While I understand Korman still misses some features, I'm wondering what exactly holds people back, since you can build full Ages with it. Heck, even if some features are missing, there is still the possibility to build some parts of the Age in PyPRP if necessary, which is what I did to get sounds in Denkasen. Okay, it does add a step to the exporting process, but what little time you lose doing so is given back tenfold with Korman's export speed and Blender's new UI (I am NOT going back to the 2.49 interface, ever !
![Twisted Evil :twisted:](./images/smilies/icon_twisted.gif)
Obviously there are also people working on very complex Ages with PyPRP, and these could take some work to port to Korman. And people are quite resilient to change as well
![Laughing :lol:](./images/smilies/icon_lol.gif)
So I'd guess it all boils down to which features are missing from Korman. The thing is, tons of features are missing, since Plasma has a crapload of them (most of which aren't even used by Age builders).
My point is, maybe we should make a list of the most urgent features to be added to Korman, since I believe PyPRP makes building incredibly slow and drives newcomers away from Age building. Looking at the issues list of Korman on Github, I can also see some features which don't really seem as important (normalmapping ? it's cool, but expensive, and I doubt many people would use it. Particles ? people would only use them for rain or snow, which means the good ol'way of hacking the PRP is probably enough for now. DistOpacity and FadeOpacity ? I bet builders have no clue what it's used for).
So ! Here are the features I think Korman lacks most, and which would allow us to definitely dump PyPRP in v0.03 or v0.04. I'm also interested in knowing what you guys think about it, of course !
- Swimming: because people use oceans a lot, and who doesn't enjoy a good swim
- Ladders: climbing these is annoying as hell, but it's also easier to setup than an elevator when required.
- VisRegions: no matter what you do, you always need a good VisRegion when your Age gets any bigger than Tsogal.
- Sounds: personally I don't miss them much, but eventually it would be cool to have them (this would be easier than setting them up in PyPRP as I mentioned earlier).
- Subworlds: it's quite an essential tool for Age building, but it can easily be replaced by a Python script in the meantime. I'm currently using a simple Python script for all the rides in my Age, and it works like a charm (it just requires a few extra lines of code in Korman, which should be a lot easier to add than all the subworlds stuff).
- Bones and rigging: not originally in PyPRP, but it would allow for much more interesting animations: the wind in branches, animals, complex machinery...