Feedback on Game Engines

[gameboy]

Part II: The engines

First of all, let me go over what I will exclude from consideration. I won’t consider using for commercial development any GNU GPL (General Public License, or simply GPL) [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html] engines/tools, or even any that are licensed under GNU LGPL (Lesser General Public License, or LGPL) [http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/lesser.html]. Sadly, this will exclude engines like Tenebrae [http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/index.php] or OGRE [http://ogre.sourceforge.net/] which is also used by PureBasic [http://www.purebasic.com/index.php3]. Tools licensed under these agreements are basically not practical for use in commercial development. In short, you have to open your commercial application up for dissecting or reverse engineering so users can freely modify either your code, or whatever you used that was licensed under these agreements, so they can recompile them with your code and run their own modified version of your game. Under the LGPL you could probably avoid this problem by furnishing an SDK to your application’s binaries so users could modify the LGPL portion of your game, and using the SDK to link the modified code back with your game application. I wrote to the open software foundation for clarification on the LGPL recently and they basically told me to either get a license giving me permission for commercial use from the creator of the tool licensed under the LGPL, or retain a lawyer who is expert in this field. Lawyers, ugh. No thanks, I’ll stay away, unless I can get the creator of the tool to give (or sell) me a full-blown commercial license IN WRITING.

I also excluded from consideration any technology that is obviously way too expensive for a typical individual to purchase – so we’ll have to exclude tools like the Jupiter or Lithtech Engine [http://www.touchdownentertainment.com/licensing.htm], or Aruan Jet [http://www.auran.com/jet/license.htm], etc. from consideration. Even Virtools [http://www.virtools.com/ ; http://www.id8media.com/framesets_3...o_dev_frame.htm] must be excluded, because by the time you add up the cost of the base product, add modules like physics, and then pay the royalties on the games you develop…well, you’ll need a wheelbarrow of cash to pay for it all. One clue that the tool you are considering is probably too expensive for an individual is if they don’t (or won’t) list their price. Sometimes, they won’t even answer your email inquiries (*cough* Vulpine [http://vulpine.de/index.html]). It’s one of those situations evidently where if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

One discussion of game engines and development tools I came across that mentioned many different engines can be found on the 3D Game Studio’s forum: [http://www.conitecserver.com/ubbthr...part=1&vc=1]

I will try to keep the list relatively short, with only listing engines that seemed to have potential (IMHO) that I’ve run across. Perhaps you have others you’ve seen or have used them and can give us some more feedback about them as well.

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Quest3D [http://www.quest3d.com/]
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Price:
Professional Edition $749
Enterprise Edition $1999 (includes database and networking support).
No royalties or “per product” fees to pay.

Pros:
Performance of the engine is good and the graphics look gorgeous. The idea of linking channels (pre-compiled “chunks” of code) together graphically makes for rapid development works really well and you can see changes instantly as you tweak your project without having to recompile. If a channel doesn’t exist that has the capability you need, you can code one up in C++ using the Quest3D SDK. When you’re done, you’ve got a brand new channel that you can reuse in future projects if you like. The “channel” linking concept works really well and is both fast and flexible. The channel graphs can be nested as desired and displayed visually so that details can be hidden away to appropriate levels, allowing a design to be grasped and understood visually “at a glance” (well, once you get the hang of channel graphs, that is). Making games with this tool will still require work, but probably much less than if you used traditional methods.
The product has physics via the ODE library, and even support for rudimentary A.I., crowd animation, etc. Maps are portal based – no need for .bsp “compilation” step.
The demo games made with it look impressive.

Cons:
Getting animation data into Quest3D and working can be tricky. Although Quest3D provides the capability to bone and animate your own characters from within the product, its tools for doing so are rather primitive; your best bet is to find software that exports geometry and boned animation in the DirectX (.x) format. The good news is that many of the new 3d modeling and animation tools are starting to add support for games by doing this. Using channel graphs may seem a bit strange for programmers at first, and there aren’t any channel debugging tools available – about all you can do is visually see if a channel is being executed while running your project (there is a blue outline around the channel box). Also, I don’t know of any commercially released games that were developed using this product (yet). However, the same could be said about some of the other engines listed below as well.

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Crytek [http://www.crytek.de/]
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I initially wrote these guys off, because they didn’t list the price of their engine, and on other forums people were saying it was way too expensive for the indie developer. However, Renderman has said above that the price is about $900 that seems is reasonable. I wonder if that is a one-time charge, or a per game fee. I agree that this engine looks very good (based upon the screenshots I’ve seen).

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Amp II [http://www.4drulers.com/amp.html]
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$2000 for a commercial license. Not clear whether this is a one game or permanent license to develop any number of games.

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Aztica [http://www.aztica.com/modules/news/]
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Cost: Free until game is sold commercially, then there is a $195 licencse fee for each game developed.
Comments: A bunch of DLLs that can be used with Java, Delphi, C++ Builder, VB6, or .Net
Pros: Built in scripting language (called LUA). Supports MD2, MD3 (Quake2 & 3) models.
Cons: COM based. DX 7 only. (version 2 in the works).
Awkward website; no downloadable demos of games made with it.

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Cube [http://wouter.fov120.com/cube/index...f7e2c2d4483b273]
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Price:
Freeware, for any purpose. However, it uses Fmod and SDL (see below).

Pros:
Doesn't need any kind of map precompilation.
Map Editor is engine's map-making tool is a very quick and direct, WYSIWYG process.
Collision detection and physics included.
Good net code.

Cons:
Doesn't have sophisticated eye-candy of state-of-the-art 3d engines.
Engine is still in beta stages.
Uses Fmod [http://www.fmod.org], which requires a licensing fee ($100 per game developed, or $2000 per game developed if you sell a lot of copies).
Uses SDL [http://www.libsdl.org/license.php], which uses the LGPL license.
Not well documented.
Not the best choice for a commercial game, due to libraries being used, and the fact that the engine is only in beta form and not well documented.

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3D Game Studio [http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm]
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Price:
$199 or $899 for commercial editions. No royalties or extra fees.

Pros:
Licensing, established track record, many users.
Built-in tools.
Can quickly produce a working game.
Visual (level and model editor) and scripting tools (C-based scripting language).
Latest version supports DirectX 8.1, boned animation, physics.
Many commercially released games have been made using this product.

Cons:
This engine simply does not perform nearly as well as other state-of-the art systems.
Graphics don't look great; engine is a bit behind state-of-the-art.
Might be difficult to get the engine to perform well.
Conitec's own documentation of what's new in version 6 says some things, like reading the mouse, take longer in version 6 than in version 5. In some ways version 6 is a downgrade from version 5. The manual also said many things had not yet been completed or tweaked yet.
However, the product is continually being updated and improved. For instance, boned-animation support has just been added.

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3D State [http://www.3dstate.com/]
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Price:
$399 (for developing one application).

Pros:
Engine looks good, the development package comes with integrated tools that all work together. The version 7 demos look great.

Cons:
Uses Fmod, which requires a fee for commercial use ($2000 for one application!)
Frame rate for the previous version demo was erratic; e.g. player could run much faster after a short time if not firing bullets at the same time.

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DarkBasic Pro [http://www.thegamecreators.com/]
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Price: $100

Pros:
Supports DX9, boned animation, many other modern features.
Easy to use programming language.

Cons:
Not too stable – the debugger for instance frequently crashes on my system.
Help file (i.e. command reference) is not completely searchable.
No physics (but could be added via DLL calls to the Tokamak [http://www.tokamakphysics.com/] physics engine).
Graphics don't look as sharp for some reason compared to other game engines. (Poor rendering?)

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Blitz3D [http://www.blitzbasic.com/]
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Price: $100

Pros:
Solid, fast programming language.

Cons:
Currently only supports DirectX 7.
No built in physics.

