Has anyone worked with the WildMagic Engine?

The WildMagic engine is accompanied by an entire book :). That's the engine that comes along with the book entitled "3D Game Engine Design", and they tie each section in the book back into the corresponding files in the WildMagic engine. It's a very good book by itself, so I'd suggest getting it whether you care about this specific engine much or not.

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Original post by Goosey Documentation Inadequate; Seeking Mentor ... ;) The engine is fully free and open source, located here: http://www.wild-magic.com I am a student taking my cap class this semester, Advanced Game Programming. This is the engine we are using, and looking over it this last week is revealing that the documentation is extremely... sparse. *shrug* It IS a free engine so I guess you get what you pay for.. -_- So if anyone has any experience with this engine that I could refer to for help, I would greatly appreciate it! Thanks,

I have some experience with this engine. I believe that it was intended to illustrate the concepts and algorithms discussed in "3D Game Engine Design". Initially you were required to own the book to use the code, but later the code was made freely downloadable, so consider the book the external documentation (to some extent). Compared to commercial code I have seen, I think the internal documentation is quite extensive, especially for a package on the order of 250,000 lines of code. The web site has a lot of PDF documentation files that are related to engine components. The applications in the package illustrate how to use the engine.

The "Game Physics" book has an additional package of files for various physics support. That code has also been made freely downloadable (version 2.4 of the engine). The book itself may be considered the external documentation for that code. The book "Geometric Tools for Computer Graphics" has yet more description of many of the components at the web site.

Sadly, your class will end before the book "3D Game Engine Architecture" appears in print (December 2004). This book describes the engine architecture in detail--actually for version 3--which will ship with the book.

3DGED has 550 pages, GTFCG has 1100 pages, GP has 800 pages, and 3DGEA will have 700 pages. I would call that a lot of documentation :)

At any rate, 3DGEA is what I think most folks are looking for in documentation, which is why that is being written. My apologies for it being too late for your purposes.

Feel free to send email questions to the engine author (his email address is at the web site you mention). I hear he responds to all his support mail, especially for folks kind enough to use any of the books in a university course. I also noticed that gamedev.net has a forum for engines folks use. Perhaps you can post questions there, also.

I highly recommend picking up 3d Game Engine Design. Excellent book, and like Dave said it's good documentation for Wild Magic. (Good book, Dave, and I can't wait for 3D Game Engine Architecture.)

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Original post by Dave Eberly I have some experience with this engine.

:D

really ?! i'm wondering where it's coming from... ;)

:)

Hey thanks for the suggestions. I just ordered the '3D Game Engine Design' book off amazon.com following all the great suggestions (and following the fact that my gaming idol Tim Sweeny personally recommended it! :])

And Dave thanks for the invitation to personally e-mail you. Expect me to take you up on that offer! :) I think it is great your spending time here helping out people.

I am not sure why I didn't think of contacting the makers of the software before combing message boards for 'mentors' anyway.. I guess I am just so conditioned by the ultra-low standard of consumer-level tech support that I always consider that the last place to turn for help anymore.

EDIT: BTW Dave I didn't mean to offend with my comments about Inadequate documentation.. But these things are very complex and I like hand-holding ;)

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Original post by Goosey I am not sure why I didn't think of contacting the makers of the software before combing message boards for 'mentors' anyway.. I guess I am just so conditioned by the ultra-low standard of consumer-level tech support that I always consider that the last place to turn for help anymore. EDIT: BTW Dave I didn't mean to offend with my comments about Inadequate documentation.. But these things are very complex and I like hand-holding ;)

No offense taken. I know that a lot more has to be put in print regarding the engine. As always, the problem is time and resources. (It is not possible to make a living just writing technical books...)

I believe my web hosting package allows for me to set up a forum, which I will investigate as a means of supporting the engine users, but I imagine setting this up is very complex, and I need hand-holding :)

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I believe my web hosting package allows for me to set up a forum, which I will investigate as a means of supporting the engine users, but I imagine setting this up is very complex, and I need hand-holding :)

I've actually heard Invision Power Board is pretty easy to get up and running. It's also a very clean, powerful, and secure forum that you can get for free. If you're thinking of setting up a forum, I'd highly recommend you give this one a try.

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Original post by Nemesis2k2 I've actually heard Invision Power Board is pretty easy to get up and running. It's also a very clean, powerful, and secure forum that you can get for free. If you're thinking of setting up a forum, I'd highly recommend you give this one a try.

Thanks for the link! Maybe this will not be so difficult...