Paradise Framework announce [19/07/2011 updated!]

[Xavyiy]

Hi all!
The Paradise Studios team is proud to announce the Paradise Framework solution!

Note: this is just an early announce, all framework parts are under a heavy development process. We will announce a realease date as soon as we feel that we have an excellent product to show, that live up the high quality standards set by HydraX and SkyX.

The Paradise Framework is integrated by:

Paradise Engine
A robust and well-designed showcase engine, which uses the latest real-time rendering and simulation technologies. The Paradise Engine is built on the top of the Paradise Threading library, which allow you to run complex scenes getting a very high performance.
Of course, the Paradise Engine uses Ogre3D as its rendering engine!

Paradise Engine Sandbox
The Paradise Engine Sandbox is a complete scene-oriented world editor system that has a very intuitive and rich user interface. As well as the Paradise Engine, the Paradise Engine Sandbox is built on the top of Paradise Threading, which guarantees you the best possible performance!
- More info after the introduction -

Paradise Threading and Paradise Utils
These two libraries are the core of the Paradise Framework.
Paradise Utils is a C++ templated, high-performance utilities library that offers us the possibility of doing complex things in a smart and easy way.
Paradise Threading is a powerful micro-threading library which has a bunch of features which allows the Paradise Framework to use all CPU resources of latest multi-core systems.

Hydrax and SkyX
Now, the well-known Hydrax and SkyX Ogre3D libraries are part of the Paradise Framework.
Of course, Paradise Studios has a compromise with the Ogre community and both – Hydrax and SkyX – libraries will always been released under the LGPL terms. New major features are coming for Hydrax and SkyX so… stay tuned!

Paradise Engine Sandbox Preview:

Note: The Paradise Engine Sandbox is currently under development - since 6 months ago- and it's being developed at the same time that the other framework parts.

At the moment, the editor core system is almost finished, although advanced object types / rendering techniques are not yet implemented.
Currently, these are the main Paradise Engine Sandbox features:

• Fully micro-threaded system
• Scene-oriented world editor
• Multi-tab support (with tab renaming support)
• Powerful multi-selection system
• Per-pixel precission selection system(with alpha BRAND NAME support)
• Powerful undo/redo system
• 3D Viewport gizmo with user interaction support
• Full plugin support (Engine plugins + Editor plugins)
• Multi-lenguage support
• Customizable grid per viewport
• Solid, wireframe and point view modes

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g99hIVLXiT0
Direct link: http://modclub.rigsofrods.com/xavi/Para ... nounce.avi - 73.4Mb

19/07/2011 Update:
It's now more than a half year since the initial announce, and a lot of things have been added to the Paradise Framework.
These are the most interesting features added during this time:

• 3D manipulation system
• Multi-viewport tabs(6 available layouts)
• Full property editor rewrite
• Materials support
• Lots of Engine/Editor enhancements

Here are some new screenshots!




Next steps are SkyX and Hydrax integration, SkyX thunderstorm support and a lot of new features for both plugins! So... stay tunned!

Licensing: The Paradise Framework isn't yet available for licensing. Hydrax and SkyX are out of the comercial scope and future versions are going to be released under the LGPL terms.

About us: The Paradise Studios team consists on 3 guys: one 3D artist, Marcus 'despadas' Feital; one 2D artist/BLOCKED, Josep 'emmgfx' Viciana; and me, Xavier 'Xavyiy' Verguín, at the coding part.

The Paradise Studios team

[DanielSefton]

Looks solid.

So are you aiming for something along the lines of Unigine? Aka, graphically focussed and optimised for outdoor scenes?

[compvis]

A ton of Congratulations to your team !

Al least we have an announcement before say goodbye with 2010 like Xavyiy promised

[trilobite]

The Paradise editor looks very snappy.

OK, what I see in the screenshots and video is a very nice scene editor. Place, orient and move objects, modify their properties and so on. Nicely done.
Now, the term, "framework" , as in Paradise Framework, suggests a larger system of which this nifty editor is part.
So, I was wondering if the Paradise framework will include a shell or shells (game shell? do they call them that anymore?) that tie these beautiful Paradise scenes together and host the action going on inside them...
I can imagine a framework that includes the user interface, game shell, media support including entity audio, scene music, plugin support for physics and AI, and scripting support. That should be enough for three guys...
That sounds more like a game development framework, but is that your goal?

