own little project alone it
is in my very interest to make the way CS presents itself to the game
developer community as awesome as possible!
I would love to become part of your community. How about it?

Of course, we always welcome help! One reason for the 'stagnation' is
that we are (compared to other projects) not that many people, and we
basically like to write code more than documentation ¬.¬ ...
- Web site editing (Main page/trac wiki): you need a website account.
Once you have it, you should be able to edit most pages (it's a wiki,
after all). Some pages are protected due their importance and/or
previous vandalism (eg the front page), you need some special
permissions to edit them: to get them, ask someone with Wiki admin
status (such as me, Jorrit, Mårten/thebolt, andres, Eric Sunshine).
- Manual/Code documentation: the sources for these are actually in the
source code repository (the manual is generated from texinfo sources,
the code documentation is generated from special comments in the headers
etc. themselves). To edit these, you need (a) an account on
SourceForge.net (b) write access to the source code repository, which
can be given by someone with SF project admin status (me, Jorrit,
Mårten/thebolt, Eric Sunshine) - we need your SF.net username for that tho.
-f.r.
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[Mike Gist]

Post by Eric Sunshine
- Resolve compilation/build diagnostics. Compilation warnings make the
project look sloppy, especially in a "stable" branch.

One issue here is deprecation warnings. Those tend to make up the majority.
It would be good if they were optionally enabled inside CS (but always
enabled for projects using deprecated functionality).
I don't know how to go about doing this though.
I've got into the habit at work of compiling with -Werror, with deprecation
errors not occurring I'd be in favour of enabling that in CS. It kinda
forces you to spend the (usually) few minutes to fix them as they appear.

[Eric Sunshine]

Post by Mike Gist
One issue here is deprecation warnings. Those tend to make up the majority.
It would be good if they were optionally enabled inside CS (but always
enabled for projects using deprecated functionality).
I don't know how to go about doing this though.

Deprecation warnings are indeed intended for 3rd-party code, not for
within CS itself, which means that they should not show up when building
CS. All CS code should be repaired so that it does not employ deprecated
functionality. In the few cases where such code is still present (for
backward compatibility or such), it usually is possible to disable the
deprecation via very localized pre-processor hacks. An example of such
(ugly) trickery:

http://trac.crystalspace3d.org/trac/CS/changeset/27300

Generally speaking, it probably would be a bad idea to disable
deprecation warnings globally within CS since that likely would lead to
situations where developers neglect to fix code relying on some other
code which they have just deprecated.

Post by Mike Gist
I've got into the habit at work of compiling with -Werror, with
deprecation errors not occurring I'd be in favour of enabling that in
CS. It kinda forces you to spend the (usually) few minutes to fix them
as they appear.

I also employ -Werror in my own (local) projects for this very reason,
however, I am not convinced that it would be workable on a larger scale,
such as with CS. A developer can be very careful to commit warning-free
code only to learn later that it generates warnings with tools different
from the ones he used. Enabling -Werror would then penalize everyone who
builds the code from the repository, not just developers with commit
access. By "penalize", I mean that the code would fail to compile, which
is worse than code which compiles with warnings.

-- ES

[Denis Washington]

Post by res

Post by Denis Washington
A few days ago, I played with the idea of starting a project to create a
game authoring tool on top of CS+CEL (kind of like Unity3D, but
open-source), and the Crystal Space publicity issue caught my attention
once again. So I thought: why not propose to help them out? And so here
I am - I would be glad to help you getting (and keeping) the website and
documentation up to date (and maybe - maybe - doing some coding). I have
to admit that I don't know very much about Crystal Space (essentially
what's in the - how up-to-date? - manual, and then a small bit more),
but I am very willing to learn, and for my own little project alone it
is in my very interest to make the way CS presents itself to the game
developer community as awesome as possible!
I would love to become part of your community. How about it?

Of course, we always welcome help! One reason for the 'stagnation' is
that we are (compared to other projects) not that many people, and we
basically like to write code more than documentation ¬.¬ ...
- Web site editing (Main page/trac wiki): you need a website account.
Once you have it, you should be able to edit most pages (it's a wiki,
after all). Some pages are protected due their importance and/or
previous vandalism (eg the front page), you need some special
permissions to edit them: to get them, ask someone with Wiki admin
status (such as me, Jorrit, Mårten/thebolt, andres, Eric Sunshine).
- Manual/Code documentation: the sources for these are actually in the
source code repository (the manual is generated from texinfo sources,
the code documentation is generated from special comments in the headers
etc. themselves). To edit these, you need (a) an account on
SourceForge.net (b) write access to the source code repository, which
can be given by someone with SF project admin status (me, Jorrit,
Mårten/thebolt, Eric Sunshine) - we need your SF.net username for that tho.

Thanks for the information. I'll create a website account, although I
think we should use something else than a Wiki in the mid/long term (see
my reply to Christian).

Regards,
Denis

[Scott Johnson]

I'd be willing to admin, as well.

-Scott
------Original Message------
From: Christian Van Brussel
To: CS developers and users list
ReplyTo: CS developers and users list
Subject: Re: [CsMain] A helping hand
Sent: Feb 8, 2010 10:02 AM

Post by res
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

Another measure would be to make the changes needing validation from an
admin before getting public. It would need more admin work but this can
be spread among several admins (I can be one).

Kicking the user accounts doing spam may also help since robots won't be
able to create new accounts thanks to the Captcha protection system.



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[Denis Washington]

Me too.

Regards,
Denis

Post by Scott Johnson
I'd be willing to admin, as well.
-Scott
------Original Message------
From: Christian Van Brussel
To: CS developers and users list
ReplyTo: CS developers and users list
Subject: Re: [CsMain] A helping hand
Sent: Feb 8, 2010 10:02 AM

Post by res
If locking down editing ability (much like in a "classic" CMS) is seen
as The measure against spam, well, that can be done in MediaWiki, too.

Another measure would be to make the changes needing validation from an
admin before getting public. It would need more admin work but this can
be spread among several admins (I can be one).
Kicking the user accounts doing spam may also help since robots won't be
able to create new accounts thanks to the Captcha protection system.
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