C# .NET 3D Frameworks - Part IV - RANT
C# .NET 3D Frameworks - Part II
C# .NET 3D Frameworks - Part III
Since I figured out that I didn't want a wrappered engine for development. I set about writing a simple demo application in .NET using C# and "DirectX For Managed Code" directly. Why did I do this ? Because I fucking never learn!
Here on this blog I went on a long diatribe how engine wrappers get invariably abandoned, then I assume because it's not really a third party engine but a library from big Microsoft and since I envisioned MS was still in the process of going to all .NET, Virtual Machine bla bla.... which has all these advantages like... um... garbage collection... which you really want, except if you want to sell your software... . So my gut expectation was, this would not be abandoned so quickly. Direct3D showed up in my Assembly Browser in Visual Studio and googling around I found a good start project to learn from with: D3DControls
After a few days of diddling around with it, I had to notice that the MeshBuilder class is nowhere to be found, although I really need it. Now after quite some research it turned out:
The current DirectX SDK (March 2008) and the current DirectX Runtime installer both install the Managed DX 1.1 assemblies, but August 2007 was the last version of the DirectX SDK that included support for developing Managed DX 1.1 applications. In fact, the last time we updated MDX 1.1 was April 2005. It has been deprecated for some time.
Currently I am pondering if I can repeat my mistake by going to XNA or if I wise up and go native.