Anyways, it looks really cool. Great work!

[so0os]

Man, I was looking forward to that, even though i didn't know what paradise engine even was. Looks awesome! Keep up the good job!

[jacmoe]

Congratulations, Xavier!

I wish you success.
It's not easy to break into that market.
We have NeoAxis, but it would be great to have other alternatives (preferably using pure/raw C++).

[pratty70]

Good work! Well done...

[Xavyiy]

Hi all and thanks for the kind words!

@DanielSefton
About your question, I think the simplier answer is: we want to get something graphically along the lines of Unigine(focussed in outdoor scenes), but providing a robust and intuitive world editor like Unity3D does.

@trilobite
Hi trilobite, about your question, the Paradise Framework also(apart all graphical things like scene objects, terrain, water, sky, particles, etc) will include: sound system, physics, built-in procedural foliage generator tool(to be used with the engine foliage system), scripting support, tree based post-processing compositors generator tool, river tool, and so on. All tools are going to be integrated in the editor.
This is the because of we've called it "Framework", but in a near future(<2 years), it's going to be more a Showcase framework than a Game framework, since a game framework is more focussed on the IA/Scripting part, and we're going to do that when all other parts of the engine/editor will have been finished.

@jacmoe
Thanks jacmoe!
Yes, we know it's not an easy market, but hope a high graphic quality (I've read that full DX11/tessellation support is now coming for Ogre 1.8, that will be a big plus!) married with an optimized pure C++ micro-threaded engine and a great All-in-one editor will fit the needs of some clients! =)

Xavi

[Rambus]

Hello,

I just want to say that this looks very good- and its great to know you are still working on (and committed to LGPL for) HydraX and SkyX.
I look forward to see more of your work in the near future.

[nevarim]

i'm curious to see all of this project

[Archwyrm]

Paradise Threading is a powerful micro-threading library which has a bunch of features which allows the Paradise Framework to use all CPU resources of latest multi-core systems.

That's pretty interesting. Are these microthreads similar to what is in Erlang or Stackless Python? What are you using for synchronization? Channels perhaps?

Almost a year ago I was looking for a C++ library that allowed me to do CSP style concurrency, but I didn't find anything too promising. So, I've ended up writing code in Go instead.

Also, what platforms are you planning to support? Everything that Ogre supports?

[nevarim]

paradise ai again in development?

*curious*

[Brocan]

Hi Xavyiy!

First of all, your engine looks great! with lots of funcionalities!

Me and a friend are currently working in a small engine, and we want to make a few tools... which libraries are you using for this editor? wxWidgets? Qt? Windows Forms? Windows Forms in C#?

Thanks in advance!

[Xavyiy]

Hi all!

@Archwyrm
First of all, sorry! I've totally missed your post! (I think due to I've had my exams in January...!)
I'm not familiar with Erland or Stackless Python, but I think Paradise Threading is more like Stackless Python.
To give you a general idea, in Paradise Threading you've the scheluder, called TaskManager, which allows you to execute group of tasks. These executions also can be recursive: you can execute a group of tasks and execute another group of tasks inside one of the original tasks (any recursion level is allowed).

An important point is that Paradise Threadingsupports dependencie relations between tasks, for example, you can define that one task needs some data from another task/tasks, and this task will be executed -only- after the needed data has been calculated.
Inside a task, you can notify that a data has been calculated by invoking: PThreading::Task::dataFinished("ID")
Also, tasks data is marked as calculated when the task has finished its execution, so any other thask/tasks that needs the calculated data can be executed now.

Here is a little example, Parallel FFT execution using PThreading: (No task dependencies or recursivity in this example)
FFT functions: http://codepaste.net/tu5kqj
So, with that, FFT execution looks like this: http://codepaste.net/oto1tk

Also, if you're interesed in some numbers, you might find interesting a post I wrote some time ago when I was finishing/testing PThreading: http://www.paradise-studios.net/?p=29

Basically, Paradise Threading features are:
-Easy-to-use object oriented C++ interface
-Data dependencie between tasks support
-Support for recursive tasks executions
-Custom user tasks implementations support
-Support for multidimensional parallel loops
-Built-in concurrent-safe data structs such as queues, stacks, …

About the platforms I'm planning to support, the whole code is multi-platform, there are only some parts of PUtils and PThreading that I haven't written the Unix implementation yet. So, I hope to work on the Linux version as soon as I'll feel the engine/editor is in a good development state!

