Irrlicht running on the PSP
Posted on:August 09 2006
Good news everybody: There is a new 3D engine available for the PSP! And it is free, although not open source. Look here. Nice, eh? What? The features listed there are looking familiar? That's right. That 'new' engine is actually Irrlicht. Simply ripped of by LTE studios, and as you can see in their API documentation they simply replaced every occurrence of 'irr' with 'engine'. Maybe to justify this, they are claiming they had to rewrite/optimize 80% of the engine code. Well, Irrlicht has about 2.5 MB of pure C++ code (just estimated, I'm blogging this not from home, don't have access to the code here), written by me and contributors over the last 5 years. So they have rewritten 2 MB (=80%) of code in 3 months? Pretty impressive. Bah.
But anyway, nice work, cool that they did it and cool that the Irrlicht code is useful for them and their users now, that's why I made Irrlicht open source :). Thanks that they are giving us the credit (the Irrlicht license does not even force that, and it looks like some evil companies even exploited this) and I hope maybe they are going to make the engine open source too. :) Keep up the good work guys, looking forward to see more of Irrlicht on PSP. :) But I think with your 'irr' to 'engine' renaming you might have some problems of getting all the good features of the currently new released Irrlicht 1.1. and future versions of Irrlicht into the LTE engine. :-/ (Picture stolen from here, hope I've not broken any law.)
Comments:
Jeez, I mean you release software under the most liberal license and yet there are people who will "steal" it or misrepresent the origins of the software? By the way I get a Service Unvailable on their page. Anyway, thank you LTE Studios for porting to the PSP, lol.
peon_grunt
Quote2006-08-09 21:30:00
What? He says it is ok for him as far as I understand.
fred
Quote2006-08-09 21:39:00
Yeah he said it. But it's a different story to claim a search & replace a rewrite.
And it's sad that if they are making any money from an Irrlicht based engine and writing stuff for it, that they don't contribute back to the community.
Just my two cents.
And it's sad that if they are making any money from an Irrlicht based engine and writing stuff for it, that they don't contribute back to the community.
Just my two cents.
bicunisa
Quote2006-08-09 22:06:00
Since (or if) it is not that hard there should be someone else to provide a PSP driver for Irrlicht then!?
hybrid
Quote2006-08-10 01:17:00
"So they have rewritten 2 MB (=80%) of code in 3 months? Pretty impressive." He didn't say that he hadrewritten 80%.
"80% of code must be optimized/changed/fixed."
"80% of code must be optimized/changed/fixed."
Matthias
Quote2006-08-10 09:29:00
Hm they should have mentioned Irrlicht, since it's the Engine based upon.
Btw, are there any news regarding the PocketPC port of Irrlicht?
Thanks, and Irrlicht(niko) for president ;-)
Btw, are there any news regarding the PocketPC port of Irrlicht?
Thanks, and Irrlicht(niko) for president ;-)
IRRer
Quote2006-08-10 10:30:00
I bet Sony put the smackdown on their site :) Btw the graphics library from PSP is different from OpenGL AFAIK (if they used say PSPGL), so at the least a new renderer and different methods for handling input would be required.
Matthew
Quote2006-08-10 17:11:00
I have been lurking on the forum and looking over a lot of Irrlicht's stuff and I have been impressed in the amount of dedication and work has gone in to this. Also, that you have released the engine on the most free lisence I have ever seen on the internet.
Most of my life I have always wanted to program a computer game and release it, and you have solved the problem of a renderer with this engine
Thanks!!!!
Most of my life I have always wanted to program a computer game and release it, and you have solved the problem of a renderer with this engine
Thanks!!!!
Jonathan Snyder
Quote2006-08-10 17:11:00
Congrats! :)
Yeah, the downside of using such a liberal license is that people can quite legally rip your stuff off totally with absolutely no comeback. That's one of the reasons we've stuck with the LGPL - using the library is not restricted in dynlib environments but modify it and you have to give changes back, quite a nice balance of freedom & responsibility. It does mean we have to dual-license for consoles though because of the NDA issues, slightly complex but at least we can control it. There are ports of Ogre out there for various consoles but none can be made official except under this dual license.
