Been playing with Xenko for a few weeks and so far like where it’s going. I’m a long time Unity developer and also have a bit of experience in UE4 and Cryengine. Obviously things are still early days but was looking for more information on the long term direction of the engine (I have looked at the roadmap but it’s mostly nearer term items and didn’t see anything on what I’m most curious about).
My main question comes down to the editor and in particular plugins and is a long term question. So far there is minimal emphasis here which makes sense since there are bigger fish to fry (lighting, playing movies, etc.). Long term though are you looking to be able to modify the editor WITHOUT modifying the engine source (like unity) or will it be more like unreal where if you want to have the editor behave differently that you need to modify the engine source. There are tons of example but to name a few adding new items to the menu bar, customizing entity inspector property windows, adding scene view gizmos, etc. Obviously, APIs like these take time I just wanted to know from a thousand foot level which main path eventually is desired to be taken.
This ties in to my second question which is a timeline on an asset store. For a long time I’m sure most of your emphasis will be on core engine features and not peripheral things like 3rd party integrations (ads, analytics, replays, etc.). Those type of things are usually where an asset store shines but for one to be fairly useful, usually requires a nice package import/export in the editor and an API for interacting with the editor.
Mainly I’m just looking for a statement on which direction you guys prefer to go in, I know things are way to early to be set in stone. I’d love to invest more time in Xenko as Unity is starting to seem to be showing it’s age and it would be nice to start over with something fresh. I make and will continue to make assets for Unity (https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/search/page=1/sortby=popularity/query=publisher:11731) but would be interested in doing so for Xenko as well if an API started to materialize around making it easier for 3rd parties to tie into the core of the engine and editor and also for users to be able to incorporate 3rd party packages.