Ambiera ForumDiscussions, Help and Support. |
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"were do I get the idea its dead and it would be better if it was open sourced?" probably after having used it for around a decade, it still suffers the same problems which prevent it reaching its potential. many many niggle bugs which prevent the user from finalizing a project. As you correctly noticed a few small fixes would push it forward enough but yet these small fixes have remained unimplemented for so many years, it's extremely frustrating, we're not suggesting monthly updates either - especially whenever we contact Niko, for a decade has been saying nah - too busy. You say there have been solid updates recently, to the end user, the updates are unnoticeable. if it was open sourced, 100% would have improved by now, especially the api and gui and editor - yet it's been sat with nothing updated in many many years, it's definitely a dead project by now, even though there is still a roadmap with progress bars, lol.. It's a no-brainer. People new to coppercube are going to discover the same exciting potential we did 10 years back, and undoubtedly fall in love with it - but eventually, after never really getting anywhere with it, you'll agree that it's not reaching anywhere near it's potential.. as for suggesting I move on to another engine, instead of complaining, that's exactly what I did a year or so back... after Niko refused to acknowledge some bug reports I posted - but just to clarify, suggesting that ccb could be improved if it's opensourced is not a complaint. I absolutely loved ccoppercube but, for me, the fruustration of having to constantly work around the shortcomings outweighed the results in the end. Shame really. |
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..and suggesting I need to spend more time trying to understand coppercube is, quite frankly, ridiculous. |
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VP, when I mentioned “a few minor fixes”, I was mostly talking about the fact that CopperCube doesn’t remember the positions of the editor windows, so you have to rearrange them every time you launch it. Other than that, I honestly don’t know what else you’d even need to change in it. And since you’ve been using the engine for nearly decade, maybe you could clarify exactly what issues you’re talking about? I might just not have run into them yet. |
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Sikes, well, to be honest, I only started using CopperCube fairly recently, so I don’t really have much to share yet. I’ve got a few things I’ve been messing around with, like 3D billboards in the style of the original DOOM (with 8 viewing angles), pathfinding using different search algorithms, some matrix operations, and stuff like that. For the most part, I was just testing out how things work while learning the API (you know how it is "when you’re learning a new tool, the first thing you have to do is make a mini DOOM clone", lol). I don’t think I’d want to release anything right now since I’ve just decided to fully settle on CopperCube as the tool for building my small project. Maybe if (or when) I actually finish it, I’ll start writing some extensions for CopperCube too. |
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P.S. I might even finish up the custom binary I’ve been working on with some extended functionality for my own needs, and release it once I’m done with my program.
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No worries - the main issues I had were extremely simple/basic fixes.. the gui window size is way too smal (I could see only 2 lines of text on my screen) and not being able to directly edit nested actions and behaviours. Kinda difficult to explain the latter because the way I used coppercube seemed completely different to the way other people were using it, so I expect thats why I ran into the same problems which weren't much of a problem for others and why Niko said the problem is non-existent - not repeatable. I was heavily (in fact, totally) dependent on visual coding, especially variables. The Gui just isn't friendly for 1- entering, 2 viewing 3- editing conditions and variables but... some very kind (Guest) person made a few extensions for me to workaround this - they were game-changing for entering/editing/reviewing variables and conditions - but I still encountered the second deal-breaker problems of not being able to re-order sequences of actions or events (as there's no way to do this using visual coding) other than deleting them manually and re-creating them - which is mind-numbing and becomes almost impossible to track when you reach (let's say) a few hundred to a thousand variables and actions where almost every 2-line window looks exactly the same as the last. |
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VP, honestly, this is a pretty rare issue in theory, since if you want to build complex logic, you really should be using JavaScript, not the engine’s visual scripting. Visual scripting is fine for simple games, but if you’re working on anything more advanced, knowing how to write actual code is absolutely essential. Which brings up the question: why do you even need an open-source version of the engine if you’re not planning to rewrite its code? I don’t mean to sound harsh, but complaints like these just aren’t relevant. This isn’t a problem with the engine itself - it’s a problem with people using the tool incorrectly. |
