Hello,
my company bought a license for this engine not too long ago, with the goal to build an MMO on top of it. It looks promising but while looking at the tutorials and the source-code for 'Ineisis Online' and the 'Esenthel MMO' a few questions emerged.

Code editor
It seems like the code editor is the only way to really 'create' a game in this engine. My company is mainly using 'Visual Studio (2012)' and 'XCode' in connection with 'Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS)' to manage and create any projects. We'd like to create an visual studio project without using the code editor for 'editing' the code itself.
The actual questions are the following:

1. Resources; How are they added to a project? All I saw in the code was UID's generated by the editor(?)
2. Generally, how can one add resources - like maps, materials, etc. to a project that is not created in the code editor?
   
   Note to point one and two: The engines we were using in the past had either a package manager to store files into a packet or we're loaded directly through a file-manager with it's path.
   -
3. .pak files; How are they generated? How can I generate them?
4. Cross platform; How can I build for Mac, Android and iOS without using the code editor? Is there anything that I need to pay attention to? Any files generated by the editor that I would be missing?
5. Working Offline; The code editor seems be in need of an internet connection in order to work proper, is this correct? (We noticed that without an internet connection the editor claims to be in demo mode)
6. Documentation; Is there anything else beside the wiki that we're missing?
7. Networking; Is it recommended to use the build in networking for larger projects (256 - 512 players per server) or some external networking library like RakNet?
8. Linux support; Are there any plans for adding it?
   

Thank you for your time.

Regards,
Andrew

Hi Andrew,
I'm no EE pro, but here goes.

EE v2 is heavy on the editor.
You can still develop on VS, but you loose portability (android etc).
EDIT, well you don't loose it, you just make it hard for yourself doing it manually, ie eclipse/xcode etc.

Resources are handled via the editor, drag and drop your objs/textures etc.
You can load images (I'm sure other things) from the filesystem, again you brake portability.

The PC version builds for 32/64bit windows and android the Mac version (see your store account) builds for mac and iOS.

You can't work offline, it says the editor requires internet connection on the store when purchased.

Documentation, just 100+ tutorials, the header notes, a few videos on youtube and this forum, plenty really. Look at my footer for help.

Networking, not sure why you wouldn't use inbuild MMO features, not sure how it scales to 250-512 user.

Linux support, highly doubt it although support for linux *may* be provided via wine, especially for the server.

I suggest your company consider purchasing the MMO source code example and revisit the all tutorials/headers.

Esenthel isn't very point and click friendly so it's not for lazy programmers like me.
It's more for coding ninjas that enjoy hacking cryptic puzzlers.

Hi Andrew!

1) Resources have to be dragged into the editor. More precise into the panel on the lefthand side of the editor. It's pretty much like the "Solution Explorer" in VS.
You can then drag the resource into the code to get UID in there. (Strg + rightclick will also paste the UID in the code.

2) Not sure, never tried anything without the Editor.

3) The editor automatically creates them for you. There is a Pak class (Esenthel Engine->File->Pak) that could be used. Again i'm only using the Editor, but as the Editor was written with the engine, i imagine you can implement it with the pak class.

4) The editor applies some small changes to the code, depending on the platform. Not sure what these changes are exactly, maybe Esenthel himself can shed some light on this.

5) The Editor needs an online connection, it's some sort of DRM.

6) The tutorials project, the header file documentation, the wiki, youtube videos and the forum. Thats about it. Regarding the headerfiles, you can easily navigate them in the editor. Even if you end up using VS i would recommend to have the editor open to be able to browse the header files. Clicking with the middle mouse button while hovering over a class or function, will take you directly to the definition. The right mouse button will take you back from where you came.

7) I guess the buildt in one, but i never actually used networking.

8) Check the roadmap: Roadmap And no, it's not on the Road map atm.

Regards
Donik

Thanks for your fast replies!

@GWALD: Your signature helped me, especially the links in it, thanks.

1, 2, 4): I was investigating EE this week and found a way to use a visual studio project without loosing any portability (At least Mac, iOS and Windows; I couldn't verify it for android yet).

4): I'd still like to hear if there are any optimizations applied to the code when building to other platforms than windows in the editor (In advance: Yes, I read the Wikipedia entries for "Platforms" and "Writing portable Code").

5): Probably read over it while purchasing. But that's not a problem at all.

7): This isn't solved yet. I'd like to hear an opinion from the engine developer on this.

