A new release of PYGGEL is fast approaching...

[RB[0]]

But, there are still 3 major features missing:
ODE support
Animated models support (whether it be cal3d, a keyframe animation, or
a custom thing)
3d sound

Also needed (but not so big a project) are more doc-strings for all
the new features, some more tutorials and such.

With the new features I have just added, it is now possible to detach
the various pieces of an OBJ mesh object - so we can dismember,
explode or ragdoll (with ODE support) them.

For the 3d sound I was thinking of probably just using Pygame's sound
module, and then wrapping it into the scene, so you have now add_sound
and add_music functions in the scene.
The Music will always play the same volume, ie not be 3d, but sounds
can be given a position.
Every frame the scene is rendered the position of the camera is
checked against the position and the sound modified against that.
Sounds can then be set to repeat or die when finished.
Naturally we will also want an actual controllable volume variable for
the sound - so the distance check should then be applied to the
regular value.

For ODE support we probably need a basic "ODE_object" that you can
make like this:
geom = ODE_object(my_object)
Then that would be added to the scene, and the scene would house a
world that can then be updated each frame.
I am unsure how closely we want to integrate ode, though.
Do we want to be able to use the pos/rotation value of the regular
objects, and force ODE to acknowledge these - and thus only provide
collision detection?
Do we want ODE to work like it normally does where pos/rotation must
be dealt with through our geom objects?

Naturally ode will be optional - you just attach an ODE_world object
to the scene, and create a geom for each object and such.


For animation, I seriously have no clue what to do at this point.
I tried the pyCal3D bindings - but there is no installer for windows
or anything, and I can't manage to build it for whatever reason, and
we won't want to maintain a compiled version anyways - we have enough
to do with just PYGGEL... lol
I think there are some md2/md3 (I think lol) loaders/renderers
floating around for opengl, but I haven't found them yet.
Or we could wrap our own. In which case we would need some kind of
simple animation tool to convert an OBJ file into our animated object
file - allowing manipulation of the objs each frame.


If anyone is interested in helping with, or even handling completely,
any of these, please let me know. I unfortunately am very busy any
more, so my time for developing PYGGEL and other projects is more
limited now than it has been - so the future of the project may very
well rest on other's being willing to take a larger role in
development.

Cheers all :)

[RB[0]]

OK, I am really pushing on this release.
I'm not going to worry about 3d sound as yet, nor ODE support.
But we do now have animation support!
Basically you hardcode the animations, but those same animations can
be applied to numerous models.
Model formats are still limited to *just* OBJ, but the animator can
cull the object names out of the mesh, so you can animate everything
separately!

I'm going to be working on adding doc-strings and more tutorials and
tests and such over the next few days, with a release within the week!

Cheers all! :D