This games api is awesome. It’s very well documented and designed. Most of it is build with python except for a small C++ core. This means that with Jython the work would be greatly reduced.
So anyone wants to take the chalenge?
Panda links:
Why not port if C++ part is a small part. Then extra layer would be eliminated and give(?) performance boost.
I looked at the http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/ engine just yesterday and downloaded exe and demopack. It has a LUA scripting support and some demos were quite impressing.
But I wish could see a good (java) 3d engine with java-like scripting toolkit. Then if scripting is not enough we could go hardcore and compile real java .class files 
Thats actualy a very good idea. I think i will going to propose that to them.
Ahem… Note that I do have nothing against a binding project or whatever but… wouldn’t you create a good engine yourself or use Panda3D in C++/Python ? It’s a kind of “manie” from java devs to want to bind, bind, bind everything.
Go do your engine it’s more interesting (if you’re willing to do a binding it’s that you don’t have a game project to finish so you can afford a game engine creation ^^).
Just my 1 cent ;D Please don’t feel offensed.
We bind stuff because we can’t use it directly. The alternative is reinventing the wheel. Hurray, let’s call that a “manie”, trying to reproduce something a team of professionals put together after a few years of headscratching and choking on their coffee.
Ofcourse you’ll learn more by doing it yourself, but you might ask yourself, will it be anything near the quality that is required for my project.
I agree with Riven on that one. Think about it BlueSky… we want to “bind bind bind everything” because we don’t want to re-create OpenGL, or OpenAL, or ODE, etc. all very detailed and complete projects which took years to get to this level… it only makes sense to bind it.
[quote="<MagicSpark.org [ BlueSky ]>,post:4,topic:28244"]
(if you’re willing to do a binding it’s that you don’t have a game project to finish so you can afford a game engine creation ^^)
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Actualy i have two game remake projects to finish (starflight3 and daggerfall revisited) and already have plenty of game art, design docs, models, musics made by my project companions. Thats why i would like to finish these remakes if possible before finishing univ. ;D
Panda is a rapid development api. It’s a very well documented api and has plenty of support for textures, animation, models and other media like movies, sounds and music. You should give it a try to get some ideas for your own engine.
Heres an hint, if you create an .egg model importer you can then translate a load of other model formats to .egg with panda commands. The panda mesh format is vrml like format (with the full documentation in the manual) that supports skeleton animation and shaders.
Documentation, besides features, support for lots of media formats and an already binded scripting language, is probably one of the most important factors for me to choose this engine. I can’t image how many hours i wasted trying to figure how something works that isn’t documented. Panda documentation isn’t perfect either but it saves me a lot of time and frustration.
It would still be very interesting to have a complete rewrite of the panda c++ api in Java. Just think about all the documented and well designed code that is already created and would only have to be recoded into JOGL or LWJGL so that we didn’t have to waste years burning our own brain cells just for sport. The Panda guys are not interested in that but they would be very interested in knowing if anyone else would do something like this.
It’s a pleasure to admit to be wrong when you have such nice arguments ^^. If for my next game the C++ port is not yet done I may contribute to it.