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The Nebula Device [http://sourceforge.net/projects/nebuladevice/]
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Description:
Nebula Device is an open source realtime 3D game/visualization engine, written in C++ and scriptable through Tcl/Tk, Python and Lua. Its rendering system supports both DirectX (8/8.1) and OpenGL. It runs under Linux and Window and is being ported to Mac OS X.

Price:
Free, for any purpose (even commercial). Must display copyright notices and include Nebula Licensing Terms with product. Nebula is released under the MIT license [http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php]. Basically, you can use it for anything you want as long as the copyright notices stay in place.

Pros:
The demo game, Project Nomads (made with Nebula 1) looks great; visually stunning, very responsive.
Nebula 2 is in alpha stage at present.

Cons:
Lightly documented.
More suitable for people who already have a good understanding or experience in writing 3D engines.

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Origi-3d [http://www.origi3d.com/]
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Price:
Two plans. You have your choice of:
1. $2500 + 5% royalty on all games sold, or
2. $150,000 without royalty.

Pros:
Claim to have the world’s most powerful game engine.
The demo MOVIES look great.
Quote: “Magic Carpet's cloth simulation IS 360 TIMES FASTER THAN ALL OTHER REAL TIME CLOTH SIMULATIONS.”

Cons:
Was not able to get the engine demo to install successfully on any system.
Huge download (over 200MB). The documentation says running the demo takes about 4-5 minutes to load on a low-end Pentium 4!

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Power Render [http://www.powerrender.com/]
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Price:
(Power Render 5 engine).
$289 for a single programmer, Distribution of unlimited shareware and freeware products.
$1500 for a site license, Distribution of unlimited shareware and freeware products and Distribution of one commercial product.

Pros:
Comes with a fairly complete set of tools for game creation, with support of most major 3d file formats. They claim they have an extremely easy API developed over 6 years of actual usage with commercial applications, and full DirectX 9 support.
The movies for their upcoming prototype engine look impressive. They don’t apply to this product, however.

Cons:
No physics (but has its own collision detection). Could use Tokamak physics engine.
Price of $1500 applied to each game developed. Price for next version (Prototype) will be prohibitively expensive, at least for the source code versions (15-50K). Non-source code versions of the engine (to be released later) are supposed to be cheaper.

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Qube [http://www.qubesoft.com/q/overview.php]
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Price:
Q for windows is currently free (for now).
However, pricing for support can be very expensive (5,000 pounds for only 3 months!).

Pros:
This engine has been used for development on other platforms (game consoles).

Cons:
Frame rate seemed slow compared to some of the other engines, and the rendering did not look as good.

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Sylphis 3D [http://rainbow.cs.unipi.gr/~harkal/sylphis/index.php]
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Not too much information is available yet about this engine. But the playable demo and demo movies look impressive. The website doesn’t get updated too often. But it is something to keep an eye on.

Price:
Unknown.

Pros:
Stunning performance. Includes physics.

Cons:
Not yet released.

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Torque Game Engine [http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=1]
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Price:
$100. But if you have a successful game and your revenue is over $500,000, it costs you $10,000 per game (up front!) to develop using their engine and tools.

Pros:
Decent performance. Comes bundled with a set of tools to assist in making games.

Cons:
The tools that come bundled with the engine can be purchased or downloaded on your own. The demo games were OK, but the engine is not as state-of-the-art graphically as other engines.

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Truevision 3D [http://www.truevision3d.com/html/]
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Supported by .NET.

Price:
Single commercial product: $150
Multiple commercial products: $500

Pros:
Full DirectX 8.1 and 9 support.
This engine may be an option if C++ programming is not desired, or .NET development is desired.

Cons:
Tech demo was OK, but inferior to other engines. However, improvements are being made: http://www.truevision3d.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=phpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=3240

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Cipher [http://www.cipherengine.com/index.php]
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Is probably worth a look. It comes with a complete set of tools, and a really good price (just $100, period). The downloadable demos look OK, but may not be quite as visually stunning as some of the better tools listed above.

Pros:
Looks to be a solid engine with great licensing for commercial development. You won't find a better price.

Cons:
Some of its game development tools are designed to work with 3ds max's .ASE format, which no other tools apparently export to. Little documentation on this scene format is available, making writing a reliable conversion program to its format difficult.

So, what would you recommend for game development?

[jud]

Im not sure if this is what you are looking for as your thread is way too long for me to read all of it,but this application has great format support for all game engines and will probably make working with different platforms a breeze,and it has full rendering capabilities and loads of other tools for game developement and it use's Python scripting.
Hers the link
http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/

Oh! and it is very reasonably priced at $199

jud:surprised

[Renderman_XSI]

gameboy, thanks for the long reply.Its great now i have more options to look at.

i really wish Softimage would intergrate a game engine, in XSI.

[gameboy]

Actually Renderman, there is an all-in-one modeling/animation/rendering tool that includes a game engine; it's called Blender. http://www.blender.org/ It is open source however, and therefore its licensing is not really suitable for commercial development.

[DonMeck]

Quest3D and Virtools
----------------------------
The schematic scripting/programming metaphor in Quest3D looks very low-level for me therefore i don't believe that rapid development of complex games can be done in it. Because everything is a channel and you need to go through a couple of folders (a grouping mechanism for channels) just to see whats going on.

At least this is my impression when i did some short glances at it.

Virtools costs a lot more and it asks for royalisties, but their schematic programming metaphor is much more high-level and therefore better (in my opinion) as you can see what is going on more quickly than using the quest3D metaphor. Additionally they addressed some draw-backs that occur when using a visual/schematic programming metaphor by introducing a scripting language. Code-programming is simply cleaner and easier to handle when it's about creating low-level logic (many tests and loops).

Open source
-----------------
open source doesn't mean it doesn't fit for commercial use. It depends on the license. Is it GPL or LPGL etc. LPGL allows you to not release your source code if it's not part of the engine itself. Ie. game logic, plugIns etc. For example you use OGRE and you modify/improve OGRE itself, then you are asked to provide the sourcecode for those modifications to the community. But your game logic - which is a part from the OGRE engine - doesn't need to be open source. Same for plugIns.

Some more free 3d engines
-----------------------------------
NEON: http://neoengine.sourceforge.net/
Irrlicht: http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

More criterias
-----------------
Very important for choosing an engine is also if it provides you with everything you need - and if not how long or how easy is it to add the needed functionality. Same for the pipeline for importing media. So both comes back to time. Then there is the question of support (and community?). etc.

cya
dom

[Renderman_XSI]

keep in mine im no programmer, when asking this questiion. Im looking for a commercial game engine, that have at least DX8 support, and would be up to speed to create PS2,XBOX titles. Price i can afford 1000 USD per license. Something that lets us implement our own tools with ease. Cipher is nice, but it seems to lack the texturing ability(base on their base demo).

the genre is adventure game, and graphics are important. it would include a good number of combo's, attacks,etc with sword.

BTW: virtools seems nice.i'll look into it.

[gameboy]

Thanks for your comments, DonMeck. They were just the kind of feedback I was looking for.

I agree that Virtools is more suitable and a better tool for producing games than Quest3D, but it's price is beyond my means at present.

I also found Quest3D channel programming to be somewhat awkward at first. Channels that have been hidden in "folders" (which can be expanded/contracted by pressing the space bar) help overall program comprehension in that a folder appropriately named describes the functionality inside of it, at a glance. A subtree of Channel graphs can be saved as a "template", further abstracting the development process. In short, you can compose "higher level" code (or channels, in this case) with templates, and string them together. The Quest3D designers hesitate to call it the "ideal" tool for making games, saying some programming logic may be too complex to code using channel-logic and channels are limited with respect to debugging methods. But this can be overcome through the use of the SDK, which works with MSVC++, and can be used to create your own custom channels when the need arises. The Quest3D developers say that games can be made with it, and some of the demos like the Monster Mayhem truck game demo look impressive. I am comfortable and used to programming in the "traditional" way, but channel graphs can speed up development (for example, you can get a 3D animated scene up and running with a few mouse clicks by dragging a template and importing an animated model).

