http://www.panda3d.org/

I am not shore is it a good platform for our game cause I'm not programmer, maybe Cdrwolfe needs to check this out, I'm little bit outdated with informations about combat system as far i remember there were problems with irrlicht maybe panda is solution. On their web site you can find bunch of nice screenies which show all potential of engine.

This game uses Panda engine for massive space battles:
http://www.panda3d.org/showss.php?page= ... /antarean2

Thanks Zeleni and I sure hope it works. One thing that seams to turn model builder away from us is that we do not have a more functional combat engine at this stage.

@Kenneth- I agree with you completely, key thing why support for supremacy is so weak is non functional ai and combat system.

There's not much that we can do about the AI; Mike is working on it but the work will simply take as long as it takes.

As for the combat system though, Wolfe said something about him converting the current system to XNA. I'm not entirely sure what that means, but Strings made both of his programs, The Combat System and the The Model Viewer with XNA, and the results are brilliant as you can see. Strings is currently too busy to produce anything towards the game, so his programs are no longer under development though.

I've actually asked Mike if he could find a way to add a model viewer of some kind into the ingame Trekpedia so you can rotate the ships like you could in BOTF, although he didn't reply to the message.

Anyways, if we (Wolfe) was to go with this Panda thing, the first thing it would need is to be XNA compatible...

I do not know from XNA but for what it is worth:

"Full Python Integration
Automatically-generated wrappers expose full functionality of engine.
Highly optimized: all core functionality in C++
Thoroughly-tested: two commercial MMOs in python
Panda3D structures garbage collected when using Python
Manual and sample programs use python"

Models need to be in the Panda3D format to run in the engine. It supports 3D Studio Max, Maya, and blender models via plug-ins. I could convert 3ds into blender and then Panda3D but the textures might have to be reasigned. That could take a few light years.

Key problem is C++, I couldn't recode everything in C++, which is why I wanted to try and migrate to XNA, considering it is Microsoft and C# based as far as I'am aware.

Regards Wolfe

So does that mean this engine would not work for us?