Funtrench Journal

Welcome to FunTrench, the digital tomorrow!

My name is Kingsley Ndiewo and I’m the lead programmer at FunTrench. I suppose some introduction is in order because once I get into the subject matter I might not have the opportunity to say much about FunTrench. You’ll know me as the Trencher soon enough, and I’m tasked with updating you on current events as they happen.

WHAT IS FUNTRENCH?

FunTrench is a technology company that is dedicated to providing technology solutions in a relevant and straightforward way. That’s not the official company position but hey…I’m the one doing the coding. So what we do for our clients is remove red tape from technology. If you want a ball to bounce we make one that bounces – simple; we won’t confound you with pre-bouncing procedures and post-bouncing checks. That’s basically us – we take care of the whole bounce scenario for you so that you only worry about sales and other important stuff.

Technology is meant to serve you, not bog you down trying to figure out how to use it – Kingsley Ndiewo

ON TO EDEN!

Now that I’ve introduced FunTrench I’ll tell you what I’ve been up to with my team of programmers. We are in the process of creating a revolutionary new product – the Eden 3D rendering engine. Now this is no ordinary 3D engine, it’s the Swiss Army knife of 3D engines. This part of the entry is for game developers, so the rest of you can just skim through. I’ll have an entry specifically for end-users later.

Eden is a development tool, an SDK, a gaming platform and so much more – all rolled into one. And our motto since we began developing it is ‘no startup code!’

Ever tried setting up a simple 3D scene in DirectX? Maybe you’ll understand what startup code means. Any SDK that requires you to write fifty lines of code just to initialize the rendering device might not exactly fill you with joy and goodwill. That’s where Eden comes in….

Eden allows you to write complete 3D games in Python. And your whole game logic will most probably fit in a few Python scripts. I tell you this because I’ve written sample games for Eden already and none of them has more than 3 code files – an XML configuration file and 2 Python scripts.

Some advantages of using Eden can be quickly summarized:

• Python is free, available at www.python.org for free download.
• Python is a very high level language (it is a scripting language), so the ease of writing code in Python as compared to C/C++ cannot be over-emphasized.
• Eden runs extremely fast so the concern about using an interpreted language will not arise. Frames-per-second values exceed 100 for simple to fairly moderate scenes which are characteristic of many games.
• Eden is suitable for both advanced game design and enthusiast game programming. I guarantee that making games in Eden is a piece of cake.
• Eden runs on the robust Panda 3D engine, which provides its back-end. Panda is a reliable and proven 3D engine, freely available at www.panda3d.etc.cmu.edu/download.php
• Eden provides a client program for the end-user, so you as the developer has only scripts and game resources to worry about. We’ll take care of getting Python, Panda and everything else installed, you just take care of making a game. No red tape.
• Eden is cool. Really, it is.

TO THE PYTHON DEVELOPER

So what does Eden look like? Well, essentially Eden is a software development kit that provides a package interface for Python code. You import Eden modules into your code and inherit Eden classes to make worlds, actors and other things. Most of the donkey work is already done for you in these classes, so all you have to do is inherit them. Sounds easy? It is.

Eden consists of 3 components you might want to know about at the SDK end, and a conventional MVC directory tree as a requirement for your game. The information given here pertains to the Alpha 1 release and is subject to change as new features are added. The 3 components are:

• Eden2D – A sub-package of the Eden SDK that provides interfaces for rendering images, video and text in the game. With this you can create game menus, pre-game graphics, cut-scenes and other things. The classes availed are Text2D and Visuals2D.
• Eden3D – A sub-package of the Eden SDK that provides interfaces for rendering 3D worlds, loading geometry (non-animated 3D models), loading and manipulating actors (animated 3D models) and general management of the 3D scene. There are several Actor classes and several World classes.
• EdenTools – A sub-package of the Eden SDK that provides tools for XML parsing and management of the MVC structure. Only advanced developers will actually use classes from here. Even the most basic world in Eden3D reads the XML files internally.

That wraps up our first lesson. More on the MVC structure next time.