[fpc-pascal] Castle Game Engine 5.0.0 release

[Michalis Kamburelis]

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> Michalis Kamburelis wrote:
>> The main engine site,
>> with detailed list of features, links to downloads and documentation,
>> is on
>>
>>   http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/engine.php
>
> I wonder whether I could ask one very basic question. Is this intended
> for creating e.g VRML that can then be used with other viewers, or is
> the intention simply to use VRML as an intermediate format to describe
> scenes and objects which then are animated using Castle and rendered to
> a local display via a high-bandwidth API such as OpenGL?

Both. We have both reading and writing of VRML and X3D covered. You can 
use the engine to load/construct/modify the VRML/X3D node graph, then 
you can render it and/or you can save it back to a VRML/X3D file. As 
long as you don't use any of our VRML/X3D extensions nodes ( 
http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/x3d_extensions.php ), the resulting 
VRML/X3D files will be perfectly readable by any VRML/X3D browser.

>
> Leading on from that, can Castle interwork with formats handled by
> Second Life and related projects? What are its selling points when
> compared with OpenSimulator, Open Cobalt and so on?
>

Basically, Castle Game Engine is a game engine, that can load/save X3D 
(and other 3D model formats), and render X3D (with many eye-candy 
effects). And also we have stuff for 2D, for scene manager, for AI in 
games etc... But we do not include anything "instant" for creating 
multi-user worlds. Of course you could use Castle Game Engine as a basis 
for this, to implement a standalone (and Android, and iOS, and in the 
future browser plugin) client for such system. But implementing the 
networking part will be on your side.

Regards,
Michalis