Regarding the LGPL license, the problem I see with it is that you must allow users to be able to change the public code covered under the LGPL license and then recompile it with the rest of your application, and then run the modified application. This has at least two drawbacks; one is that unless you provide some sort of SDK for your application, you must "open" it up somewhat so they can recompile it. The second drawback is that users would be able to create their "customized" version of your game, and if you want players to be able to compete against one another online, these customized versions of the game would be equivalent to "cheating" (unless the point of the game was to allow users to compete against one another using their own customized modifications).

Other open source licenses, like the MIT, BSD, and zlib-libpng, for example, are just fine for commercial development.

[Blud_Stane]

you guys seem like a knowledgable group so here goes:

Which engine would you suggest using for...

-Equal quality to "Jak & Daxter" games by Naughty Dog
-bump mapping
-cell shading
-DX9
-ragdoll physics


Thank you as I'm still too confused with all the "hype" all those engines put on their sites... i wanna know what is realistic.

[gameboy]

Blud,

I would like to mention one engine that has impressed me the more I play around with it, and that is the TrueVision 3D engine. I initially wrote it off somewhat because the techdemo video presentation didn't seem all that great to me, but as I work my way through their programming tutorials, I am impressed by its power and ease of use. I'm getting frame rates of several hundred frames per second, even when programming in Visual Basic!:eek: (At least on an Athlon XP 2800+ running at 2GHz, and an ATI RADEON 9700 Pro video card, at 1280x1024 resolution, 32bit color). Feature-wise, it has support for DX8.1 and DX9, and supports DOT3 Bumpmapping, etc. You can find a list of some of its features here [http://www.truevision3d.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2]. The engine is continually being updated, and the next major release (version 6.5) will be optimized for .NET managed code. Right now, version 6 of the TrueVision 3D engine is COM based, so VB6/VC++6 slightly outperform their .NET counterparts. This is expected to change with version 6.5. Its licensing cost for commercial game development is very good ($150 for one game, $500 for an unlimited number of game releases. The engine is free for non-commercial uses). The engine also comes with a set of tools to aid you in quickly making games. This engine and its toolset may be the fastest way to create games that contain a high degree of visual quality.

As far as ragdoll physics, you can use the Tokamak physics library [http://www.tokamakphysics.com/] which is free.

[Blud_Stane]

how did you even get the thing working.. we've almost given up cause our programmer is trying to just get it started but has like 90+ errors. Maybe theres a simple setup out there, and we'd like to use Truevision as its powerful.... but im leanin toward Torque unless we get it going :(

[gameboy]

Blud,

I've been using VB6 and TrueVision3D, going through the tutorials and modifying them for experimentation. It has been about the easiest thing I've done yet.

The C++ file has a line you must change in the tv3dcpp.h file (line 154, I believe) that must point the path to the truevision3d.dll file to match the location on your computer. However, regarding the VC++ file compilation, I was getting "fatal error C1084: cannot read type library file: ...\truevision3d.dll". I'm not sure if it is because this library somehow isn't registered correctly for VC++. I made sure my Directories were pointed to the correct locations, etc. :banghead: If you go to their website, you can open up a private chat with one of the developers and ask them (I was going to eventually do this).

I've been working most recently in VB6 with their product, putting it through its paces.

[DonMeck]

Blud_Stane,

sounds like an ambitious project you are planing.

You should consider that - i think - only state of the art physique engines have out-of-the-box rag-doll physqies. Contraining the characater parts is one thing, but limiting etc might be something not very trivial - if it should look convincing.

"Jak & Daxter" did have large levels and background loading (if i remember correctly). Nothing that every engine has. Indeed it was a special feature of the game (i think) - like for Dungeon Siege.

How much can you invest in an engine?
I wanted to propose the copperhead engine, but i can't find info about it anymore. Maybe it has beeen sold? Was the successor of the jupiter engine, i believe.
http://www.touchdownentertainment.com/

[Blud_Stane]

Gameboy: also do you know about implementing netcode into Truevision? And what projects are you working on, i'd like to just talk to you about Truevision and what you know?

thanks

steve (bludstane)
aol: royers24
icq: 83646867
yahoo: sroyer_hcc

[gameboy]

Blud,

I'm just learning TrueVision by working throught the tutorials; I'm not a guru on it or anything. I've been looking at a lot of software tools lately to determine what I should use for game development. I haven't tried to implement a client-server application using TrueVision3D.

The networking capabilities of TrueVision3D, according to their website, should be as follows:

Net Engine :
- DirectPlay8.1 support.
- Peer 2 Peer, Server, Client
- Send custom messages or predefined 3d messages.
- Works on LAN or on Internet.
- Unlimited number of players with server component.
- Easy player management with events (join, quit...)

Hope this helps. :D

[Blud_Stane]

Originally posted by DonMeck
Blud_Stane,

sounds like an ambitious project you are planing.

You should consider that - i think - only state of the art physique engines have out-of-the-box rag-doll physqies. Contraining the characater parts is one thing, but limiting etc might be something not very trivial - if it should look convincing.

"Jak & Daxter" did have large levels and background loading (if i remember correctly). Nothing that every engine has. Indeed it was a special feature of the game (i think) - like for Dungeon Siege.

How much can you invest in an engine?
I wanted to propose the copperhead engine, but i can't find info about it anymore. Maybe it has beeen sold? Was the successor of the jupiter engine, i believe.
http://www.touchdownentertainment.com/

Thanks for the help Don,

The motto for my small team is "more with less" I've been on and off contract projects with people that couldn't run a team, and been through a couple mods. I am planning a small title, with the most advanced but cheapest engine because that's more money i dont need to ask for from a publisher. I don't want to spend more than $100 (maybe $200 max) on an engine, but ultimately i believe there are resources out there for a starting group like mine to make a demo for free. I'd like to talk more but gotta run my contact info is above in the last post if you wouldnt mind talkin over things like this, any help is "help"

steve

[gameboy]

TrueVision update:

Their site has changed (it may have been hacked :shame: - the forum is down and the chat area displays Chinese (or Japanese?) characters instead of english now).

There no longer appears to be any mention of networking capability for their product in the features section, and the demo does not contain any classes or objects for networking.

It is possible to add networking to a project with third party tools, but this could be expensive (e.g. http://www.replicanet.com/pricing.html).

I may have to give up on TrueVision if the networking features have been dropped...just when I thought I had found the right tool. :sad:

[Blud_Stane]

well gameboy my small team and I have gone with:

Torque engine

...and we're gonna try and incorporate ODE physics

seems like the cheapest way to get state of the art games

[DonMeck]

If you use the torque engine, u nd to publish through their site (garage games), not? You wanna do that?

[gameboy]

I was just visiting the TrueVision3D website, and they're evidently experiencing problems due to a change in servers. They DO have network support evidently, in an object called "TV3DNetEngine". However, I did not receive this object in the download of their demo.

Blud, if you want Garagegames to handle your distribution, and take 35% of the revenue, then maybe that is the way to go. (Oh, and by-the-way, if you have a really successful game and your revenues are over $500,000, you must pay them $10,000 to develop with their software [per title, up front from then on]). I am also not convinced that their engine is as state-of-the-art graphically as some of the other engines out there, but I guess the net code is supposed to be pretty good.

