Hiya.

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The point I am trying to make is pretty much the same as Lion_Ts, putting yourself in mind frame that you have to have all those great features or you just can't get anything done, isn't worth it, and will get you no where.

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For me, it's not about "all those great features"...it's about workflow and pipeline. It is like fighting an uphill battle...blindfolded. I'm about to start on a new project. I use Hexagon2 and Softimage|XSI for my modeling/animation. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to get a fully uv'ed, textured and animated model into A6? Very. The .x format that is "kinda implemented" in MED just plain doesn't work. The .3ds and .obj formats don't hold animation...and sometimes won't even keep the UV/textures...and when they do, you still have to re-load all the textures by hand in MED. There is pretty much no option other than to hand-animate in MED. Textures? Man-o-man, if it was only so easy to choose a texture, bump map, opacity map, normal map, etc. from within WED, I'd be laughing! But, alas, it has some ancient .wad format that makes that all but impossible. Oh, wait, the geometry blocks can't even use them...guess I'll have to do that with models then. Oh, dang, I use something other than MAX or Maya...back to the "butt-my-head-against-the-wall" method of trying to successfully import a model, with textures, into MED.

...at any rate, the point is that I could easily live with the "lack of whiz-bang" features, just as long as it was quick, easy, and painless for me to get my assets into the game in the first place. It's not like it would be all that hard for Conitec to do. Implementing a Collada import/export would allow people to happily use 3DS MAX, Maya, Softimage|XSI, and Blender...all by simply integrating *ONE* single, open source, plug-in. Fully textured and animated, ready to go.

Sorry to go off a bit there, but it's just really frusterating jumping through the "my package to 3DGS" hoop.

COLLADA import/export...is that to much to ask?

Eventhough you make some points that are indeed valid, the 'work-arounds' and/or solutions are less painfull than you think.

From Wings3D it never ever gave me problems whatsoever when it comes to the .3dS format and believe me I can unwrap with Wings3D within several seconds low-poly meshes and under about 20 to 30 minutes with an average high poly mesh. All in all, my workflow is fast enough, but yes it doesn't really work from within the 3dgamestudio programs with the push of a button, but I don't think it should either...

Cheers

I personally hope A7 is a long way off, I don't want to have to shell out $500 to upgrade from A6 pro.

I'd rather they keep doing what they're doing, adding, upgrading, and supporting A6 - all the way to version A6.99. And so many of the features that aren't included in A6 have been developed as plugins by the community... I've never thought of 3DGS as the easiest thing to use, but I'd say the available catalog of features cover just about any reasonable game design.

Rather than finding limited features, I've been continually surprised at just how much can be done with A6.

Let's wait to spend the money on A7 until it can be based on the Unreal2 Engine.