Agon - the exploration of cosmos

Thanks for visiting. This project has recently migrated to SourceForge and cannot be said to be in a state fit for others to have a go at.

There are at present no public releases, but there is a subversion repository.

Please feel free to contact the administrator of this project or visit the project summary page.

Idea

Conceptually, Agon is about traveling in space and exploring stellar bodies. Landing on distant planets, coming close to a star, exploring the vicinity of a pulsar, sifting through stellar dust. Generally we'd like to do in Agon what one perhaps could do in future space exploration. We'd like to keep a healthy compromise between the physically right and the practical. Thus, we'd like presentøy known stars, planets and other known stellar bodies and to adhere to physical laws but at the same time we need to tackle practicalities of navigating cosmological spans of distance and time.

Technically, Agon is a playground for 3d graphic engine exploitation, 3d modeling and artwork, physics simulation, UI development, object orientation, C++, software methodology and infrastructure in a collaborative software development environment.

Agon is latin for acting and doing public games.

Release history

pre-0.1: Present build

Directory layout

bin: binaries and scripts

docs: for docs that are generated

docs-src: input to the document generation process

src: where the c++ source resides

Building

Windows VS.NET 7.1

1. Make sure you have Ogre3D 1.0.7 installed.
2. Get the source with "svn co https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/agon-cosmos agon-cosmos".
3. In the Planet directory, you want a Debug directory (or Release) with the needed Ogre3D .dll files - e.g. OgreGUIRenderer_d.dll Plugin_OctreeSceneManager.dll OgreMain_d.dll Plugin_ParticleFX.dll OgrePlatform_d.dll RenderSystem_Direct3D7.dll PlatformManager_Win32.dll RenderSystem_Direct3D9.dll Plugin_BSPSceneManager.dll RenderSystem_GL.dll Plugin_CgProgramManager.dll.
4. Build!

Misc requirements

• RTTI support is required. In vs.net that means /GR compile flag.

Dependencies

OS

All dependencies should be platform independent, in the sense that a dependency is stable, mature and available on Windows XP or later, Mac OSX and Linux.

Successfull platform build and runs (i.e. if your host is not listed below, but is a Windows XP or later, Linux or Mac OSX it should be possible to build Agon for this configuration, but hasn't been tested.)

• pre-0.1:
  • MS Windows XP Pro SP2 under VS.NET 7.1.3088

Run-time components

• 3D engine: Ogre SDK, presently 1.0.7
  • Terrain: PLSM2, although presently not used

Build-time components

• Documentation: Doxygen and GraphViz
• Versioning: Subversion

Modeling

• 3D modeling: Presently, the modeling has been done in Maya 6.5. For this configuration you need
  • Maya 6.5 exporter
  • Ogre command line tools
• Textures and overlay images: Gimp 

Environment

• The bin/publish script(s) depend on PUBLISH_HOME to be set to wherever your web-server finds its documents (for Apache where your htdocs resides)
• You need the OGRE_HOME to be set correctly.

Contributing

Subversion

If you have sufficient privileges, this is generally how you would commit to the repository (checkout is covered above):

svn ci -m "<something meaningful>" <local-dir>

Publishing

The present index.html is basically the top-level Readme.html published as index.html:

$ scp Readme.html <your-login>@shell.sourceforge.net:/home/groups/a/ag/agon-cosmos/htdocs/index.html

Frequently sought-after services

Ogre3D services

Camera: get it from AgonApp

SceneManager, RaySceneQuery: get it from WorldObjectManager

Friendly hints, coding style and the like

• In general, whatever is being said in the c++ faq lite (http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/) is usually more well thought out and experienced than most of my own ideas
  • Generally we avoid evil things (http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/big-picture.html#faq-6.15)
  • One size usually doesn't fit all and that also applies to style (http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/coding-standards.html). And btw, we're with Pascal and Ada background, cf. section [27.12]. :-)
• In 80% of the cases where you're considering using a typeid() comparison or dynamic cast test, you probably want a polymorphic method instead.
• Generally, you want clarity, simplicity and readability over performance, optimization and fanciness.
  • If we need to optimize, we'll do it as a separate job and not as part of a functionality implementation
• If you add new files, please
  • add subversion property svn:keywords = Id to any relevant text file
  • ..and add an Id tag somewhere in relevant text files. With header files preferably in the class comment. With body files at the top in a comment.
• Minimal documentation requirements:
  • Use doxygen tags where appropriate
  • Classes have a class comment which at the minimum includes a paragraph on the intention of the class and an Id tag.
  • All public fields/variables have a comment
  • All public methods that aren't property get/setters has a comment unless they're overriding and the usage/intention is identical to parent
  • All header files are preambled with the GPL abbreviated inclusion text ("How to Apply these terms to your new program"). See AgonDef.h for an example.

License

This program is under the GPL license. See license.txt. The copyright holder Agon Team can be reached at yarc-oslo@users.sourceforge.net.

Tactical todo

• Surface collision detection
• PLSM2
• Agent instead of camera
• Exception hierarchy

$Id: Readme.html 4 2006-04-10 06:45:05Z yarc-oslo $