Argh!

[neighborlee]

This thread definitely made me chuckle!

I gave Unity an honest shot, and I think it's quite well done for what it is. For myself, I just couldn't be beholden to license fees per platform and I certainly couldn't afford a source license for unity/cryengine/unigine/anythingyoucouldname ... not to mention Ogre stands up decently to those. I strongly identify with the programmers who chose Ogre in order to work with C++ and I've taught many a non-coder how to appreciate Lua

It must hurt Ogitor contributors deep in the heart to hear people say Ogre lacks a decent scene editor. I was blown away by the quality of Ogitor when first checking out Ogre as an option for my own projects.

Well I guess anybody would be 'hurt' as you say for all their hard work to go unappreciated, but in real life sometimes the details are important too
I've tried Ogitor, and sure while its still not version 1 by a longshot , its a huge offering for Ogre3d without question, but a few things before we get all teary eyed about a 'lacking ogre editor'

Ogitor lacks documentation, which for the elite and powerful not already stars in using ogre3d , that could make this very rough, and the tutorials noted on the 'wiki' have still after all this time, not been created. Judge for yourself if that matters, but it's fact. Maybe they just don't have time, don't think they are needed or think other editors are more worthy so why bother, I just don't have that answer.

The binary that's up there still doesn't run ( as it is). Judge for yourself if that should matter.

That doesn't change the fact its a very capable editor making ogre3d hardly without one, but its hard to use unless you know a lot about it or are a solid c++ programmer using ogre effectively. Again, judge for yourself whether or not that effectively gives us a on blance '0' score for a 'ogre editor' . It's awesome, but how do you use it ? Maybe it really is true that OSS makes great stuff but is often lacking in documentation. I could site other examples. I could myself try and get it working again if I had the energy ( maybe that explains missing documention; lacking energy , blah), but getting there with a non working binary doesnt' appeal to me atm. I want to very badly and USE ogitor and make Tutorials for it I really do, but my head hurts thinking about it honestly knowing the hassles involved in getting there. I might change my mind tomorrow, who knows.

That's my take anyway, feel free to attack me if you disagree , but before you do realize its just how I feel about it, and its not personal. Really it's not. Maybe I didn't try hard enough the last time I used it and was lost, so maybe tomorrow will bring a few new ideas.

Cheers
nl

[c6burns]

The binary that's up there still doesn't run ( as it is). Judge for yourself if that should matter.

It does run. I ran it as a binary and eventually built it from source both as a beginner to Ogre. Did you download the media files that are required to go along with it?
http://www.ogitor.org/wiki/Getting_Ogitor

How to use it is pretty self explanatory. Documentation is overrated: http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/0 ... -luke.html

[spacegaier]

Yes, the binaries do run otherwise we wouldn't have had those uploaded. If you have concrete trouble feel free to notify us on the Ogitor forums and we will try to sort them out. But as already mentioned, building Ogitor from source is fairly easy and in many situations still your best bet.

[neighborlee]

THe binary does not run in windows 8.1, and I know ogre supports that OS. So while you can claim it does run, it doesn't run here.

Download binary > unpack > runpath>bin>qtogitor.exe

Crash. It may run on other OS's,,XP maybe ?, but not in windows 8.1, so effectively Im not wrong about it not working

About the docs well, no, its not obvious how 'all' of it works, its somewhat complicate given the underlying structure of ogre is anything but simple. So no I don't agree about it being all that intuitive, though doable obviously, if you spend enough time with it I guess and ask enough questions. BUt no its not that obvious how to do , xyz. Not at all and to say otherwise is ridiculous Im not knocking it, Im just saying its far from 'obvious' what to do, to achieve a awesome looking terrain out of the box.

I'll check my windows 7 computer later, to see if the binary works there, or if it crashes like it does in windows 8.

Oh and btw, don't tell me to make sure I have xyz to 'run' the binary. That does most of us no good,because there is no 'readme' in the runtime DIR I unpacked, telling me anything special needs to be done to make it work.

If there is binary available on website, and if I download said binary and it doesn't work as expected, given no docs are offered in the directory where download occurred, then I expect it to work out of the box, short of possible issues with OS 'name yours'.

OH and btw c6burns, your point about reading the source, is what exactly ? That url was not instructive and very insulting to anyone but the most elite of users. I don't appreciate , elite users, so next time please, just don't bother posting such things because the next time you do it, will put you on my IGNORE list immediately.

