3D Mesh thoughts

Small update on the way things are going right now: I've been sick for almost a full week now, so that's both a plus and a minus; if I miss work, I can program more, but since I'm sick, I haven't the energy to program as much. ;

Regardless, that wasn't the update I'd intended for. I've been doing some research into which 3d format to use for the game, and I consider it likely to be a combination of .OBJ files for static (non-animated) objects, and .B3D files for animated objects. B3D supports skeletal animation, at only a slight cost to the CPU over "baked" animations, so I'd very much like to use it if at all possible. Even if I can't do skeletal animation for whatever reason, B3D still supports "baked" animations as well, so life is grand, and the people rejoice (yay...)

Anyways, I've gotten myself another copy of Blender (a freely available open source 3D program that rivals many commercial programs out there...), and I'll be putting together some simple models for my own debugging use. I'll probably have every single debugging model I'll ever need done in less than a day. They're all so simple. The only limiting factor on me right now is the blender exporter to B3D format, which is currently "in testing", or so I've been told. I've gotten in contact with the exporter's author about it's status, and I'm just waiting on that. SO, until I have that exporter (or am informed that I will never have it, so I can start using a different taskflow...), I'm putting animated 3d models on hold for the world map state. 90% of my debug models will likely be unanimated anyways, so it's okay. With this bit of news tho, I'll be concentrating for the time being on some of the other things I've kinda put to the side, but as you can clearly see I am working on the world map state now! I've actually already created some GUI layouts for use in the world map state, such as dialog boxes and generic text output to the player.