@nevarim
Yes, of course, but a whole engine/editor takes a lot of time to have something new and interesting to show you =)
I'll post new screens in some weeks!

@Brocan
Hi Brocan, thanks for your opinion! =)

For the editor, I'm using Qt. If you're using C++ for your engine I think Qt is one of the best options!

Xavi

[Brocan]

Hi again Xavyiy

Qt is my primary target for making my tools , but Windows Forms looks really great... the problem is the .net dependence

As I can see in your post, you are currently working in a microthreading solution at low level, like paralelize fors and other calc tasks, like openmp do, o like CUDA should do. So, are you thinking about execute all system updates sequentialy and, inside of each one, update the system itselft paralelly? or you update all the systems in parallel at the same time?

My current vision is update all systems in parallel, but i'm having some problems on how manage them, because when (for example) there is a task of renderoneframe in ogre, the creation tasks, destruction tasks, and "change properties of ogre object" tasks can't be executed, because it can cause segfaults because ogre isn't thread safe. This produces that at last, the render task must be executed sequentially, but in parallel with other systems tasks...

Thanks in advance!

[compvis]

@Xavyiy: Congratulations ! You have your own site !

[nevarim]

@Xavyiy: Congratulations ! You have your own site !

i quote congratulations (but there aren't images inside )

[Xavyiy]

@Brocan
Hi Brocan!

About Windows Forms, I've never used it, but I have also hear some good words about it =), anyway, if you've planned Linux/OSX support (even in a future), I think Qt is the best way to go!

Well... about how to update things inside the engine loop, this is something very specific to your engine/game design and probably one of the harder design parts!
In my case, I'm using an hybrid solution, this is: update some systems completly in parallel(when possible), and, inside systems that can't be parallelized, update parts of them in parallel.

For example, in the sandbox initialisation, I create all systems in parallel because at this point they're independent one from others:


Also, inside systems, somethings are parallelized in order to make things faster, for example, in a 8-core CPU, ideally each system(there are 8 main systems in Paradise Engine) will be asigned to each processor, and, one time one system will have been initialised, this processor will be used to process any other system "sub-task".

@compvis @nevarim
Thanks =).
Anyway, as nevarim has remarked, the website isn't yet ready!

Xavier

[Xavyiy]

Hi all!

Long time since last update! In the first post I've listed some new features and posted 6 new screenshots!
Now, it's time to work in SkyX/Hydrax and its integration within the Engine/Editor! =)

Since the core work is almost done, from now on the updates will have more graphic material to share, so it will be more interesting to all of us!

Also, we are woking on some models and art to showcase the full power of the engine. Things are moving slowly but steady, and as soon as we have more to show, we will post some screenshots!

Hope you like the new screens, and stay tunned for more news!

Xavier

[nevarim]

good job i'm waiting skyx and hydrax update

[Xavyiy]

Very close to release Paradise Sandbox! October 10, if all goes as planned.

If you want to be an early user (aka betatester), contact us: http://paradise-sandbox.com/#contact.php

More info in the website! I'll make a proper announcement here after the official release date!

Xavier

[scratchyrice]

Great news!

Will the new version of hydrax be released along with it? Or will that be seperate?

Cheers

Scratchy

[Xavyiy]

Hydrax 2.0 will be released separately, under a commercial licensing model. I'll try to have it ready for November.

Paradise Sandbox uses Hydrax 2.0 (with custom micro-threaded geometry and noise modules, using Paradise Threading), but I still have to create the Ogre-standalone demos and some doc.

Xavier

[scratchyrice]

Hi Xavyiy,

Will the 60 euro license have the source available? I plan on integrating it with my own engine and would like to create optimized mutli-threaded noise and geometry modules.

Thanks

[Xavyiy]

Yes, all licenses will have full source code access

Xavier