Alright, after reading at great length;this topic, I have to share some of my views, albiet from a different POV.
Q: Why do people use Blender?
A: Becuase its one Integrated Development Env.
Q: Why Do people use 3dgs?
A: (In my opinion) its because even though its not one complete IDE, for the results that can be achieved,it uses a much more straight forward approach than other systems/languages; ie: Scripting.
I must admit dissapointment after downloading the new demo of Lite-C, because my expectaions for it where infact much higher, or
maybe just misguided. I expected that by now we would have everything so common to game development needs in this day and age, such as fully integrated terrain creation/manipulation tools, next-gen built in shader library and editor(not just a set of fx scripts), etc, etc ad infinum.
The point I'm trying to make (and its a good one) is that in the past (at least 4-5 years), I've watched this entire community hunt for 3rd party or user-made development tools just trying to piece together what they need to produce what is already standard in terms of today's games.
So Whats the point? where is the solution?
I know the real answer is in scrapping both MED & WED, and moving all such
development to the engine itself(realtime/runtime env.), and creating everything there. Dont agree?, I know better. I mean honestly, why does everyone need to go hunt for John_Doe's TerrainMaker, just so they can export a relief map that inturn has to be imported, textured, perhaps otherwise modified, etc.(thats alot of work) only to then end up with guess what, a PIECE OF GROUND. If conitec would just realize this and follow the roadmap, we could have every single possible need met in a very short amount of time(like inside of 6 months). They already give us a level compiler, so why not make level editing in realtime (blocks), and as far as static shadow-mapping, just create a light representing entity like a light-bulb, move it to where you want, set its properties through an iterface(light range,color) then click a button, and the shadowmaps are updated and the level refreshed. The same goes for models, if they can make a MED, they can build it into the runtime engine. And the solution to overloading the engine with editor interfaces, is have the designer's engine as one application, and the actual game engine a second application, bare-bones that can read/load all the designed data.
I have my self, using nothing but C-script created many tools that try to bring some sort of realtime editing to gamestudio, for instance scrapping the bones system for a real-time hierarchy entity system, including its own keyframer, realtime cutscene tools(that uses the same keyframer), etc.
Gamestudio will never reach its full potential until both its users and creators address the need to meet all the shortcomings with a simple,effective, all-in-one solution.
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PS: I didnt want to ramble into a HUGE post, but I have come up with a true solution, and will be presenting much data about my theories on my new website in the weeks to come,so stay tuned.
