Should I buy Beyond? Idea to make a Laser game with Pangolin Beyond and Pango script

[MrM]

Hi, I am a newbie in the laser world since a month or so, and totally addicted and having loads of fun...
So, I have Pangolin Quickshow, a 900mW RDB Diode 40kps at 4deg (not the best, but good to get going)...
I fitted a -6 saftey scan lens for scanning...

Love it.. Just use it for me at home for now... lets see where this develops.

Now I have an idea to upgrade QS to Beyond, because I want to do my own 3D stuff,
and I was thinking at having a go at programming a game.

I am a professional software developer, so although I don't underestimate it, I hope that I will be able to tackle this... don't know anything about Pangoscript (YET ...

What do you think? Possible?... Could Pango Script handle this level of complexity / amount of code... I was thinking in the lines of target as laser cursor.
And 3d things coming at you on the screen (cues).... Having to blast them before they get away or get too close....

..Or how about simply breakout block game to begin with, or just laser pong... (start simple

If I got this working, I would release it for free; anyone interested in contributing?

Imagine mixing that in to a big sound system... control the smoke over dmx... some LED affects too.
For me its this massive 3D playground to be creative with.

[mixedgas]

If you ask Bill Benner at Pangolin for a PDF on Pangoscript, I bet you get it.

Pong and Tetris have been done on other control platforms. Asteroids ships with Lasershow Designer.


Steve

[colouredmirrorball]

Since you already own Quickshow I assume you own an FB3. That's the worst choice for DAC if you're a programmer since Pangolin refuses to publish an API. A DAC with an open API would be cheaper than upgrading to Beyond and you won't be limited to PangoScript, but of course you don't get its features either (which I know nothing of).

[m0f]

As an fb3 / beyond owner I'd certainly love to see the existence of a laser game or two. I'm not sure pangoscript is quite there yet, however there are a few features for direct drawing that I haven't figured out yet as while the code fragments listed / available there isn't much of a manual yet explaining it. It is getting to be quite a powerful and complete language, and with direct access to the programmer Alexei through the Pangolin forums, requested / needed features and commands are a possibility to have added. So in a way is a good time for programmer to attempt this as any shortcomings could be addressed while it's still in active development

As others mentioned most other dac's have an api available for direct control of the dac, so in a way is the easier way to go. However I'd love to see something for the fb3, and there are a large number of fb3's out there. Unfortunately people would need beyond to run it which could be limiting.

[masterpj]

You can make a game in pangoscript for sure.
The learning curve to get there I don't know yet.

Best right now would be the pangolin SDK or use an DAC which uses drlava's all dac SDK.
If you have the budget for it I recommend beyond essentials with a QM2000 DAC so you have both pangoscript and the pangolin SDK and you can also use drlava's all dac SDK's

[norty303]

That's the worst choice for DAC if you're a programmer since Pangolin refuses to publish an API.

Actually, you can use the Beyond SDK to address the FB3. This has been discussed before. Just not the FB3 directly. But Bill says this is a better scenario anyway.
If looking to develop a game for Beyond, I would think the Beyond SDK is the thing you're after, rather than Pangoscript

[colouredmirrorball]

Actually, you can use the Beyond SDK to address the FB3. This has been discussed before. Just not the FB3 directly. But Bill says this is a better scenario anyway.
If looking to develop a game for Beyond, I would think the Beyond SDK is the thing you're after, rather than Pangoscript

Aha. That was not known to me.
That makes the FB3 only slightly better as it sounds like you need to buy Beyond to get the Beyond SDK (?) and that still makes any other DAC with open API cheaper :P

[swamidog]

it is not clear based on forum posts if the beyond sdk works with the fb3 or still requires the ld2k.

perhaps someone from pangolin can chime in.

Aha. That was not known to me.
That makes the FB3 only slightly better as it sounds like you need to buy Beyond to get the Beyond SDK (?) and that still makes any other DAC with open API cheaper :P

[Picasso]

https://github.com/echelon/light-engine

[JohnYayas]

If you can leverage Beyond as a 3D laser game engine via PangoScript that would be pretty cool. I think Zoof also created a 3D engine for lasers. There is also the Openlase project (I think that is the name) that does something similar, I think. I checked out the link above but it doesn't seem far enough along to be useful.

At my day job I work with Unity 3D a lot and have considered the possibility of marrying a 3D video game displayed on a video projector with augmentation from a laser projector. It should be easy to control a laser through the Unity 3D game. However, I haven't really thought of an interesting way to combine the two. Just thought I would throw that out there in case anyone has an idea and wants to run with it.