# HG changeset patch
# User Robert McIntyre <rlm@mit.edu>
# Date 1395967596 14400
# Node ID 6d55ac73bc6fc7860f3943588fa202ed8be942e1
# Parent  bb81cef09ad7579f86c0032eefe4ab9b0a36f1f4
moar text.

diff -r bb81cef09ad7 -r 6d55ac73bc6f thesis/cortex.org
--- a/thesis/cortex.org	Thu Mar 27 20:18:51 2014 -0400
+++ b/thesis/cortex.org	Thu Mar 27 20:46:36 2014 -0400
@@ -433,14 +433,63 @@
    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. 
+   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