4.1.2 Plugin Overview

This section presents a quick overview of the plug-ins provided by Crystal Space. More detailed descriptions of these facilities may be found in later sections.

• VFS (Virtual File System)

  VFS serves as the basic module for file access for all parts of Crystal Space. It allows one to map "virtual" directories to "real" ones; to map several real directories together as a single virtual directory; and to treat `.zip' files like subdirectories. See section Virtual File System (VFS).

• Graphics Drivers

  The graphics modules provide "low-level" graphics output. This includes drawing pixels, lines and text, but also drawing polygons and polygon meshes to support hardware acceleration. See section The Rendering System. The graphics drivers themselves uses a "canvas" plugin specific to the operating system and/or the graphics driver in order to open a window or setup the graphics base system.

• Sound Drivers

  The sound modules allow you to load and play sound effects and music. 3d effects are supported, as well as different ways to the same sound file. See section Sound Plugins.

• 3D Engine

  This is the core of Crystal Space. It is the main driving force behind CS. See section The 3D Engine.

• Mesh Objects

  Mesh objects are 3D objects that can be used and displayed by the engine. Examples are 3D sprites, 2D sprites, particle systems, terrain mesh, .... This functionality used to be in the engine but has been removed from the engine for greater flexibility. See section Mesh Object Plug-In System.

• Map Loader

  This plug-in provides map loading capabilities for your game. In addition it also contains functions to load mesh objects, textures, and sounds. See section Loading Maps and Models.

• Image Loaders

  In many cases you don't have to use these plugins directly as they are used automatically by the Map Loader. However in some cases you might want to access the image loaders in your own application. These plugins are responsible for loading various types of images (GIF, PNG, JPG, ...).

• Collision Detection

  There is currently one collision plug-in using OPCODE. Collision is based on testing for intersection of two objects.

• Console Output and Console Input

  These plug-in modules can be used for console-like text input and output, similar to the console in Quake.

• Scripting

  The scripting plug-in modules allow support for Python, Java, and Perl.

• Font Server

  The font server can be used to display different fonts in your application.

• Reporter

  The reporter plugin is used by all plugins in Crystal Space to report about errors, warnings, and other notification messages. A game or application can also use the reporter to report messages. You can set up a listener to listen to messages that arrive on the reporter or you can use the standard reporter listener plugin below.

• Standard Reporter Listener

  This plugin listens to messages that arrive at the reporter and displays them in some manner. It is the easiest way to handle messages from the reporter. You can control what should happen with each type of message and to what output device it should go (i.e. things like output console, standard output, and so on).

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