General questions

Why is it named Soya?

The creators of Soya, Jean-Baptiste (Jiba) and Bertrand (Blam) Lamy, are vegetarian.

Is Soya 3D related to Opale.Soya (an old 3D engine for Java)?

Yes; Soya3D was created by the same people that wrote Opale.Soya. They abandoned Opale.Soya because Java is not Free Software. Sure, there are free Java Virtual Machines available, but none of them are compatible with Java 1.3, nor have a "Just In Time" compiler enough fast for extreme gaming. So for both ethics and technical reasons, we have moved to Python.

Isn't Python too slow for 3D games?

I don't believe so. My own experiments with 3D games (such as Arkanae, Slune, and the Balazar series) have shown to me that, in a game, about 80% of the CPU time is spent on rendering 3D. This rendering is achieved by OpenGL and the 3D hardware (if available). OpenGL is fast, whatever it is used in C or in Python. Using a faster language can only speed up the remaining 20%! On the other hand, Python offers high-level features and scripting capabilities, which can be usefull for game.

Why Pyrex?

As it generates C, Pyrex has no reason to be much slower that C. It is, though, mush easier to use (especially for Python coders like me :-), more concise. I expect Soya 0.7 to be more stable than previous version, since Pyrex generates automatically all type check (most of these type check was missing in previous Soya version). Finally, notice that Soya 0.7 (in Pyrex) is slightly faster than Soya 0.6 (in C)! This is due to a better internal organisation.

Why Soya has been forked?

Arc Riley forks Soya and created PySoy. More details can be found on the History page of Soya.