[spacegaier]

My statement was meant in a general way, that they work at least on the platforms we tested and given that I am not aware of any team member using Win 8.1, we might still have issues there. But as I said. If none reports them in our forums, how are we supposed to know .

Adding a README is a good idea. It would then include the hint that another poster already gave you, that you are probably missing the media.zip and the projects.zip as described here: http://www.ogitor.org/wiki/Getting_Ogitor

But please let's move that discussion over to the Ogitor forums, so that we can get back on the original topic here.

[c6burns]

OH and btw c6burns, your point about reading the source, is what exactly ? That url was not instructive and very insulting to anyone but the most elite of users. I don't appreciate , elite users, so next time please, just don't bother posting such things because the next time you do it, will put you on my IGNORE list immediately.

If you don't understand C++ I can't imagine why you would choose Ogre in the first place, which brings us back, in a way, to one of the subjects of this thread ... namely turnkey game engines vs. Ogre. There's no shame in not being a coder, or being a beginner one. We all came from that stage no matter where we may be now. So there's no need to get upset about some sort of presumed elitism, or threaten to add people to ignore for offering help with Ogitor.

The point of the article, which I assumed would be completely exoteric, is that documentation will never be as good as the source ... it's the reason I enjoy open source projects so much. I feel the concept also applies outside of coding as well, in the form of "getting your hands dirty" and "learning by doing". Anyway no hard feelings and best of luck in your endeavors!

[neighborlee]

Who said I don't understand c++ ? Not me . Maybe you assumed that, but that would be a incorrect assumption. I may not have 10 years of experience in c++, but I can work my way through it.

Isn't it kind of odd to expect someone to read the source, to understand how AppX is expected to be used/works ? I mean fine for some things maybe, but to suggest doing that as a general rule is weird.

I guess if that is the desired outcome, a developer from ogitor should say so here

I've hardly ever, ever heard anyone say, that to figure out how to use a app, that I need to read the source. If that were true, why does ogre itself have any documentation ?

Cheers
nl

[neighborlee]

OH and btw c6burns, your point about reading the source, is what exactly ? That url was not instructive and very insulting to anyone but the most elite of users. I don't appreciate , elite users, so next time please, just don't bother posting such things because the next time you do it, will put you on my IGNORE list immediately.

If you don't understand C++ I can't imagine why you would choose Ogre in the first place, which brings us back, in a way, to one of the subjects of this thread ... namely turnkey game engines vs. Ogre. There's no shame in not being a coder, or being a beginner one. We all came from that stage no matter where we may be now. So there's no need to get upset about some sort of presumed elitism, or threaten to add people to ignore for offering help with Ogitor.

The point of the article, which I assumed would be completely exoteric, is that documentation will never be as good as the source ... it's the reason I enjoy open source projects so much. I feel the concept also applies outside of coding as well, in the form of "getting your hands dirty" and "learning by doing". Anyway no hard feelings and best of luck in your endeavors!

P.s.--because the choices for OSS engines are VERY limited ?

It's not impossible to learn as you code, none of this is rocket science and there is zero reason I shouldn't try. TO suggest otherwise I find a bit strange. BUt anyway asking is free I guess :0

I just don't like being told to RTFM ( intent notwithstanding, that is what it felt like is all). I 've heard it way way too many times in certain cirlcles shall we say and its just boring and tired I hardly threatened you. I s aid if X happens, Y will be the result. You could have just apololgized if you thought you had offended me and I could apologize if I 'misunderstood' your intentions. But you must admit, the url seemed to be saying something pretty clear. You do not need docs, just read the source. Really ?

cu
nl

[c6burns]

It's just a harmless link to an article I like. Maybe you don't like it. That's OK. I don't want to get dragged into the weeds of a tangential argument. Next time you try Ogitor, read the wiki article I linked on how to get it running, or post on the Ogitor forums. It might save you several posts here.

[neighborlee]

It's just a harmless link to an article I like. Maybe you don't like it. That's OK. I don't want to get dragged into the weeds of a tangential argument. Next time you try Ogitor, read the wiki article I linked on how to get it running, or post on the Ogitor forums. It might save you several posts here.

Last post on this. It had 'nothing' to do with me not liking anything. IT was the idea that the 'source' is all we neeed, vs documentation. I hope you weren't suggesting that, but given you did mention that and your URL certainly made that clear, how else should you expect me to react ? ) I Freeely admit though, that a reminder about the source is never a entirely bad thing as we all likely will need to interact with it as some juncture.