Good luck. Hope it all works out. :thumbsup:

[Blud_Stane]

DonMeck: Well, I do not plan on using Garage Games if I can help it. I will be attempting to hit up some mainstream publishers that I think our Genre and budget are aimed for. Garage Games will be a fall back if several attempts are shopping around do not get anywhere.

gameboy: Like I mentioned above, Garage Games is a cushion, and more of a garauntee to get published if a more stable publisher does not pick up on it. I have unlimited webspace, ftps use, private mIRC channels...and luckily just recieved an email of yet another programmer that has a Torque engine license and has played around with the engine for a year.

Thanks for the kind words, and luck... I am becoming more and more optimistic :) Truevision did not work out because our only programmer at this time, uses C++ and the engine is in pieces he cant even get it running.

[DonMeck]

make sure htat you understand this paragraph from the eula:

"
(b) Licensee may not use the Software in whole or in part to create products for competing game publishing companies, commercial websites, or any other commercial or non-commercial entity, whether public or private if the sum of the annual revenue of the Licensee and publishing entity exceeds $500,000, without obtaining a COMMERCIAL LICENSE from the Licensor.
"

otherwise, good luck! :)

[Blud_Stane]

well if we make over $500k with sales I'll be happy to stick with GG or anyone because that is enough success right there :)

but thanks!

[Fox Mc Cloud]

Here some really nice cutie a state of the art engine that
gone Open Source the tech demo looks really nice:
http://catmother.sourceforge.net/
3D Max 5 Exporters and some other Tools are included
but you gona need Visual C++ experiance to get startet
with this Engine.


Greetz Fox Mc Cloud

[gameboy]

Thanks Fox.

Yeah, I just saw a mention about that on www.gamedev.net. It uses the BSD license, which makes it good even for commercial development.

[DonMeck]

i just donwloaded the demo, but its sooo dark - cant see anything!

Animation is too stiff and the story is really cliché pur. But great that they realease the whole stuff for free!!!

[gameboy]

TrueVision (http://www.truevision3d.com/html/) network code update:

Evidently the networking code portion of TrueVision isn't ready yet, but it will eventually be there in version 6.5 (right now they are at version 6.0). Here is a quote from darqSHADOW (TrueVision staff member) on their website:

"For 6.5 we are going to be taking my networking technology from Nada Games and creating a very solid, and flexible networking system. (A subset of the same system that NG sells to clients for $10k+ will be available inside of TV3D.)"

Hope this clears up any confusion I might have caused. :blush:

[gameboy]

More info on TrueVision:

Evidently the engine was originally written in VB, but is being recoded in C++. This has caused some problems with those trying to code the engine in C++ (VB seems to work fine).

The port will not be completed until version 6.5, or so it has been said on their forums; so you might want to hold off C++ development using this engine until then.

[jaydmax]

Here is another website for researching low cost game engines
http://www.salleurl.edu/~manuellv/Public/english.cg_gameengines.html

[gameboy]

Thanks for the info, jaydmax. It looks like they've got a ton of info on that website. :thumbsup:

[jaydmax]

Thank you Gameboy for the research you've passed on. I myself am currently playing with Quest3D (im still having issues getting animated files from maya to import properly. Models I got but not animation yet.) and and a few others but I really want virtools. I got a evalution copy a few years ago at Siggraph and its a sweet program for non-programmers like myself. I think im gonna save my pennies for virtools.
Does anyone know the royalties virtools charge?
One thing though, the Crytek engine that you priced at $900 bucks in not for the engine but for the Polybump plugin. The engine itself is priced up there with Unreal. I emailed them and they didnt bother to reply. oh well... but the Jupiter engine which looks really sweet can be evaluated upon signing a NDA. But its still 10K.




www.jaydmax.com

[DonMeck]

and dont forget the coppermine from them. Yes it's 10k but it has physiques and networking ... this costs extra with virtools and its isn't cheap. In the end , its maybe about the same price ... but of course ... virtools can also be used to a certain degree by non-coders

[jaydmax]

what happened to coppermine on the website? it is no longer advertised. did they sell it or something?

[gameboy]

It appears that 3D GameStudio (http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm), Conitec's latest engine A6, has come a long way. Two of the latest demos based on the A6 engine, FX Ball (http://www.conitecserver.com/down/fxball.zip) and Crane (http://www.conitecserver.com/down/crane.zip) , look pretty good, and demonstrate realistic physics. :eek: The graphics and lighting seem to look better now, with some real-time shadowing effects in evidence.

I may have to give this product a try. With its 30-day trial download, you can't go wrong. You can evidently save your work, but not in a form that doesn't require the GameStudio itself. Visit their download (http://www.conitec.net/a4update.htm) page for more demos.

[gameboy]

Another RAD game-making tool that should give 3D GameStudio a run for its money is Radish Work's Cosmos Creator (http://www.radishworks.com/CosmosCreatorInfo.htm). It touts the ability to rapidly create and edit 2D or 3D scenes while play testing a game.

It contains its own internal tools for creating models, textures, animation (yes, even skinned/boned animation) but also supports import of 3ds and .X (with boned animation for the .X files!). It also has a game engine that you can script via LISP or C++, and has built-in physics and other various special effects like real-time shadowing and bump-mapping! You can create standalone .exe's or interactive web presentations/games that can be played via the Radish Works viewer (http://www.radishworks.com/viewer/GameViewer.htm) (988K). Your creations can be distributed royalty free, so the licensing is great for commercial development.

It stores all its files in a special internal format from which it creates all geometry procedurally on-the-fly, making for some extremely small file sizes. :eek:

A free trial download is available, with tutorials to get you started. The product can be purchased in one of three levels of features: Silver ($49.95), Gold ($99.95), and Platinum ($499.95). To get the C++ API you've got to purchase the Platinum edition. :D

This tool might very well be the best all-in-one package for the money. :thumbsup:

[DonMeck]

Ah interesting link! I didn't know that one although i've seen a screenshot from it on the ODE site.

Its defenitly an intersting thing, but still not developed enough - in my eyes. BumpMapping doesn't look bumpy. The physique in the physiques doesn't feel very well - but from other applications i know that ODE can do better - maybe a settings issue. The LensFlare and the LightGlow demo isn't convincing at all. Unfortunally the webPlayer crashed quite often.

But the file sizes are impressive. Realtime boolean is great and lightmap calculation is also very nice. It's something to keep an eye on. :)



About the engine from touchdownentertainment. It's copperhead and not coppermine - i remembered it wrongly. It's not accessible through their homepage but still can be found on their site:

http://www.touchdownentertainment.com/CInfo.htm

It really looks very sophisticated ...

[gameboy]

Another new game engine has emerged, called Artificial Heart (http://www.3dlevel.com/artificialheart.php). It is a work in progress, written in VB.NET. It's physics demo (http://www.3dlevel.com/ardemo.php) is interesting, and demonstrates real-time shadowing as well.

Information as to how to use the engine is not given through an SDK, but a series of tutorials (http://www.3dlevel.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=21) .

I believe the engine is free for non-commercial use, and for commercial use, you must contact them via email.

http://www.3dlevel.com/

If you've been looking for another option for developing games using VB.Net, this is worth looking into. :D

[tburbage3]

gameboy,

Many thanks for getting this discussion started and the obvious amount of research you've already put into it. I had thought to start a similar thread when I came here and found yours.

As you've reported there are lots of possibilities out there -- some more complete solutions, some basically just rendering systems, some only suitable for arcade-style games, others trying to push the envelope on current state of the art. It is hard to sort through.

