samsaraJS - first look

[gadicc]

Hey @dmvaldman!

Of course we remember you Very happy to have you here with us in the forums, and thanks for this awesome update… had no idea something like this was in the works. The stream based approach is super cool!

Having said that, you’re in a very different place from the rest of us… 9 months of work on an existing code base, vs from-scratch rewrites of a few weeks. Are you interested in collaborating with us? What kind of collaboration did you have in mind?

As @trusktr said, what’s happening now is that we’re each working on our own engine candidate. I know it kind of sounds crazy at first, but instead of theoretical chats about what will work best, we’re trying to each get a real / practical feel about what’s involved and generate a few different ways of solving the same problem to see what works best. And then ultimately, combine all our efforts into a single code base, a long these lines:

What is the merge game plan?

Just want to make sure we’re all on the same page. How is it going with everyone? Should we decide on a deadline and how we plan to handle the merge? e.g. (modify this as needed) Current plan is as follows (pending additional team member input): Finish Engine prototypes (until roughly end of November) Finalize Common Design spec (can start before part 1 is completely finished) Merge, as follows: Evaluate each of the following aspects of each engine: Components Events according to thes…

I’m guessing you’d probably want to see some finished candidates before committing to anything, after so much of your own work. (Do you want to share any of your existing plans for samsaraJS?).

Two differences I’d immediately note between your current code base and what we have planned, is:

1. Web workers - as @oldschooljarvis mentioned - for simultaneous calculations and/or just to keep the UI thread more free in general and specifically for super slow DOM updates which of course can only happen there.

2. WebGL - we discussed in some other threads here. The general feeling was that we quite liked the idea of mixed mode… and that most devs aren’t interested in it only because it’s a chore, but with low barriers to entry it’s just cheap awesome. Also a few of us felt that it was a 2nd priority, but an important one… i.e. after “a DOM model that feels native everywhere”, but definitely something we wanted to be able to accomodate, probably by leveraging ThreeJS as part of an optional plugin.

Lastly, any input you have about anything is very welcome