I can't not respond when you say things as you have else look like Im just reacting to something I flat just, 'don't like'. That would make me look bad, and I can't do that.

AS space* noted, if I need further help, I will post on Ogitor's forum.

I do however think, that we can' t be naïve to think that all of ogre's ( or any OSS engine) offering holds up to anything unity can shoot out, cryengine, UDK or whatever. Hardly. I say that, in full recognition of OSS's accomplishments in allowing those of us who aren't rich, to not be forced to bow down to that endless circle of money. That's a huge deal, but lets be honest, unity/udk etc., is in NO current danger of being yesterdays news THEIr editors, while ogitor is indeed amazing for what it is atm, is no competition to them whatsoever, at least not in having any sizeable impact on their bottom line. I suspect that someday that will no longer be the case

cu
nl

[Kojack]

I think Ogitor is confusing to get running at first, I had the same problem: crashes when run.

When you go to the Ogitor page, there's a huge download link for 0.5 (although it doesn't say download, it just has a little arrow pointing down at a tray like thing). When you extract that, you get a runpath directory. There's no readme.txt, install.txt or similar, so it seems like not much is needed to make it work. Find the exe (it would be better to have a bat file or something in the base path that knows where the exe is) and run it: crash. It doesn't say why it crashed. That's not a good start to a program.
If I then download a media pack and project pack (their download links are in the wiki, not anywhere near the big download link) and extract them, it works fine. Even in windows 8.1 (I just tested it on my Surface Pro 2, it runs great).

First up, if three downloads are needed for Ogitor to run, all three should be near each other! Don't have one on the front page and the other 2 in the wiki. It would be better if the download link went to a page (instead of starting the zip download directly) that lists all three and says "you must download all of these for it to work".

Second, if the binary isn't enough to start, it should have a readme.txt that says "if ogitor crashed, go get the other two downloads".

Third, if it is known that ogitor crashes when certain media is missing, ogitor should check for that media and give a meaningful error message dialog. It's not like I extracted Dark Radiant or Unity or something and the install was corrupt so a few files were missing, in that case it would be understandable that the program crashes. In this situation, Ogitor is supplied in a "it will crash" form, so it should make that friendlier. A lot of Ogitor users on a team are going to be designers and artists, not coders. They won't know to read an ogre.log file and sort through almost a thousand of lines of logging output to find a missing item exception.

Not to bash Ogitor (it's great) or the devs (they are great), but the way it presents itself to new users is lacking. If the front page of a site has a big download link, most people will grab that and give it a shot before looking through wikis and forums, so their very first experience (that will probably taint their opinion) is a crash.

(I'm not sure if the projects zip is needed or not, but the media one is. Maybe above where I say three downloads are required I should have said two. Sorry if that's wrong)

[syedhs]

There is a lot of work done in Ogitor.. however there are minor bugs here and there.. and I think it is in the state of 90% completed, only 10% more effort is needed to enhance user experience, fixing all minor bugs, and also make code contributions easier - currently you have to understand a lot of stuff inside to contribute.. correct me if I am wrong..

[spacegaier]

@Kojack: Yes, checking for the media files is on the ToDo list = there is a ticket on our tracker for that. Same for adding a README. We just have to implement that. As soon as I find some Ogitor time, those will be the first ones I will tackle.

And thanks for testing Ogitor on Win 8.1! Good to know that it works flawlessly .

[c6burns]

There is a lot of work done in Ogitor.. however there are minor bugs here and there.. and I think it is in the state of 90% completed, only 10% more effort is needed to enhance user experience, fixing all minor bugs, and also make code contributions easier - currently you have to understand a lot of stuff inside to contribute.. correct me if I am wrong..

It's actually pretty accessible if you are committed to working with it. I was able to implement my own Editor (inheriting from CBaseEditor) after just a few days of digging around the source. I have a level designer (non coder) who started working with it and didn't really have any complaints about stability. A few crashes here and there, but that's pretty standard for someone used to the cryengine sandbox. I think it holds up surprisingly well to commercial sandboxes in terms of productivity (considering not only that it's free, but MIT license), and I have used several fairly extensively.

[Kojack]

@Kojack: Yes, checking for the media files is on the ToDo list = there is a ticket on our tracker for that. Same for adding a README. We just have to implement that. As soon as I find some Ogitor time, those will be the first ones I will tackle.

And thanks for testing Ogitor on Win 8.1! Good to know that it works flawlessly .

