I woke up this morning and I felt like doing some BSP rendering... in Java though. Yes, I'm forsaking Lisp for now, and returning to that partial 3D engine in Java that I was working on before. No I do not suddenly consider Java to be better than Lisp; Lisp is still the cooler language. The main reason seems to be that I have a much more comfortable development environment for my Java code than I did for my Lisp code. Lesson learned: the success of a language is only partly defined by its features; the surrounding "ecosystem" also plays a major role. Yes I know I could be using something like LispWorks and enjoy the comfort, but I don't want to. It's not open, unless you agree to a somewhat limited environment. I much prefer the Eclipse philosophy where non-commercial software developers are not treated like second rate citizens.
So anyway, I looked around for some apropriately licensed Java code to start off from. When I didn't find anything, I just decided to start coding the loader myself. Sofar I've got the plane and node records loading, based on the unofficial Quake 3 Map Specs. I'm also using info from "rendering Quake 3 maps" to help me decide which parts of the file to load first.
No big promises that I'll be finishing this code soon though. :-)
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