The ideal solution to me would sound like this:
- Provides a nominally complete set of design-time tools to bridge the gap between one of the good 3D content apps and what the engine needs;
- Most ideally, would allow use of said 3D app as the primary level design tool;
- High quality (for me, OpenGL so Linux or OSX could be targeted) renderer oriented toward realistic output where the developers are shooting for state of the art including full vertex/pixel shader support;
- Some C++ programming may be required, but would not require a full staff of programmers to maintain and enhance -- allowing development focus to remain for the most part on content and game logic;
- Provide decent animation and effects support -- particle system, physics/collision detection, procedural animation (some crowd, flocking, etc. support);
- Total cost within reach for a *small* group of artist/developers (say 1-5) -- as you mentioned -- within the same scope as the other necessary components such as 3D content app. Non-restrictive license -- *perhaps* with royalty provided the amount is *very* reasonable. These criteria let out the big names in commercial game engines;
- Scriptable animation/game logic using a standard language such as Python or perl.

Again, great thread. Keep it going!

[gameboy]

Thanks tburbage3.

Another place I came across during my "research" for this thread that you might want to check out is Neuro's 3D Engine List (http://www.3dhangout.com/cgi-bin/Blah/Blah.pl?b=Gen_3DEngines,v=display,m=1046376474,s=0). He lists a few engine that have not yet been mentioned on this thread as well, and has even put them into price categories. One thing I'm beginning to realize is that if you really want a well documented and supported (i.e. frequently updated) engine, you generally have to pay for it, and the larger the installed base of customers, the better off you'll be in this regard. I guess this is probably obvious. The fewer the installed base of customers, the more you'll probably be paying for a quality engine and support (i.e. add-ons, etc.) although some of the licensing agreements can be rather ridiculous at times when comparisons are made between the various options out there.

Good luck in your search. Let us know if you find that "ideal" solution. :thumbsup:

[atenyotkin]

There is one engine that I didn't see on your list, that may be of interest. It's called Tenebrae. The first version requires you to have Quake 1, which wouldn't work out for you since you want to sell that game. Tenebrae 2, however, is a stand alone game-engine that should come out in the near future. It uses the per-pixel shaders that AMP II, Power Render X, Doom III engine use. So it looks good. You need a pretty quick machine to run it though. The engine is free, and you can do whatever you want with it.

www.tenebrae2.com


My group is using Cipher Engine right now. It is the most powerful out of all the ones you listed. We tryed Torque, and we tryed the 3D Game Studio, and it just wasn't what we were looking for graphically. Cipher Engine really cought my eye though when I saw the demos. The only problem with using it though, is that you have to have experienced people making the game. All geometry is made in MAX, even the level. Everything else including entities (light, button, etc.,) and event scripts are done in c/c++. It's really really though in the beginnging, but even those who barelly knew how to program managed to understand it. Now, because everything is coded, you have unlimited possibilities for every entitiy and the scripts. And also becuase all models and levels are made in MAX, you can animate anything. For example you can have a terrain that will deform, or face morph out of a wall. Pretty cool. You just gotta know the software.

We were actually considering purchasing licenses for the Source engine used on the Half Life 2 game. But once we saw Cipher, we realized that we can add all the features we were interested in.

One other thing about cipher. it has two tools that come with it that really help you. Cipher Shader Tool and Particle Tool. They are very powerful.

So, even if you're not going to be using Cipher Engine now, I would give it a try for your next game. The engine is evolving way quicker than AMPII or 3D Game Studio.

The forums are always full of people to answer your quesions, and the developer of the engine is usually the first one to anwser.

[DonMeck]

gameboy,

very good link, thx.

atenyotkin,
yes Cipher looks really good. Especially foe that price. But i only wonder how much OOP is it when its only in c? How far developed is the charater system? secondary animations?

[atenyotkin]

I am not sure what you mean by how developed? Everything is animated in MAX. You can check out what cipher supports as far as animations on their site.

http://cipherengine.com/features.php



Download the Dancing Alien Girl movie to see the quality of the in-game animation.

http://cipherengine.com/download.php


There are no tools that come with the engine that help you animate something in a certain way.

The only other thing you can do to the model, is load it into a shader tool, and see how the shaders are applyed in real-time. For example with the dancing alien girl, you can change the shaders on the skin texture as she is dancing.

I hoped I helped.

[DonMeck]

Talking about mixing animations at runtime. I like primary animation (walk cycle) + secondary animation (something with the torso and arms or so)

[Mussi]

haven't read most of the thread :P, but i would recommend you dark basic profesional, I've worked with quite a few gamemaking packages but this is the one I like most. it is an easy to understand language, It has amazing powers and the thing is... it's still growing :). unlike the click and drag game making packages you really have the freedom to make any type of game with any kind of features. but ofcourse it takes some time to learn it and to be able to make some cool games, but I promise you, if read a lot, you will be able to make some real good looking games with it within months

[Mussi]

haven't read most of the thread :P, but i would recommend you dark basic profesional, I've worked with quite a few gamemaking packages but this is the one I like most. it is an easy to understand language, It has amazing powers and the thing is... it's still growing :). unlike the click and drag game making packages you really have the freedom to make any type of game with any kind of features. but ofcourse it takes some time to learn it and to be able to make some cool games, but I promise you, if read a lot, you will be able to make some real good looking games with it within months

[gameboy]

My current favorite game development engine is TrueVision3D (http://www.truevision3d.com/html/). It is fast, seems very easy to work with, and has a good licensing scheme for commercial development (i.e. inexpensive and fair). :D It is also free for non-commercial development.

I found DarkBasic Pro to be far slower and "buggier" than TrueVision3D. TrueVision3D's rendering quality is also superior.

With TrueVision3D, you can pick which language/IDE you want to develop in. They have tutorials to bring you up to speed using different programming languages (e.g. Visual Basic 6.0, VB.NET, C++, C#, Delphi). Currently, I'm using Visual Studio .NET and C# (along with Whole Tomato Software's Visual Assist .NET (http://www.wholetomato.com/) - a great little tool by the way). It is nice to have professional quality tools to work with; in comparision, the DarkBasic Pro IDE seemed rather toy-ish.

However, of all those Basic-language all-in-one programming-engine tools, (e.g. Blitz3D (http://www.blitzbasic.com/), PureBasic (http://www.purebasic.com/index.php3), IBasic (http://www.pyxia.com/), etc.), DarkBasic seems to have the most features and is updated the most at present.

But none of those Basic-language based tools really compare favorably to TrueVision3D's power. TrueVision3D recently released version 6.1 of their SDK and tools. (http://www.truevision3d.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=Downloads&file=index) It's worth checking out. :thumbsup:

[Mussi]

checked it out, there is no feature that can't be done in darkbasic pro, is there lightmapping support? bump mapping? detail mapping? blend mapping? realtime shadow shading? alpha mapping? Nvidea effect supprt(.cg or .fx)? it doesn't say anything about those things... does that mean you have to program them your self?

btw, you can also program DLLs in an other language for DBpro :)

[gameboy]

Mussi, you probably didn't see this (http://www.truevision3d.com/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2) page. You can look at it and judge for yourself. Or better yet, download the SDK and try out some of the examples.

I'm hoping this thread won't turn into a flamefest as to which engine is the best, but just a place to provide feedback on engines to help others decide which one is right for them.

DarkBasic Pro is getting better, but IMHO TrueVision3D offers better performance than DarkBasic Pro, in terms of FPS and rendering quality. I have yet to see a demo of DarkBasic Pro that blows away what TrueVision3D can do. Yes, programming skill and knowledge play a major role in this, but my point is that I like the programming IDE toolset available to me in TrueVision3D over that of DarkBasic Pro, at least for the moment. With improvement, DB Pro may someday change my mind. :D

[Mussi]

I'm hoping this thread won't turn into a flamefest as to which engine is the best
did not intend to do that :)

have yet to see a demo of DarkBasic Pro that blows away what TrueVision3D can do
I'm working on it ;)

[anim8]

Me and the rest of the development team just went thru the ordeal of chosing an engine.....
We went with Cipher, and so far everything seems to be going well.
To clarify, you do the modeling and animation in 3D Max (or Maya) and export to .ase files. ASE is not uncommon. The export is the trick. You get vertex colors, etc with .ase... Cipher comes with a tool that is drag and drop to convert the .ase files to .mdl files. Couldnt be easier.
Normally, after you build your models, textures, etc, you export them to ase. Afterwards you build your map in Max/Maya, group your segments (rooms, environments, ect) and export that file (using a script that comes with Cipher) to a .seg file. This file is opened by the engine as a map/level. The groups help with BSP, lighting, etc...
You'll notice there is no game editor. We chose to build one.
The reason we went with cipher is the toolset, the source code and the license. Cipher has shader and particle designers that make the job pretty easy and expandable.
You will need a decent programmer! I lucked up and got two great coders which makes my job easier.
The Cipher site also has good documentation and help from the developer.