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"why would I want it to be open sourced if I'm not planning on rewriting the engine myself?" Because other people, who can code, would have published an improved in around 10 minutes flat. why do I use visual coding instead of javascript? Mainly because I'm dyslexic and also because it's more logical, rather than abstract. The backend (api) is exactly the same in JS or Visual Coding. Like I said, It's the gui (frontend) that is the problem for me, not coppercubes capability/functionality. In essence, you asked what's the issue? - I said the gui for visual coding is brutal - you suggest: "You're not meant to be using visual coding, You should use JS instead" and implied it's user error, rather the GUI of software, lol. OK, well, you think it's user error then but, just to be clear, it's not user error, it's the GUI. You've answered your own question - you use JS, as do most users, so you're not encountering the issue with the GUI but the visual coding is just as powerful as the js, just a lot simpler to understand (like I said, the main issue is that the GUI doesn't show more than one action at a time and it doesn't let you edit the actions you make) effectively - you're just using a text editor for JAs, instead of coppercube editor - then just compiling the code. |
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VP, dyslexia? I get it, that’s definitely a challenge for you, no argument there. But I think it would actually be possible to build an extended, cleaner standard toolkit in JavaScript to make the visual coding workflow more convenient and compact for people who need it. |
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That said, open-sourcing the engine would honestly just hurt Nikolaus’s already low revenue. First, it would lead to a bunch of forks, which could end up killing CopperCube as a product altogether. Second, since CopperCube is built on top of IrrLicht, it’s not like tons of people would start using it anyway - maybe a handful of folks in this small community, but that’s about it. Plus, many programmers consider IrrLicht to be “bad” or outdated, so it’s not going to attract a big dev crowd. In the end, your main complaints, like mine, are really just about the editor windows. And let’s be real: source code is available, nobody ever steps up to build a new shell around it to create a more user-friendly editor (Vazahat started something like that but dropped it, and I saw one other person on the forum mention something similar, but it’s been forever with no updates) I honestly don’t think CopperCube would gain anything by going open source, even if it switched with version 7.0, especially when there are already dozens, if not hundreds, of open-source engines out there. |
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Thanks - yeah, something like That would be a dream to be honest. I did try and look into it in the past (scratch) to see if I could implement it but it was way to complex for me. The visual side of scratch is great - I even tried making a CCS drop-down-menu version which worked for reviewing my logic but I still had to enter all the actions manually in coppercube - and it got confusing making a copy of coppercube in ccs. so I didn't bother finishing iteventuallt, I had a notebook and just physically wrote evrything down but it still didnt help when I needed to edit the visual code. If there was a visual coding like scratch (but with coppercubes api), then exports a JS into copperc ube, that would be amazing but probably not possible? |
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You know, once I finish up my 3D editor, I might actually write a visual coding tool that lets you save everything as a JS file, so you can just drop it straight into CopperCube as an action or behavior. Actually… that’s a pretty good idea. |
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That'd be great! |
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That's great, wing, in fact when you're more settled please focus more on the pathfinding system, there are good ones by sven, but more of them doesn't spoil anything, if you're that good in coding I recommend you try A* Pathfinding, if it's incorporated right, coppercube will be free of bad AI, and oh my gosh, that will be a revolution, you're most welcomed buddy, have fun in this forum, some of us are here to support you 
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Right now, I’ve got A*, Dijkstra, BFS, and GreedyBFS pathfinding algorithms all working, but unfortunately, I still have to create the navmesh manually in a 3D editor. I did try to implement it as an editor plugin, but it turned out to be too complicated, mostly because the collision calculations inside the editor aren’t super reliable - and honestly, I still haven’t figured out why. |
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