cortex: thesis/cortex.org comparison

comparison thesis/cortex.org @ 463:6d55ac73bc6f

moar text.

author	Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
date	Thu, 27 Mar 2014 20:46:36 -0400
parents	bb81cef09ad7
children	8bf4bb02ed05

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 build =CORTEX=. Doing so would lead to a system that is impossible
 for anyone but myself to use anyway. Instead, I use a video game
 engine as a base and modify it to accomodate the additional needs
 of =CORTEX=. Video game engines are an ideal starting point to
 build =CORTEX=, because they are not far from being creature
 building systems themselves.
 First off, general purpose video game engines come with a physics
 engine and lighting / sound system. The physics system provides
 tools that can be co-opted to serve as touch, proprioception, and
 muscles. Since some games support split screen views, a good video
 game engine will allow you to efficiently create multiple cameras
-in the simulated world that can be used as eyes.
+in the simulated world that can be used as eyes. Video game systems
+offer integrated asset management for things like textures and
+creatures models, providing an avenue for defining creatures.
+Finally, because video game engines support a large number of
+users, if I don't stray too far from the base system, other
+researchers can turn to this community for help when doing their
+research.
+** =CORTEX= is based on jMonkeyEngine3
+While preparing to build =CORTEX= I studied several video game
+engines to see which would best serve as a base. The top contenders
+were:
+- [[http://www.idsoftware.com][Quake II]]/[[http://www.bytonic.de/html/jake2.html][Jake2]]    :: The Quake II engine was designed by ID
+software in 1997.  All the source code was released by ID
+software into the Public Domain several years ago, and as a
+result it has been ported to many different languages. This
+engine was famous for its advanced use of realistic shading
+and had decent and fast physics simulation. The main advantage
+of the Quake II engine is its simplicity, but I ultimately
+rejected it because the engine is too tied to the concept of a
+first-person shooter game. One of the problems I had was that
+there does not seem to be any easy way to attach multiple
+cameras to a single character. There are also several physics
+clipping issues that are corrected in a way that only applies
+to the main character and do not apply to arbitrary objects.
+- [[http://source.valvesoftware.com/][Source Engine]]     :: The Source Engine evolved from the Quake II
+and Quake I engines and is used by Valve in the Half-Life
+series of games. The physics simulation in the Source Engine
+is quite accurate and probably the best out of all the engines
+I investigated. There is also an extensive community actively
+working with the engine. However, applications that use the
+Source Engine must be written in C++, the code is not open, it
+only runs on Windows, and the tools that come with the SDK to
+handle models and textures are complicated and awkward to use.
+-  [[http://jmonkeyengine.com/][jMonkeyEngine3]] :: jMonkeyEngine3 is a new library for creating
+games in Java. It uses OpenGL to render to the screen and uses
+screengraphs to avoid drawing things that do not appear on the
+screen. It has an active community and several games in the
+pipeline. The engine was not built to serve any particular
+game but is instead meant to be used for any 3D game.
+I chose jMonkeyEngine3 because it because it had the most features
+out of all the open projects I looked at, and because I could then
+write my code in clojure, an implementation of =LISP= that runs on
+the JVM.
 ** Bodies are composed of segments connected by joints
 ** Eyes reuse standard video game components

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comparison thesis/cortex.org @ 463:6d55ac73bc6f