I would recommend this engine over A6 (no source code) and TGE(no shader support, and everything looks like a T2 mod..)

BTW- The vision engine people emailed me back...:
"The regular investment for a 18 month, core devlopment cycle with full support is 250,000 $ for a commercial game production heading for a 5-10 million ROI"

:hmm:

Cipher for me!

Hope this helps!

www.fathomthegame.com (http://www.fathomthegame.com)

[gameboy]

Actually, I've found the .ase file format to be rather uncommon. There seems to be little information out there about its file structure.

Unfortunately I'm not using 3ds or Maya (I'm using Lightwave), so I gave up on Cipher because of this. I'm finding that often the workflow between digital content creation and importation of that content into game engines chokes because of incompatible, unsupported, or only partially supported file formats.

I have to admit though, that for the power you get for the price, Cipher (http://www.cipherengine.com/licensing.php) seems to be one of the best options out there.

DarkBasic Pro (http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/) seems to have among the most features supported at a good price, but I'm not sure that it performs all that fast. Blitz3D (http://www.blitzbasic.com/) seems to run at higher frame rates, but it is only DirectX 7 enabled at the moment as far as I know.

[Mussi]

there is currently a compo running for db users. it ends at 31 december, there will be some stunning entries so why don't you give a look at the games when they are done, I'm sure you'll find it a good tool then. hope I can finish myn in time :)

[anim8]

Even if .ase is uncommon, the final output is .mdl. So regardless of how you get there, ase to mdl, or straight to mdl, you have options. Especially with the new Blizzard tools...:thumbsup:

[gameboy]

ani8, Do these Blizzard tools convert to .ase, or from .ase? Can you give a link for the Blizzard tools?

Thanks. :)

[anim8]

Neither, they convert to .mdl....

http://www.battle.net/war3/files/index.shtml#arttools

[Noxerus]

Of course, you can also always use Deep Exploration to convert between file formats.

[Scottie]

ShaderWorks XT is not a game engine, but may be a GREAT fit for most engines that use effect files. It's a shader development program using a graph-based approach at writing shaders...... it's currently in alpha and free for download

www.ShaderWorks.com

have fun

[Scottie]

Here's an intersting tool...

ShaderWorks XT is not a game engine, but may be a GREAT fit for most engines that use effect files. It's a shader development program using a graph-based approach at writing shaders...... it's currently in alpha and free for download

www.ShaderWorks.com

have fun

[Mussi]

VERY interesting tool, downloading it now, can't wait to experiment with it

[MadMax334]

i have used darkbasic pro...to tell u the truth i find that it gets to slow when u try to do tomany things at once......also its a hassel to get any kind of OOP out of it.......the include file is virtualy useless....u must either compile ur own dll's or us tpc.....i would either stick with truevision or any of the sdk by eclipse (wildtangent for web, genesis3d).....even if they dont have some features......or maybe some that gameboy illisutrated like cipher or cube engine.....but i dont have oney for licenses so i stick to gpl's

[anim8]

One of the code guys (Section8) on my team has teamed up with the code guys from Out of The Box and built an editor for the Cipher engine.:bowdown:
I've been using it for a few weeks now and it will be released to the masses in the next few days if all goes as planned.
This, in addition to the shader and particle editors, makes Cipher a good choice for indie developers. The price is right and its higher quality than alot of the engines out now.

If you have any questions feel free to post them in our forums, the coders will be happy to help you guys out.


FathomTheGame.com (http://www.fathomthegame.com)

[gameboy]

Well, after much searching and some tinkering, I've decided at this time to go with 3D GameStudio (http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm).

The engine has come a long way since I first came across it a couple of years ago. I think it has now reached a point where some great looking games giving good performance can now be made with it. It has a large support staff backing it, and probably the largest installed base of developers for any indie development system. It is frequently updated to keep up with both bug fixes and changes in state-of-the-art technology. The company behind the technology, Conitec, regularly publishes a forecast (http://www.conitec.net/forecast.htm) for upcoming upgrades to their engine and game development tools, even setting priorities for them and giving their current status, something which is nearly nonexistent from most other organizations.

The engine is specifically designed for making games, so that many features that make game development quicker and easier are built in - this cuts down on development time. Bundled tools ensure you have a way to create content for the game without having to worry about incompatibilities between content creation tools and the game engine (yet it also works with output from other stand-alone tools that may be better suited for their particular task, like 3D modeling and animation). It has a powerful scripting language and support for developing games using other programming languages as well (see their forecast (http://www.conitec.net/forecast.htm) page - this will become even easier in the future). The engine is not only very complete, supporting online play and the latest technology (e.g. DX9), but it can fall back automatically to run in a state which is compatible with older systems that do not support such technology.

I'm not trying to start any flame wars, neither am I saying 3D GameStudio outperforms all other game creation tools in every area -- but for me at least, when you take ALL the criteria I set forth at the beginning of this thread (e.g. overall engine performance, technological feature set, cost, documentation, speed and ease of development, tech support, game and content creation workflow, suitability for a 1-man development team, licensing issues), 3D GameStudio would appear to be at the very least not only an excellent choice, but also one that perhaps best satisfies the requirements initially specified in this thread at this time.

:thumbsup:

[Renderman_XSI]

I'd to add one more game engine to the list. for future reference.

X-engine:

http://www.thexengine.com/index.html

[Tinny_McFinny]

EDITED

[gameboy]

Another one to add to the list:

3Impact 3D Engine (http://www.3impact.com/)

[mastermesh]

http://www.crack.com/golgotha/ Golgatha.... old, but from what I understand is totally free to use and you don't have to reveal your source in commercial use... if you do get it get
http://www.dynabits.com/ivcon/index.htm to get converter... EDIT - URGH, THAT GOLGATHA DOWNLOAD LINK IS NOW DEAD! IT WAS NOT DEAD ABOUT 2 WEEKS AGO - GLAD I DOWNLOADED BEFORE NOW! :)


http://www.3drad.com - this is the brother app to 3Impact...

and http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html is the oldest and probably best list of Engines that I've come across... OTHER lists do exist like http://fraktali.849pm.com/graphengines.html if you google enough.

[mastermesh]

http://sv3.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=53435

[mastermesh]

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:O7iealq9x30J:www.crack.com/golgotha/+&hl=en&start=1&ie=UTF-8

[Mastakojo]

Most of the people here probably are programmers. Im an 3d artist and planning to make a game with some people too, does any of these game engines supports normal mapping, good network system and data management? I know AMP2 and tenebrea2 supports normal mapping, but their others features other then graphics seems to be behind....

[Mussi]

DarkBasicPro can handle all of that, check it out atTheGameCreators (http://www.thegamecreators.com/)

[Sashelas]

After reviewing each tool on your list, the best bet seems to the combination of the Torque indie license at $100 US, then the Caligari gamespace pack: http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/ for $300.

The community for support is large enough to flush out most of the bugs you would find in using any product. Having purchased a variety of tools in the past and getting burned, I think the two tools above would give you what you need in order to meet your break even point when you can sell your resulting products.