I didn't try much with it, but it loaded the sample scene fine.
The main issue is touch/pen input.
Touch works fine for the general interface. I can select meshes just by touching them, the qt gui works fine with it. But right mouse camera control via touch goes crazy. Probably because touch is an absolute positioning system, not relative like a normal mouse. The trackpad on the keyboard does do right mouse camera control fine.
The pen (a wacom digitiser pen with hover, right mouse button and eraser tip) is completely disabled when Ogitor is running. It won't even interact with the rest of windows 8.1 (can't click on the task bar, etc). It doesn't even have it's hover cursor. Exiting Ogitor returns the pen to normal.

The same things happen with the ogre sample browser, touch input goes crazy for camera control. However it doesn't disable the pen, it just goes crazy like touch.

But this isn't about windows 8.1, just the unusual situation of running ogitor on a tablet.

I've been meaning to take a look at ogitor to see how easy it would be to add 3D Connexion support (hmm, I mention them enough that people will start thinking I'm a shill). They are really awesome for editors.

[spacegaier]

I've been meaning to take a look at ogitor to see how easy it would be to add 3D Connexion support.

Not sure right now, if we already expose a matching interface for input devices, but if not we can happily work together on one to expose all necessary parts to a plugin that can deal with your "exotic" hardware . If you start to give it a try, contact us on the Ogitor forums to align and assist.

[Kojack]

Just imagine Ogitor with this kind of camera control:
[youtube]QO1Q8LIyKqc[/youtube]
You'll need to look closely to even see my hand moving, the controller is very sensitive.
Of course that doesn't help the 99% of people who don't have one of these.

[spacegaier]

JOf course that doesn't help the 99% of people who don't have one of these.

If Ogitor were to support it, that might increase the adoption rate of the controller .

[cybereality]

3D mice rule. People have no idea what they're missing.

[Kojack]

Well, they are missing not having a huge chunk of their income disappear. Sadly these things are a bit expensive (especially in australia, where the price gets bumped up by the local stores and 3d connexion don't ship overseas to individuals).

I've tried convincing the 3d art teachers I work with to give them a try, but most say "but I use my left hand for keyboard shortcuts, this would interfere". There's buttons on the controller, but not enough to replace the keyboard.
On the other hand (no pun intended) a 3d controller like this can theoretically move the camera while you are using other tools. In Sketchup (one of the best supporting applications) if you are dragging out a wall but get to the edge of the screen, you can move the camera without releasing the wall.So you can move around to get better views while moving/rotating/editing an object. It's impossible with the typical keyboard/mouse based camera tools.
(Although a lot of software, such as blender, can't handle camera changes while tools are active)

Very easy to code for too. I ignore the sdk (I think it was com based), just grab the raw input device and read the messages. It's just 6 axes and a bunch of buttons. Although that won't get you into the configuration program with all the settings.
The lcd screen is programmed using Logitech's lcd sdk (for their keyboards, G13, etc).

There's a new cordless model out now. I might get one for my surface pro 2.

[TheSHEEEP]

Anybody else got some quick rants they want to vent? (not just about unity or education, anything is valid)

Yes. Windows!
Seriously, how could that nonsense ever get the coverage it has today?...
It must be the most unstable system in existence.

I'm currently doing profiling and performance optimizations in our research prototype. Mostly on Linux, though, as there is no good profiler for GCC under Windows that would not cost hundreds of $$$. Also because Kubuntu (or any Linux system, I guess) is just waaaay faster than Windows in... pretty much everything. But every once in a while, I switch to Windows, of course, to see if my changes also yielded an improvement there.

And seriously, the same program runs once with 40-41FPS, and when I close it and start it again, I get 50-53 FPS. Wtf? It is as if there is a "good" and a "bad" mode and Windows determines randomly which one to choose when starting a program. There's also no medium ground here. The performance stays the way it started. It's not like the program would end up with a balanced 45FPS in any case.

So I always have to check different revisions against each other when testing under Windows, and each revision multiple times to get the "good" mode at least once. As there is no way I could say "Yes, this runs better/worse than without the changes" with just running the program once. Way to spend development time. And it's not just my problem, my colleague has the exact same issue. I'm on Windows 7, he's on Windows 8.

[neighborlee]

LOL, I just love that cute Linux <user> rant, you feel better now ? lol

Seriously, I myself, and my two friends all use windows, and they never report 'stability' problems, but sure, costs to run a given app in windows sounds awful so on that front I concur, and sure , you sound like you are having troubles on other fronts that I can't relate to, so I can't comment.

