3D GUI

The 3D intersection testing code has been very slow going. I just don't have enough time to relearn how the geometric intersections are calculated and implement them without any bugs. I have been considering using the physics API to do my intersection testing for me, since the API writers pretty much need the intersection code to be correct to survive. Currently I'm using physX for my API - I'll have to investigate to see what type of querying is available in the system...

Lua

In my old engine, I had implemented a modest scripting system using Lua. It was a capable system, but didn't really take advantage of the special features of Lua - it was being used more like a scripting language that you could write yourself (as opposed to several hundred or thousand over the years on Lua). I decided to update the scripting system in Hieroglyph 2 to better utilize the abilities of Lua.

With that in mind, I had to go back and re-learn much of what I had known about Lua before. Some of the ideas are semi-mind blowing when coming from a C++ background. The concept that you can add, remove, or modify an object's member functions AND member data (via metatable modification for those who haven't had the opportunity to learn it yet) seems like a wild concept. To be honest, I can't think of a situation that would benefit from this type of mutating objects, but sounds cool anyways!

So I downloaded the lua source code, made up some projects to build the libs and have it up and running. I just went with the most recent version, 5.1, and am having fun experimenting with it. I have even been kicking around the idea of how to provide a scripting interface to my render view system (described in a pdf link below). It would be fantastic to be able to modify a render view's actions in a script instead of hard coding everything. There will certainly be more info coming on this one...