Rapid Prototyping

You might've heard about artificial life in SL, or about this blog I maintain concerning the subject of aLife in SL.

I'm currently really just exploring aLife and it's effects in a shared environment... but I'm also using SL as a rapid-prototyping environment. I want to start moving my larger more successful projects offline into a stand-alone application..

if there are other developers out there who've worked with 3D engines before -- are there any reccommendations for which rendering engine to use?

I'd perfer not to build one from scratch directly in openGL or some such thing.

Currently I'm considering using Irrlicht and developing in Ruby using the irr wrappers.

Ideas? Suggestions? Tom foolery?

As always, I suggest Torque.

Torque is originally where I learned scripting logic, and was an easy leap to LSL. Torque's scripting API also allows for some things that Second Life's does not, including Server/Client behaviors, Pointers, Classes, and an object-oriented environment similar to C++.

The core and source are in C++, and are available off their CVS once you've purchased a dev license. The demo, on the other hand, allows full access to the scripting, terrain, and GUI APIs.

While originally a game engine developed for the Tribes franchise, Torque is very user-friendly and has a large community of developers working on similar projects. I'm also a veteran with the software, so feel free to fire questions my way.

Also look into the book. It has a few errors, but it's pretty good at breaking you into the workflow. It also comes with some demo cutups that don't require a full Torque license to use.

I second the motion.

not exactly sophisticated, but I use Organica for rapid prototyping cuz it's just like working with prims.

Something to note, though - Organica is OLD. It hasn't been updated in many, many years and the price has remained constant. It's kinda expensive for what it is these days. But I've had it forever

Actually, I the main website doesnt even seem to be functional any more, which is a bit telling. But here's some info and a slightly discounted price.

http://www.filmwareproducts.com/Impulse/Organica/

Any others? Perhaps something more robust and possibly OS?

Thanks for the suggestion though -- toque does look intriguing though it does seem to concentrate heavily on game development.

Are you looking to just model things, or to model and animate things in 3D Synthetic Environments? Blender3D is a good Open Source modelling tool, and I know a few versions back they let you script a game environment via Python, but I'm not sure if that is still available.

It's also pretty easy to strip Torque of game elements and just provide a 3D world and some objects without any real gameplay. And while it's not Open Source, your $100 seat gets you access to the source code!

Looking to develop a physical simulator for my larger aLife projects.

Just a few suggestions if you're interested:

- I've not tried it myself but Ogre (http://www.ogre3d.org/) is open source and always seems well spoken of.

- I also found a pretty comprehensive list of engines at http://www.devmaster.net/

- Of course, if you're just prototyping, Director should be a quick way to throw ideas together.

- Then again you could mod Half Life or something.

- Id's released the code for most of their engines, the Quake 3 source should be out pretty damned soon.

- A quick search on Google for 'artificial life simulator' pulled up this: http://www.spiderland.org/breve/

- Came across this while browsing the forums: /120/aa/29217/1.html#post295563

Q3 source is out. Includes a version of Radiant I've read. And perhaps... perhaps... includes the source to a bsp compiler. The Ogre forum has probably been discussing it in detail. Maybe the Irrlicht engine people too.

The Blender game tools were gone for a good long while but think they're back in.

What are the language choices?

This might sound crazy, and I might get flamed for it, but if you want to do stuff fast Java's probably the best choice. You'd be surprised what Java 3D apps are doing nowadays.

If you don't believe me, visit the Java Development forums at www.gamedev.net . --Where, if you post that you disagree with what I've said, you WILL get flamed.

Gamedev, BTW, is by far the best place I've ever found to ask this type of question (I don't even care if you're not working on a game...) Not that SL OT won't find lots of dorks with opinions...

Here's what I meant by that...lol

http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/topic.asp?topic_id=339086