Hi guys,
Happy New Year to all of you.
I have a suggestions for the file formats and game engine.
1. Using the proprietary file formats of ROSE proved to be tedious task, doing all those converters, reverse engineering and hacking.
2. Converting most of the file to XML or similar format will help a lot, especially the readability, importing and programming for game engine, but this opens the biggest question - Who will code the client?.
Coding a client is not a hobby 3 months work for a single guy - it's incredible difficult task and that's why should be understood and open for most of the coders here, which leads to many more questions and discussions. That's will be lost of time. Forming a coding project requires a strong leadership, lots of time, lots a devoted developers and at the end the result is unknown. There are plenty of examples in the open-source world.
On the other hand using a already available free 3D engine + already existing level editors will eliminate most of the problems.
3. Using Unity 3D (free) or Ogre3D or NeoAxis (free) will be the best choice. You'll have all the tools you need + huge contributing community, online documentation and help.
4. All of the above are using there own formats, but there are export plug-ins for almost all of the major 3D modeling packages - creating new content will be a quick and easy.
5. What about the existing data? - Obviously converting it is the best choice. =)
6. Who will create the converters? - Sign me in
, I'll create for ZMD, ZMS and ZMO.
7. New sub-forums can be created for each file format and the tools for converting it to the chosen new format.
8. SVN repository for all the already converted files is a must. There is no point keeping the files in our HDDs.
Unity has excellent support and programming environment based on Mono and JavaScript. It can pack and export the executable and the supporting files to a different platforms.
Playing Rose on your iPhone, Android, Mac, Win ..... that's sounds like gaining more players =) Write once, play it everywhere.
Exporters exist for Maya, 3DS Max, Blender ... and all the soft wares which supports FBX and/or COLLADA exports.
Almost the same is the situation with Ogre3D/NeoAxis.
IMHO it's better to vote for a game engine first and then just create the converters.
Cheers