[ODE] { Newbie, Need a bit help }

[cr88192]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam D. Moss" <adam at gimp.org>
To: <ode at q12.org>
Sent: Saturday, June 18, 2005 3:43 AM
Subject: Re: [ODE] { Newbie, Need a bit help }


> Jon Watte (ODE) wrote:
>> Why is it that people can't recognize a link error when they see it, and 
>> figure out what to do about it? Don't classes teach 
>> compile/assemble/link/load anymore?
>
> Not every took / can afford classes.  Be gentle on
> hobbyists, he did say he was a newbie!
>
or the classes suck, or the coder is still pretty young (eg: elem or middle 
school...).

now, programming classes are usually for the older crowd (eg: those going to 
college). imo, if a person waits that long, most likely, there is no hope, 
the person does not have enough motivation and will likely be unable to 
develop much skill anyways.

ok, yeah, it took until around the middle school timeframe before I was 
really developing much skill with c, so I can tolerate highschoolers being 
newbies (and still having some hope...).

so I wonder around what was the age of that dude anyways?...


even then, it does not mean anything someone writes will matter. almost 
everything is doomed to be worthless besides that which is made by those 
people that matter apparently, or that which can manage to somehow "not 
suck".

I am off starting development of a moddeler.
it is a few days in, rough description thus far:
    full 3d interface (vs the 4 views interface);
    6dof controls (2 mouse axis, 4 keyboard axis);
    camera uses quats for orientation;
    single, multi, and drag selection for vertices, faces, and meshes;
    delete for faces/meshes/vertices, insert for vertices;
    translate/rotate/scale for selected geometry;
    not much else at present;
    a ui not quite living up to my original hopes.

will it go anywhere? I don't know. I just felt I was getting tired of ac3d 
(and it's sometimes limiting interface), but haven't found much "better".
a larger problem: come up with a ui that is not terrible.

a problem, too many "modes". eg: select, translate, rotate, and scale 
presently. naturally, these could all be handled with control points (or by 
determining whether or not the mouse is inside the selected volume). 
however, this poses other problems, primarily in that selecting and working 
with things is more problematic, but hitting keys to change modes is also 
tedius...

(one other, vaguely considered option was mapping some modes over to the 
numeric keypad or similar, which could be less awkward than letter 
keys?...).

also, more bugs and limitations exist than anything "useful" yet.

this is one of my first apps to use c++ as well, and one of my first in a 
while to be more of a frontend app than a test app for my lib code (or my 
last major "cad" attempt, which was more a demo app for a prog lang I was 
working on at the time, and served to point out many limitations of the 
language...).

note: no downloadable code, binaries, or screenshots exist yet.


> --adam
> -- 
> Adam D. Moss   -   adam at gimp.org
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