I ran windows 7 for ages with zero troubles, as did m yfriends, and one still does, hundreds of games installed and all of them played over a year or so, and no issues . I run windows 8.1 now and I have having some issues but I think its because the motherboard is too old and not certified for windows 8. THings change, but Im not happy about my time lost in trying to fix things., and I still am not sure what's up, short of going back to windows 7 until I upgade my mobo. If that counts as instability so be it, but my friends don't have the same issues. I went cheap on the mobo, so I guess im reaping what I sowed <argh>.

Thank you kojack for saying what I've been feeling myself. Ogitor is a hugely appreciated offering and I get that 'programmers' don't always see things from a designer/artist perspective so we give a pass to them on that LOL

Is it worth the extra time to get the source compiled for ogitor ? Is the terrain part of it enhanced with the new terrain in 1.9 or should I just get the media DIR stuff and use binary for now ?

btw,,does boost take FOREVER to unpack for anyone else or is it just my hdd needing replaced

Btw THeSHeeep ( got a border collie ? I do, and dain is she fast and agile! ), maybe your performance is user constrained ? lol Seriously, have you checked what is currently running and causing lower FPS ? Downloads, anything else running in background ? I bet you'll find something.

THis should go elsewhere and I'll make sure to do it, but btw guys/gals/devs,,,boost pro website is DOWN, and its staying down. THey went on to greener pastures That needs updating too ( README), bah humbug

Last thing and this is the best part so I saved it for last; Ogitor binary works FINE, at last it does not crash. Thanks to kojack for inspiration.I guess I had the 'media' dir in the wrong spot, no idea, that was yesterday. At least it runs so for now I can try it and when I get good enough Ill create a video tut to help others ( and fix those 'content missing' URL's for the 3 help articles ). For all the moaning, I do appreciate ogitor teams hard work. Once the minor 'kinks' are ironed out as kojack noted, it will be a huge benefit to ogre and those needing something like it to propel their ideas forward

NonRant'ish over LOL
nl

[Kojack]

I'd love to rant about patents, but I think we're all feeling the same way. But I'll do a little anyway.
Current situation: Apple has recently been granted patents on on-screen virtual keyboards and using a finger to make swipe gestures on a phone screen (yes, these existed for years before the iphone, but on resistive screens, not capacitive). They are taking on Android with it.
Rockstar Bidco (patent troll created by a coalition of Apple, Sony, RIM and Microsoft) has just brought patent suits (in east Texas of course, where all patent suits end up) against Google for advertising related to internet searches (Google's primary revenue source) as well as suits against Samsung, HTC, LG, Asus and other Android supporting companies. They have $4.5billion worth of Nortel patents to back them up.

[mkultra333]

Yeah, that current patent case just underlines how insane and damaging patents are. But with these consortiums paying so many billions of dollars for the patents, it's going to stay like that. They won't try to fix the system because they have too much invested in it as it is. Plus more and more court precedents and rulings will just lock the corrupt system in deeper and deeper.

Apple and Microsoft in the same patent troll group? With the cross licensing patent deals that will probably result from the Rockstar case, we'll more or less end up with just one loosely defined amorphous mass-patent monster that locks virtually everyone else out of thinking. No matter what you do, you'll probably be close enough to violating at least one of their obvious, vaguely worded programming ideas. Close enough for the lawyers to threaten, anyway, and who can afford to fight?

[Kojack]

I'm not sure why Sony is involved. They make Android phones and don't have any other conflicting business with Google, but they helped start a group that is trying to take google down.


Here's another rant. One thing that really pisses me off is movies with talking non humans (animals, aliens, monsters, whatever) that make no effort to have the non human things sound non human. Especially if they just throw in a famous actor as the voice.
One of the ones that really pisses me off is the Madagascar series. An animated lion with the Ben Stiller doing the voice, but not the voice of a lion, just the normal human voice of Ben Stiller.
I really liked the movie Paul, except that Paul was just the voice of Seth Rogen. I wouldn't mind Seth doing the voice, as long as he makes it sound alien in some way! Put a little effort into the part! Or at least get the audio guys to post process it a bit.
I'd rate the voice acting of Scooby Doo way above all the celebrity animal voices in animated movies these days. At least with Scooby Doo if you close your eyes and listen to the voices, you can tell Scooby isn't a regular person. Do that with Madagascar and it sounds like just a typical Ben Stiller / Chris Rock movie.

The world would be a better place if Frank Welker did every voice over.

[youtube]0vz1Ni35QlY[/youtube]