Was thinking about ways to get a user interface for a C++ game I'm going to be programming when I remembered the Irrlicht open source graphics engine. I remember from before that it included tutorial code (which it still does) and was very easy to get into. And free!

How this is all relevant to Arcanum 2, apart from a easy to get into graphics engine to avoid the hideous standard windows API tutes is that it also does Isometric rendering http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/tutorials/

I going over the intro tutorials now and will probably think of Arcanum 2 after I've done a fair bit of work (or at least a bit of work) on my game, but I just thought I'd through that out there. Hopefully will make it easier for people doing their own projects.

In my awesome experience, Irrlicht GUI is shit. Sorry.

libRocket has taken my interest lately -- but I'd be aiming on using one of the forks on github has the original hadn't been updated in some time last I checked. It lets you use HTML/CSS like syntax for designing and building GUI's.

Good luck on your project -- if you're still working on it.

"In my awesome experience, Irrlicht GUI is shit. Sorry. "

The main reason I liked Irrlicht is it was the easiest to understand and use open graphics engine that I knew of. I'd tried Panda3D and though the community was great when I used it, I prefered Irrlicht for it's tutorials, documentation (not just community). It has been over a year and a half since I did a unit with open source engines tho so things may have changed in that time.

"libRocket has taken my interest lately -- "

I'll google it and check it out.

"Good luck on your project -- if you're still working on it."

Cheers. Still in drips and drabs since I've been major busy these past months. While I was hopeful to have a lot of free time after I finished my honours in February, but job search and a gazzillion other projects have me moving back and forth between Arcanum and other stuff.

At the moment tho I'm going over 3D maths and code stuff from one of my old units for a potential simulation job so that will go some ways to get me back on track. It was always my plan to see it through to the end, but most likely I'll really get into it after I finish writing my random battles tutorial either tonight or tomorrow.

Might be a bit diluted by the fact I've been making my own Arcanum module recently but hey, what AREN'T I working on

I'm not at all saying Irrlicht is shit -- in my experience it's probably the easiest 3D engine (that I've seen) to get started in. By all means, the UI lib will be sufficient to start with and for most things but eventually you will hit a wall where you need extra functionality. You have two choices then -- either modify Irrlicht itself or refactor the code to include another library. I prefer to spend time integrating another library as modifying the one you have will potentially lock you down to that one specific version -- which you don't ever want. It might be possible to extend Irrlicht but then you're just spending time re-implementing something that's already been done, tested and patched numerous times -- i.e mature code.

The most you will have to do with libRocket is implement the rendering class (based on an interface from memory) which just dumps the rendered UI onto a texture. Easy.

So far as other OSS engines go --

Panda3D's strong point IMO is it's integration with Python. That's about the only circumstance I'd use it. The C API just isn't well documented enough to warrant creating a game with it.

Ogre3D is pretty much the pinnacle of Open Source engines I think. It's very well designed, has a lot of features, works on a lot of platforms, a lot of documentation etc etc. The down point is that because it's so well designed you get a lot of paradigms shoved down your throat -- makes things seem awkward to start with if you're not overly familiar with 3D. Still a great engine though and it's what I've been using for my original IP.

Crystal3D was popular a few years ago -- haven't looked at it recently.

Don't sweat it about not finishing or really starting your project -- pretty much all freelance programmers are the same (I know I am). Things get easier when you have a team behind you but working on your own it's pretty hard not to get side tract and drift off in another direction. If everyone who started an Arcanum sequel finished it we'd have about 30 games by now.