Custom writing everything yourself is easier in some cases. Use VB, use directX, postpone .NET until everyone has the run time. Find a good free or cheap installer (Clickteam or Nullsoft) and get something out. After you have done one or two round trips with this approach, compare it with the time you would have to spend understanding the eccentricities of someone elses engine.

However there are enough games out there written with Torque, that you should be able to arrive at a quick win with your game with the same effort. If your skills are more design related, you will want a tool with a very strong developer following. At the moment that appears to be Torque. If you have doubts, check out the Radiosity mods from the forums on their site. You'll be pleasantly surprised.

[SuperDre]

Originally posted by gameboy
----------------------------------------------------------
Torque Game Engine [http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=1]
----------------------------------------------------------

Price:
$100. But if you have a successful game and your revenue is over $500,000, it costs you $10,000 per game (up front!) to develop using their engine and tools.

Pros:
Decent performance. Comes bundled with a set of tools to assist in making games.

Cons:
The tools that come bundled with the engine can be purchased or downloaded on your own. The demo games were OK, but the engine is not as state-of-the-art graphically as other engines.

I don't know where you got the $10,000 but that's not correct, it's only $495 per programmer, just the same as the $100 which is also per programmer and requires you to show at least the Torque logo, and can only be used for games (Yeah like you want to do something else with it.. LOL).. Also they will soon release the Torque Shader Engine.. Which will also cost about the same..
The tools are also free, and there is also a great community..

[operativem]

If you're looking for a real solution, I would make scene graph flexibility an extremely *serious* priority, especially if you want to make a Jak and Daxter-themed title. This is going to save you a lot of time and trouble in the long run. Engines with poorly designed scene graphs (inflexibility is one harbinger of poor design) tend to make development a total nightmare. Look at OpenFlight (http://www.multigen.com) if you want to see a well-implemented scene graph.

OpenFlight, or a similar level of quality and flexbility, is the minimum you should expect. A lot of people and large companies don't really do their homework with respect to scene graph quality when they research solutions. I know of numerous examples at large, very-well known companies, where scene graph problems caused significant problems on high-profile projects. (For reference, I think OpenFlight was the basis for the scenes in both Mario64 and San Francisco Rush 64.)

The only possible downside -- if it's really even a downside -- to very flexible scene graphs is that they can be more work to optimize, and typically, you have to use elision. However, a flexible scene graph gives you lots of control over mesh granularity, which makes it easier to elide the scene based on whatever conditions (distance) you want.

Just my 25 cents.

P.S. I don't work for MultiGen.

[DonMeck]

can you lay out what the criteria are for a good scene-graph design?

Do you mean a render engine with different scene-graph-possibilities (like plug-ins)?

[operativem]

In my last post, I referenced OpenFlight, which is a commercial scene graph made by MultiGen. (I’d like to reiterate: I’m not associated with them in any way.)

When I use the word flexible, I am talking about a combination of extensibility and user control. This subject is probably too complicated for a quick post, but I'll try and cover exactly what I mean.

Extensibility is important for obvious reasons – most applications have custom data types that need to be stored somewhere, many times in the scene graph. If you look at the design of OpenFlight, you’ll probably get a good idea about what I mean. (http://www.openscenegraph.org is another good example; I’m not associated with them either.)

A user-defined scene graph (like OpenFlight or the scene graph offered in Maya) provides many features critical to optimized content creation. For example, object grouping and the ability to control mesh granularity are two of the most important. Here’s an example why:

Let’s say we’re using portals to optimize a scene with a large castle and a large outdoor area. In this case, we’re not using exact portal clipping, we’re just using the portals to cull objects that don’t overlap the portal. For reference, the camera is inside the castle, looking out through a window. The landscape is visible, as are a few stands of trees.

If we have the landscape as a single mesh (say a height field, which is a technique common to many game engines), then we have to render the entire height field, except what’s clipped to the primary and secondary viewports, where primary viewport is the screen and secondary viewport is the portal.

This means, for all intents and purpose, the portal culling has no effect on the landscape, which probably has thousands of polygons, especially if it’s an inefficient height-field. (Instead of a TIN.) Anyway, depending on your implementation of portal technology, this tends to require two passes of database traversal, so the performance cost of the optimization is significant enough that it’s a shame to waste it by getting no optimization on the landscape when it’s viewed through the window.

Without “groups” of trees, each tree has to be tested against the primary and secondary viewports. There could be hundreds or thousands of trees, each requiring per-frame tests for overlap against the primary and secondary viewports. If we have user-defined groups and a high-degree of control over what constitutes a mesh, you can create groups of trees and efficiently remove irrelevant groups of trees from the rendering list. Instead of testing thousands of trees, you might test 10 groups and find that only one group of trees overlaps the primary and secondary viewports.

Here's a scene graph with 1000 trees, I've omitted most of them for obvious reasons.

- Scene
-- Landscape
-- Tree 1
-- Tree 500
-- Tree 1000

Would you rather test 1000 trees or test 10 groups of trees when half the groups aren't even onscreen? Does the scene graph of your engine allow this?

Going a step further, user-controlled mesh granularity allows us to separate the terrain into groups and meshes, which can be efficiently culled, creating an even more optimal rendering list. Thusly, only the portions of the landscape that are actually visible through the window are rendered. There will be some overdraw, but you can greatly limit your costs in that respect.

An example of an efficient scene graph:

- Scene
- Group 1
-- Landscape Mesh Quadrant 1
-- Tree Group 1
-- Tree Group 2
-- Tree Group 3
-- Tree Group 4
- Group 2
-- Landscape Mesh Quadrant 2
-- Tree Group 1
-- Tree Group 2
-- Tree Group 3
-- Tree Group 4
- Group 3
-- Landscape Mesh Quadrant 3
-- Tree Group 1
-- Tree Group 2
-- Tree Group 3
-- Tree Group 4
- Group 4
-- Landscape Mesh Quadrant 4
-- Tree Group 1
-- Tree Group 2
-- Tree Group 3
-- Tree Group 4

Again, does the scene graph of your engine support the structure shown above? Or is it really just a naive list of objects that have to be culled each time the renderer draws a frame?

I don’t think these types of considerations are frequently made when people evaluate engine technologies. (I have yet to see one question about scene graph quality in this thread, except for the one I raised.)

Not enough emphasis is placed on the scene graph because people tend to be concerned with rendering quality and performance. However, in many ways rendering performance is directly and indirectly tied to the scene graph, so I find it unusual that more thought would not be given to this area.

It is simply a fact that even if an engine has a super-efficient renderer, a comparably inefficient rendering list will quickly overwhelm and make useless any and all rendering optimizations you can implement. If you have little or no control over how the scene is constructed, then you have little or not control over how the scene is culled. The result of that is that you have little or no control over the rendering list, and are essentially stuck with how your scene performs inside whatever scene graph the engine designer has created. Of course, you can always re-engineer major portions of the product, but then what's the point of licensing to save time and money?

This is the root of complaints about engines being suitable for some types of content but not for others. (i.e. using a shooter engine for racing game or platformer.) It's also the reason that many companies spend thousands of extra development dollars trying to work around the performance problems they encounter when they try and fit their content into a scene graph that was poorly engineered.

The task of optimizing a graphics engine is rarely, IF EVER, solved by a single magic bullet. It's a process that requires attention to the structure of the scene/database and at all points along the geometry pipeline. No use feeding bloated mesh soup to your geometry pipeline, that won't do much good. (This is something that many engine programmers know, but they often don't have time to focus properly on this because they're too busy with other things.)

Developers should be concerned with how much control their artists have over the efficiency of the rendering list, because it saves time and money. I really doesn't cost much more to create a totally efficient scene from the ground up.

This explanation would be better with diagrams but I just don’t have the time.

