The Future for Surge

[rappermas]

Hey, nice title, eh? I thought it would attract you guys like gnats to a fluorescent light. This is actually benign--nothing is being abandoned :rolleyes:

surge-0.0.4, due to be released in a few weeks, should have sound support through OpenAL. I just thought that you guys should know because 37 downloads on SourceForge is sad. That's what SourceForge is for--to see how much we can max out their mirrors :D

But yeah, sound support. It's big. Let's see how much luck we have in all of this...

Oh, and what is going on with the GPL? I just read about Stallman going crazy with his ideals in GPLv3. Anyway...

[cypher543]

I find 37 to be a reasonable number. I mean, Surge is basically just a very (very) small skeleton. Graphics is the only working part (with sound coming soon, as rappermas said).

But, yeah... as soon as I saw this topic, I said to myself "Ooooo... the mods aren't going to like this...". Basically because we turned our last gaming topic into the news archive for Surge. :p

[rappermas]

The Surge Sound System, based on OpenAL, is going to be called S3, unless someone insists on changing it.

Surge Sound System = S cubed, or S3.

[Moustacha]

S³ ? or maybe §³ for fancy stuff.
Can't wait for the engine to be completed! Will you guys post the new address of Surge when you get the hosting issues sorted out?

[cypher543]

Can I ask why we're naming the components? I think Surge is a good name, and we don't need to confuse people by making them use different names for every component in the engine.
Will you guys post the new address of Surge when you get the hosting issues sorted out?
Yup. I'm just waiting for the DNS to update for my ISP (they're very behind on that sort of thing). Ideally, I would like to purchase a domain name, because I don't want to use a subdomain anymore. :p

[rappermas]

Well, the naming is mostly for debugging. When Surge starts throwing information and error through the console, it needs to be clear where the error is coming from.

For example, one of the errors I implemented yesterday would read something like:
"S3 passed an invalid value to a parameter."

So, this way you'd know that the Surge Sound System encountered an AL_INVALID_VALUE error. You'd also know that the error is related to OpenAL.

Really, this is more for developers than for anyone else--most users should never even know the name is there.

Since I'm almost done painting my house, it looks like I should be able to deliver Surge with a sound system through SourceForge in a month tops. I hope everyone has their blenders installed and has upgraded their hardware recently--it will be time to generate textures, models, worlds, and sounds soon. :D

If we put something really cool out, I think there might be some companies out there that will be willing to donate hardware to help the cause. Meanwhile, I'll keep coding...

[cypher543]

For example, one of the errors I implemented yesterday would read something like:
"S3 passed an invalid value to a parameter."
I'm just saying that that error message would be easier to understand for everyone (don't forget... Surge is open source, meaning we won't be the only developers) if it just said "OpenAL passed an invalid value to a parameter." OpenAL is the underlying engine to the "Sound System", so why make up a new name for it?

[Firewing1]

I'm not sure when you guys want to merge in the modding interface, I've made prototypes in Glade. Of course, no buttons work, but they're still there :) lol
Firewing1

[cypher543]

There's really nothing to mod at the moment. Actually, there really won't be until at least version 1.0 (which is when we plan to have every component implemented, including scripting). Modding depends on the scripting engine, so until there's something to script, there's nothing that's moddable.

[rappermas]

I'm not sure when you guys want to merge in the modding interface, I've made prototypes in Glade. Of course, no buttons work, but they're still there :) lol
Firewing1
Can I see? Lol, you know me, impatient.

Fine, I'll get rid of the nomenclature.

[Firewing1]

No problem I'll upload when I get home
Firewing1

[b00st]

what is this game???? Someone point me to some info plz.

[Firewing1]

lol I forgot to upload... Anyways, here's the prototype I have... If you'd like to open it, you need to install the glade2 tool... Or was it glade-2? Either way:
yum install glade2 glade-2
will get it installed.
Firewing1

[cypher543]

b00st: The website isn't working at the moment. This topic will probably only make sense to the participants of the last Surge topic. Sorry about that. I'm trying to get the site going again, but I have a ton of stuff going on.

Firewing1: I'll check it out tomorrow. I've got like 2 minutes at the moment. ;)

[rappermas]

Ok, I'm back in action baby, this time on Ubuntu! So this is my third distro in the last 2 months--fun! I went out and got a GeForce FX5200 for my old machine where I program and everything locked up on me. Oh well, at least the latest version of Ubuntu installed. I finally got AIGLX + Beryl working, too. So now I'm reinstalling everything and I should start programming the sound module again (or continue where I left off, before anyone gets freaked out).

I wouldn't get too worried about finishing the website up at this point, cyph. Take it easy if you need to.

And I really like what you have so far Firewing.