You won't see these guys releasing the source code openly, they legally can't under the NDA they will have signed with Sony to be an approved developer. They can only pass on the code that uses the PSP libs to other approved developers, this is always the case with consoles (well, except for the GP32 perhaps).
Ah well, at least they gave you credit, and even told you at all - neither of which they were obliged to do.
Yeah, the downside of using such a liberal license is that people can quite legally rip your stuff off totally with absolutely no comeback. That's one of the reasons we've stuck with the LGPL - using the library is not restricted in dynlib environments but modify it and you have to give changes back, quite a nice balance of freedom & responsibility. It does mean we have to dual-license for consoles though because of the NDA issues, slightly complex but at least we can control it. There are ports of Ogre out there for various consoles but none can be made official except under this dual license.
You won't see these guys releasing the source code openly, they legally can't under the NDA they will have signed with Sony to be an approved developer. They can only pass on the code that uses the PSP libs to other approved developers, this is always the case with consoles (well, except for the GP32 perhaps).
Ah well, at least they gave you credit, and even told you at all - neither of which they were obliged to do.
Steve
Quote2006-08-10 18:18:00
The pocked pc version is a bit.. well.. stopped for now it seems, sorry. :)
@steve: Yep, your're right. But they didn't tell me about the engine, I only found it by accident, maybe this was what made me a bit angry in the first moment. :)
@steve: Yep, your're right. But they didn't tell me about the engine, I only found it by accident, maybe this was what made me a bit angry in the first moment. :)
niko
Quote2006-08-10 18:38:00
lug still fuming about all this... niko, you're too nice. if it was up to lug, lug would've smacked them with an irrlicht open source, openly licensed worm or something, that'll take them offline...ungrateful, bleep, bleep...
lug
Quote2006-08-10 21:33:00
Too bad.
Then i have to program my old (s)c(h)ool laptop, and stick with OGRE for PocketPC...or....well, no. I'll only stick with Irrlicht.
Then i have to program my old (s)c(h)ool laptop, and stick with OGRE for PocketPC...or....well, no. I'll only stick with Irrlicht.
IRRer
Quote2006-08-11 00:27:00
I just realised that this guy isn't even an approved PSP developer, he's in the homebrew scene. This is all well and good, but if I were you I'd stay far, far away from it, at least officially / publicly.
Console manufacturers are desperate to prevent unauthorised code running on their machines, and frown heavily on people that help unofficial developers run code on their consoles. Sad from a technical standpoint, but somewhat understandable from their point of view, since their only hope of making back the money on their hardware is by keeping control of the software.
Being publicly associated with, or promiting a project that bypasses the official developer programme probably won't help you if you ever want to be part an officially licensed developer. My advice is to keep your distance, at the very least in public perception. As I said, I'm aware of several unofficial Ogre console ports but whilst I find them technically fascinating I neither use nor link/promote them, because I would like to see official ports eventually and don't want to prejudice that position.
Console manufacturers are desperate to prevent unauthorised code running on their machines, and frown heavily on people that help unofficial developers run code on their consoles. Sad from a technical standpoint, but somewhat understandable from their point of view, since their only hope of making back the money on their hardware is by keeping control of the software.
Being publicly associated with, or promiting a project that bypasses the official developer programme probably won't help you if you ever want to be part an officially licensed developer. My advice is to keep your distance, at the very least in public perception. As I said, I'm aware of several unofficial Ogre console ports but whilst I find them technically fascinating I neither use nor link/promote them, because I would like to see official ports eventually and don't want to prejudice that position.
Steve
Quote2006-08-11 13:24:00
Well, I've been pestering them for a source release, so far no luck :-( The engine could do with optimization and .irr support. A source release would help speed things up faster :-D
TOA
Quote2006-08-18 12:48:00
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