Why is alice in the format that it is in?

beachbum111111 · **Why is alice in the format that it is in? -** 02-03-2013, 09:14 PM

I mean the worlds and models. I have never seen this format on any other program. Most modeling programs don't support it either. So my question is why did the Alice dev team choose this format even though most programs don't support it and it makes modeling for alice harder?

bob3584 · 02-03-2013, 09:46 PM

I don't know... Maybe to make it hard enough that someone wont make a video with something bad in it, because it won't be worth the time. Or maybe it runs more efficiently in ALICE than other file types do.

Check out my new version of physics at:

http://www.alice.org/community/showthread.php?t=9881

djslater107 · **Alice format -** 02-04-2013, 06:32 AM

Alice was originally developed in the '90s for the rapid prototyping of immersive 3D environments, those that used head-mounted displays, and special input devices, such as gloves. So the original formatting of Alice files had to be able to execute in those environments.

When Alice became a tool to support the teaching of introductory programming, the team wanted to take advantage of the hundreds of models that had already been developed, which meant that Alice had to retain that format.

Remember that the primary purpose of Alice is to teach introductory programming, through animation. It is not primarily an animation package such as Unity, and never will be. Different tools for different purposes.

Alice 3 is being designed to better support student creation of their own models, but it will never be a trivial process, as there will always be requirements the models will have to meet in inrder to execute in eth Alice environment.