OGRE's been going for a long time now, and over the years a number of 'satellite' projects and commercial products have sprung up around it. People in the community already know about the best ones, but it was pointed out to me recently that to a newcomer, the vast number of add-on projects is a bit daunting. The wiki and forums are great places for the community melting-pot of activity to go on, but for newcomers to the engine it would really be a good idea to be able to point them at a list of the more mature and best supported add-ons.
So, that's what the new
"We Recommend" page is for. In many ways it's like the Featured Projects gallery is; projects that we on the OGRE team feel are high-quality enough to put on a 'top picks' list, front-and-centre on the main site so that anyone new to OGRE gets a kind of executive summary of the best stuff out there.
I've added a few obvious projects to it already, but I will be adding more, I'm open to suggestions. It's very important to realise that we have strict criteria for this list:
- Mature software only: No beta software, no works-in-progress, no 'it's almost ready but..'. Only things that are production-ready, and preferably that have already been used in a production environment. I don't care how cool something is, if it's not ready for people to entrust the safety of their own projects on (genuinely earning that magical "v1.0"), it doesn't get on the list.
- Well supported: You must have high-quality, active channels for users to consult for support. It doesn't matter whether that's a community resource or private commercial support, it just has to be there and clearly marked. In the case of the former, you need a mature & active community to qualify.
- OGRE Oriented: You need to be adding something of value to the OGRE community.
Please don't bother applying unless you honestly believe you satisfy these criteria. The OGRE team reserve the right to judge for ourselves on this, and your case will carry the most weight if your product has already received good feedback from the community. And to be clear, inclusion on the list is not affected by donations, we don't charge for advertising, and we also don't care how you are licensed; open source, free and commercial tools are all welcome if they meet the criteria. This is just a list we hope will genuinely help people process the ever increasing list of addon projects and know which ones are the most stable, popular and well maintained so they waste the least time getting up and running with OGRE.