How about Plugin Support?

[WolfsKnight]

I'm not exactly new to game engine; I've been using it for about 4 months. Pretty satisfied with it.

My career is Web design and C++ Programming. The reason I say/ask for plugin support is because it would resolve the problem of re-writing or editing the source code and then taking anywhere from 10 minutes to 3 hours to compile it. Where as a plugin would be a quick install and there you go, new features added. That would be a great enhancement but still keep it open source. One could make a variety of plugins to preform certain tasks that some users can't do themselves such as particle effects or even adding scripted events. I've used other game engines as well. I love GE but I also use Torque game editor; and sometimes I even poke around in Multi Media fusion just messing around with the coding to IWBTG(I wanna be the guy) Plugins could also resolve the want for 3D support. I'm just saying though it'd be really cool if we had that.

I use GE for practice programming/game engine building messing with DOS style games like The Elder Scrolls Arena, Dark Sun, and Might and magic. GE is probably my second favorite engine out there and due to it being open source it really could surpass most of the other engines out there if there was perhaps more work put into it.

Any thoughts?

[makslane]

I love the plugin concept. I've wrote other softwares thats are only based on a plugin architeture.
I haven't put the plugin support into Game Editor due to multiplatform feature.
If a plugin system is connected to the Game Editor, each plugin must work on all supported platforms.

[skydereign]

I think having plugin support will definitely help attract developers. Not sure how ill advised this is, but couldn't you implement some level of plugin support, where it does not have to work on all platforms? You would have to put in some safety measure that tells the user that you cannot export the game to a certain platform due to some plugin used. Also if someone made a plugin, other developers can try to globalize it, that way even if you don't want to allow partially accepted features, and developers who feel gameEditor should have some feature could make it themselves. This would make this easier for users to contribute, as I know there are at least several things each user wants gameEditor to have, and there are people out there who would be willing to do the work, but as of now it can take lots of effort just to compile the code.

[makslane]

May be!