---

Three more questions raised in the meantime:

1): Is it possible to run the engine without starting any graphical sub-system? (I'm asking this because server's don't really need any interface, it would be nice if they could just run in a cmd window while using functions of the engine)

2): Where can I find the animations used in the tutorials? I downloaded the resources from the store but couldn't find them inside.

3): Is there a export function in the editor?

---

PS: I found some bugs:

iOS:
The engine needs to be rebuild to support armv7s processors (iPhone 5 and above), it currently only supports up to armv7.

Mac:
I encountered some random crashes of the editor when opening a world or environment for editing. Also a world rendered without high precision render targets seems to crash after moving the camera.

Windows:
In the code editor - while using my notebooks touch-pad to scroll, the scroll-bar gets 'stuck' either at top or bottom (ELAN Touchpad).

Regards,
Andrew

Your question 7- I don't think it's been tested, but Esenthel has stated before that his network code was built to work efficiently so that a large number of users is a possibility. I'm sure the engine will support that many users if your code is efficient. If you want to, you can just use Raknet from the start so as to start with a proven system just in case.

2)If you want to use the animations from the 2.0 tutorials, open the objects/anims folder, select the ones you want, then open the menu( the M ), and go to "Copy Selected Elements". Choose the project you want to copy them to.

3)There is an export function- to export the code. Assets, once imported, cannot be exported except to other Esenthel 2.0 projects.

Hello!
4) The Code Editor does not apply any optimizations to the code.
The editor can however optimize textures/simplify materials when publishing data files into paks.
But you can do "Build/Export\Project Data optimized to Android" (or iOS) PAK and it will do the same.
7) I don't see any reason why not to use built-in networking.

Quote:Is it possible to run the engine without starting any graphical sub-system? (I'm asking this because server's don't really need any interface, it would be nice if they could just run in a cmd window while using functions of the engine)

You can run the app server minimized, and do LogConsole to open cmd window. then do LogN to display messages.

Quote:iOS:
The engine needs to be rebuild to support armv7s processors (iPhone 5 and above), it currently only supports up to armv7.

armv7 will work in iPhone 5
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12657...not-armv7s
but I will add armv7s too

Quote:Mac:
I encountered some random crashes of the editor when opening a world or environment for editing. Also a world rendered without high precision render targets seems to crash after moving the camera.

You could attach crash reports here.

Quote:Windows:
In the code editor - while using my notebooks touch-pad to scroll, the scroll-bar gets 'stuck' either at top or bottom (ELAN Touchpad).

I think it's a bug with your touchpad driver.

Hello Esenthel,

thank you for answering my questions. @Rubeus: Thanks for the copy hint!
Regarding to the mac crashes I sent you a PM with the crash reports attached.

Building for iPhone 5 does not work, see the logs below (Note that this only occurs when building directly for the iPhone 5. In the simulator everything is working fine!):

Quote:Initial:

No architectures to compile for (ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH=YES, active arch=armv7s, VALID_ARCHS=armv6 armv7).

-------------
Using ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH = NO:

Choose a destination with a supported architecture in order to run on this device.

-------------
After adding armv7s to VALID_ARCHS:

ld: warning: ignoring file /Users/###/Esenthel/Bin/EsenthelEngine Simulator.a, file was built for archive which is not the architecture being linked (armv7s): /Users/###/Esenthel/Bin/EsenthelEngine Simulator.a
ld: warning: ignoring file /Users/###/Esenthel/Bin/EsenthelEngine Device.a, file was built for archive which is not the architecture being linked (armv7s): /Users/###/Esenthel/Bin/EsenthelEngine Device.a
ld: entry point (_main) undefined. for architecture armv7s
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
Command /Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/usr/bin/llvm-g++-4.2 failed with exit code 1

Regards,
Andrew

Hello,

Thanks I received the PM I will check it soon.

As for iOS iPhone 5 compilation, unfortunately I don't have iPhone 5 (only 4) so I can't check that.
But I think if you force the project settings to use "armv7" only, and not anything else, then I think it should work.
Try setting active arch=armv7, VALID_ARCHS=armv7 and ONLY_ACTIVE_ARCH to No and then to Yes if doesn't work.

In any case next release will have engine compiled with armv7+armv7s in one binary.

(04-18-2013 01:14 PM)andrewk Wrote:  Mac:
I encountered some random crashes of the editor when opening a world or environment for editing. Also a world rendered without high precision render targets seems to crash after moving the camera.

Hello,
Thanks for providing the reports, I've checked them.
Those crashes occur inside System OpenGL functions (it's OpenGL driver bug), there were few other people with similar problem, after updating to latest Mac OS version (10.8.x), the problem went away.