🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <fergnani.807276298@cadlab> fergnani@cadlab.cadlab.it (Fergnani Sandro) writes:
>Zachi Zweig <daril@euronet.co.il> writes:
>
>
>>Can Anyone recommend me on the best 3d rendering engine. We are a 
>>planning on programming a 3d game, and we don't want to start using 3d 
>>libaries that we'll regret in the middle of developing the game. Any 
>>advise on this subject will be great!
>
>
>>thanks.
>
>>Zachi Zweig
>>D.A.R.I.L Studio
>
>Take a look at BRender by Argonaut INC. It's fantastic and it's available
>on PC's and other platforms (Nintendo I think). I believe that BRender
>states for Blazing Render. It's very very  very fast. I was in contact with
>Argonaut for a while and I saw a demo. Wonderful !! Since BRender is a
>very professional product it's not for a freelance developer (like me) but
>a software company (a little one too) can afford the price.
>
>
>Sincerely, S. Fergnani
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>--
>
>Email: fergnani@cadlab.it                            Phone: ++39 (51) 6130360
>CAD.LAB s.p.a., v. Ronzani 7/29, Casalecchio, Italia   Fax: ++39 (51) 6130294 

BRender isn't actually all that fast, even on my PCI 90MHz 
Pentium (16M RAM). Check out the "fly" sample code, for
example. Chug city.

I will say that BRender is reliable - it hasn't crashed yet.
It suffers from several acute problems though:

* Currently, only a z-buffer version is availiable. I can't
  see that running on a SNES. Bye-bye cycles, bye-bye RAM.
  There is a z-sorted version out soon, but expect sorting
  errors by the bucketload.

* The documentation is truly awful. It's beautifully presented
  in a spiral-bound book, but the content tells you such a tiny
  amount about what the API is about - eg glib one-line 
  descriptions of call parameters.

* The sample code is even worse. Badly written, badly documented,
  cobbled-together, ill thought-out, not nearly enough of it
  given the size and scope of the system.

* In order to cut the API size down, access to a lot of BRender
  facilities are made by directly accessing structure members.
  There is no Set/Get API. This means that, should implementaion
  details change in the future, all your code that accesses the
  structure members that have been altered or removed or renamed
  will break. Or looked at another way, the BRender authors are
  forced to design around the current setup, and may have to hack
  new features in by brute force in order to keep customers happy.
  This would inevitably lead to buggier, less reliable software.

* The software is such that to use a bit of BRender, you need to
  use other bits of it, recurse, recurse. The interconnectedness 
  of the bits is a major frustration. When you just want to "wash
  your hair and go", ie get something working, it can take ages.

We're using BRender to prototype a 3D game on the PC that will
inevitably be a Saturn title, using our own in-house 3D system
currently in development. I wouldn't be entirely happy using
BRender in the final product. As I've said, what is there works
reliably, but I don't think in it's V1.1.1 state, it's worth GBP
6000.

Julian Gold
(Ex-Argonaut Employee!.)

These views are my own, and are not necessarily in line with those
of the company that employs me.