Since it would almost be impossible to quote to your and reply to questions, I'll reply to them all in one go
I don't think yake has many game-specific features yet (though it can certainly be used for games! and it's definitely easier then using pure Ogre!), but I expect they will add more game related stuff as they go. We did actually talk about joining up - which we did only we sort of lost the idea - but our goals were a little different. Eventually we decided it would be good to work together on tools, as we both need the same kind of tools for models, maps and the like. We never got to that point, because we never really had the manpower for it.
Back then there were 2 programmers and I wasn't very active, when we first started using yake about a year ago now it was still rather hard to use (or we just didn't know how to use it). My inability to work with it set me back a little, just as it had done when we switched to Ogre, it just took a very long time to build any kind of interest in openfrag again. Our first demo using yake was using more pure Ogre and ODE stuff then yake, it wasn't really anything we could build upon (just like most of our previous demos) and we had to start all over again. We even considered not to use yake for a while (I'm glad we didn't take that road, we'd still be struggling with a simple predemo and nothing solid to build upon), but eventually decided we could give it another go. I started out alone on that demo, but we got a new member and he's been happily adding code since, thanks Levia! That was about 4 months ago (April 21st 2006).
One of the main goals of openfrag is to support game plugins and eventually to mix parts of those plugins. Of course, you can't mix an FPS with an RTS, but perhaps an effect used in a FPS could somehow be useful to an RTS. Every option must be open. We've setup such a framework for the first time, the previous demos all needed a major redesign and no one really knew where we were going with the code. They weren't useless, as they were all different and helped us (or at least me) get a better idea of how to build such a game engine. I believe we can use the current codebase without major modifications for a very long time.
Yake really provides freedom in all respects, openfrag tries to provide freedom in games, but it also makes a few decisions for you: if you want to make use of our network infrastructure, you will have to use our network code; if you want to build a plugin for openfrag, you will have to link to openfrag and provide a class that extends Plugin; openfrag makes use of Ogre, ODE and OpenAL - you can use anything else but these 3 will always be in memory, so you might as well use them. We try to limit people as little as possible, but some things need to be set. And of course we have Broken Alliance (the First Person Shooter we hope to make). There is no code specifically for Broken Alliance, yet, and it's not even officialy one of our goals, but most of us would love to see it. If we had joined with yake we would have overwhelmed yake in numbers (we have over 50 members, though most are inactive, and the number increases all the time) and it would probably not have helped anyone. We pretty much extend yake, but we also do things a little differently. I guess that's a specialization, though we would also exist without yake (indeed we did).
If your U-boat sim is a first person game, and you have the art available, I suggest you take a day or so to build your first demo using openfrag. If I'm online I can pretty much guide you through the process and you'd be able to fly through a sub in first person view in no time. Of course, this is easy using pure Ogre or yake as well, but at least you'd get an idea of how openfrag works. And because openfrag uses yake a lot, you'd even get an idea of how yake works
If you dont have the art, you could look at our demos, they are being improved pretty much as you read this, but they can give some sort of idea as well. I'll see if I can upload some new developer packages tomorrow (media + dependencies) as the current ones are outdated once again.
I did not mean to build a U-boat sim using an RTS engine
Our goal is to supply functionality for FPS, RTS, RPG, etc. games. If you want to add something that would also be used commonly in RTS games (in any other type of game) you could probably just use the provided functionality instead of writing it yourself. You will probably need a lot of FPS functionaility, but I suppose some of that functionality could also be used in other gametypes (think of cameras for example, or input, they are common to most, if not all). We dont want to force people into creating FPS games using our provided functionality, as that would mean all our FPS plugins would be exactly the same (with different content probably). We want to provide the basic fundamentals, and perhaps a few specializations to get you started, but if you want anything fancy you will have to create that yourself. If you want, you could then send it to us and if we like it we could add it to openfrag, allowing other people to use it more easily.
It doesn't appear time is a problem for you, so I guess openfrag would not be the limiting factor for you. I'm thinking of writing a manual for openfrag to ease the use of it, but I have to learn TeX first. Writing in word is stupid and time consuming, the same goes for writing in a wiki, so I think the only real option is TeX... I'm learning though, and I've already started on some basic texts in OpenOffice.org. The learning curve depends on how 'good' a coder you are, if you can learn from reading code it's not too bad. Most of our code is tested in one of the samples, so sample code is available somewhere. We only have 6 samples at the moment (I'm thinking of a 7th to show networking, which is currently in Playground) so it's not too hard to find sample code.
We are progressing relatively slowly, I have a near full time job which means I have about 4 hours a day of free time, in which I also have to cook and eat dinner. Most of my weekends are consumed by parties or other things, like writing lenghty forum replies
I usually manage to throw in a few lines of code every day though. Levia is currently very active, he's still learning C++ so his code sometimes needs cleaning up a little, but he has a lot of time and is very motivated. Our project recently celebrated its third birthday, so I have no doubt we will survive another few years. I should soon be going to school again, which means I'll have a lot of free time for a while. I guess we're not quick, but we are getting there!
I suppose I'm not the right person to answer how big the interest of the community is, so I'll let others answer that. Search for openfrag on the internet or the Ogre forum though, that should help out a little...
Of course, joining our IRC channel does not obligate you to anything! As much as I'd like to see you using openfrag (as a developer), I would also like to see you using yake (as a supporter of yake), and I'm very glad you are so consistent in your choice of Ogre (which I also support)! If you decide not to use openfrag you wont have to expect any hard feelings on our end.
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wow, this post is longer then expected
...and I didn't even include all I wanted to say!
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