Plan for Chris Cole

Reaction Engine chat went very well. Here's the summary!

Hi All,

For those of you not yet in the know. The Reaction Engine SDK, which was used to create Chain Reaction, was released a week ago. It is a hobbyist engine designed for the beginner programmer and to make small games quickly. The Reaction Engine SDK community has begun a series of chats in the #Reaction-Engine channel on MGONetwork. Even if you haven't checked out the RE SDK demo yet you're all welcome to join the chats.

This first chat was a pretty general discussion. I tried to direct it with a series of topics and general questions. Here's the basic outline of what was discussed:

RE SDK Launch
Universally the community thought the release was stealthy. This is NOT a good thing. I think E3 got in the way of a lot of the press. I know of several people who stumbled on the release on Flipcode and GameDev. I think the engine has value to people who might not yet know about GarageGames, so I'm going to be trying to get some interviews setup to promote the product.

If you have any ideas on how to hit more sites, drop me or Jay a line.

Mailing List
We're setting up a community mailing list using Mailman. I hope to setup a RE SDK newsletter. There will be basically two groups: developers, those interested in adding features to the engine, and users, those who just want to build little games with the engine. Look for more information on the mailing lists in the near future.

Linux & Mac Support
Cross platform support is the big one that a lot of people have requested. It is at the top of my priority list. Currently we have a small team in the initial stages of porting the RE SDK to SDL. I am cautiously hopeful that this can be done by mid July. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Developer's Repository
First off, the RE SDK is an engine for beginners and will remain an engine for beginners. There will not be a general repository setup for the average user. However, we will be setting up a repository for those developers who would like to add features to the engine.

That said, it was almost universally agreed that the repository should be CVS and located on a dedicated server. There was some thought about using Subversion but the community in general thought that this was an untested and unfamiliar versioning system that might cause more headache than help.

G3D Exporters & Converters
Another very important issue discussed was the lack of support for an inexpensive 3D modeling program. In the beginning, Jeff and I decided to support 3D Studio Max, as this was the industry standard and all our artist friends all knew it inside and out! Now that the engine has been made public, there is a real need to support the lower end (and much less expensive) 3D modelers like Milkshape and Blender. The problem is that there are so many of these modeling programs that it has become prohibitive to write an exporter for all of them.

So we're going to write a couple of exporters for some of the common modeling programs, and a format converter. This converter will be stand-alone and command-line. I'd like to wrap a GDI GUI around it for newbies who don't understand commandline tools. The first format that will be supported will be from 3DS to G3D.

(There was also some discussion of adding native support to some of the common formats directly into the engine, but to keep the engine simple, we're sticking with the .g3d file format.)

Adding Features to the Reaction Engine - Where is the RE SDK going?
There is a lot of enthusiasm for adding new features like interiors (.map), terrains, shaders, a network layer, etc. This is awesome. That said the Reaction Engine is for beginners and making small games quickly! So I don't want RE SDK to become bloated and confused. However, I am totally open to adding these features, but each feature set must pass directly through Monster Studios, and ultimately myself. I have taken it upon myself to enforce certain standards to keep the code readable for the newbie. File formating, public API, hierarchy layering, etc. will all pass through Monster Studios.

In Conclusion
The first chat went well. This was a general discussion now we'll be focusing on more specific topics. This week we'll be discussing the graphic system. This will include its general use, the difference between G2D and G3D, and adding graphic features. However, don't hesitate to ask other unrelated questions.

IRC Channel Specifics
If you are unfamiliar with chats, there is an IRC channel setup on the MGONetwork. Most people use mIRC as their IRC client. If you don't have one already setup you can get a preconfigured one at www.mgonetwork.com/dl.php?id=6.
Network: www.maxgaming.net
Port: 6667
Channel: #Reaction-Engine
Day: Sunday
Time: 4PM PDT (this is 7PM Eastern time - I know East Coasters have a problem with this ;)


Hope to see you all there.

Chris