[DonMeck]

Thank you for clearig this up. I read that in ORGE the scenegraph is acutally a plug-in or so - so it can be replaced easily.

The engine I am using allows groupings, hierarchies, places and portals. This allows the user to organize the scene to unload the culling-process.

[Antimode Siker]

Originally posted by gameboy
Regarding the LGPL license, the problem I see with it is that you must allow users to be able to change the public code covered under the LGPL license and then recompile it with the rest of your application, and then run the modified application. This has at least two drawbacks; one is that unless you provide some sort of SDK for your application, you must "open" it up somewhat so they can recompile it. The second drawback is that users would be able to create their "customized" version of your game, and if you want players to be able to compete against one another online, these customized versions of the game would be equivalent to "cheating" (unless the point of the game was to allow users to compete against one another using their own customized modifications).

I am not sure how you mean with having to open the application up. You would have to make available the unlinked objects and a make file such that the project could be relinked with another version of the LGPL licensed objects. This is similiar to how the dotXSI plugin for Maya comes in unlinked object files.

As far as the second point goes though, I think it is important to realize that security by obscurity is not. If the concern is to prevent 'cheating' by disallowing people from changing anything in the game executable, you would have an enormous challenge ahead because you would be unable to even use DirectX or OpenGL, both which rely on DLLs and vendor provided drivers. To retain compatibility with many different computers, it is probably near impossible to lock these from being changed.

In fact, if you use any kind of dynamic standard libraries, they can and will be changed depending on the user's system - compare what DLLs are available on Windows 98 vs Windows XP for example.

So unless you wish to implement your own operating system for the game to run on, you are stuck with changeable parts and a "customizable" game wether you use LGPL software or not, I believe.

More importantly, to prevent cheating, entirely different measures are necessary than statically linking the executable. These might include internal software encryption and CRC checksums compared to an internet database for online games. These measures will not stop a professional but can deter most casual cheaters.

Using or not using OGRE on the other hand probably has very little effect on determent if these meassures are in place.

[arli]

Hi..

Iam one of the developers over at TV3D (Truevision3D, LLC.).
I just saw this article and thought it might be of intrest to get some updated information on the TV3D SDK.

Some of you might have already noticed we have a new and redesigned webpage now, http://www.truevision3d.com , so some of the links that point to us in the posts from here might come out with a 404 error.

By visiting our new webpage you are able to see that we are reaiming our goals by moving our position in the 3D Engine market upwards.

We are atm working on the TV3D SDK 6.5, which will include many many new and exciting features. All of which can be expected from the big names such as HL2, Doom3 etc.

If you read the info on 6.5 on our webpage you see we have now developed plugins for the diffrent modelling packages to have support for our own formats (which are introduced in 6.5). This means smooth integration between maya, max, gamespace etc. right into the tv3d-project you are working on.

With the new 6.5 SDK we are totally redesigning the SDK aswell, some of which can be expected is new tools. ShaderBoy (a pixel- vertex- shader editor), ModelView (a Model Viewer/Editor/Processor .. assign effects to your exported models) and totally new samples which will introduce you to all of these new features.

All of the engines are being rewritten from scratch with a very optimized layout and multilanguage support (ATL/COM, .NET, Direct Library Support (C++)).

Very exciting stuff to look forward to, we are currently in the 6.5 Beta stadium. We have a closed beta atm, and we are progressing fast. We update the page pretty often with news on our progress and a development video.

I hope this brings us a bit up2date with this post, and keep looking back into our page, Im currently working on a video that will demonstrate how easy it is to get your model from your modelling package into your game with full perpixel light and bumpmapping using normalmaps (generated from a highpoly model, this is done in ModelView) and with Vertex- Pixel- Shader effects such as Glow effects etc.

PS: Heres a lil screenshot of a model in ModelView that is around 9000 poly, the normalmap is generated of a highpoly model that is at around 600 000 poly, this is all applied with a smooth sense of specular. And this is rendering very fast, due to its real polycount is only 9000!

EDIT: Our artist had an updated and nicer model so i updated the image on the site!

http://www.truevision3d.com/images/normalmapSS.jpg

Ah and also, anyone who has the 6.x license has of course automatically the 6.5 license as well, so the prices arent changing with the new SDK!

Have a nice day everybody!

Cheers.

- Arli Mujkic
Senior Developer
http://www.truevision3d.com

[SuperDre]

Oh damn, that's looking rather nice.. Looking forward on trying the new TV3D 6.5 engine out..

[ICO88]

Out of all the engines that i would have used I found it was a toss up between virtools and Quest 3d. Virtools was way too expensive for me. Quest Graphics wise is the equal to virtools. The problem is that it is pretty low level and there are not enough game tutorials. That being said Im able to do things in quest easily that took me tons of time in gamestudio. If you keep doing the quest tutorials then Quest just clicks. The core engine is good, its just those fools at quest need to make more templates and tutorials for game makers. then quest will surpass virtools.

[DonMeck]

Well, not sure if it is all that it takes.
You got scripting language (VSL) and now you can also assign those scripts to some keys, so you can speed up your workflow.

Additional the SDK has now an inerface for integrating the source/media control solution you want to use. Alien nxn interface - or so - is availble by default.

They also allow now, to use their UI within the SDK - allow to stay in look&n feel when adding new plug-ins.

Moreover, the channel thing is a really basic concezpt in terms of information-organisation.
Virtool's differentiation into BuildingBlock and Parameter, ParameterOperation and so on, gives a higer order of information. Kommunikating the concept faster to the developer.

But well - this is my personl impression from only looking very shortly into quest3D. No doubt that good things can be done and I am hearing good things. Price is really good. Only for Virtools users it is hard to go to quest3d, because the now know the other concept.

[The Weed Killer]

I tried the truevision3d engine out about a year ago and wanted to see how they have progressed since then but I can't get to their site, anyone else having this problem?

[ICO88]

You can deal with things in a higher order in quest by using the templates. But youre right virtools users would not find any real reason to switch. Either way for the price Quest wins overall maybe Virtools edges out quest. They are both on the top.

[struve]

Wow, this thread is very handy. Thanks guys!

[raven3000]

What engine would you recommend for a team trying to make a survivor horror game that take place in feudal japan.The engine that we're looking for needs to be able to produce good visual,since we want the environment of the game to look real.
Also,the engine needs to be able to handle multiple NPC without slowing down.Plus,good collision detection and works with software like 3D studio max

[DonMeck]

ICO88,
I should take a look onto the template thing.

raven3000,
depends on many other facts like: what is your budget for the engine, do you have programmers to extend/cutomize it to your needs ... ? Then it goes into technically stuff like: it should have p/v shader support, AI, character engine etc. Even this can be break down. So, what do you have, what do you need. Then responses can be more accurate.

[Tocpe]

Do any of these programs allow you to develop games for both the PC and Mac? Or how do you even do that?

[raven3000]

what is your budget for the engine:600-700 dollars
do you have programmers to extend/cutomize it to your needs:Yes,we have 2

We basically need an engine that has accurate AI control to make it easier for to make the enemies and NPC act more humanlike.Also,it being compatible with Visual C++ 6 is a plus.

[gameboy]

An engine which I've mentioned I've liked before in this thread isTrueVision3D (http://www.truevision3d.com/home.php). One of their programmers, Arli, has posted an update about it above. I've found TrueVision3D easy to use, and it supports the use of various programming languages in addition to C++ like Borland's Delphi, or any of the .NET compatible languages. In some preliminary testing using this engine I was able to get frame rates in the thousands of fps for simple graphics, and some of the more sophisticated demos they've come out with have had frame rates around 100 fps on a system with an Athlon XP 2800+ and Radeon 9700 Pro. The version 6.5 update of this engine should be quite significant, and is something to keep an eye on.

[Sashelas]

Operativem has an very important point. Poor scene graph management breaks most engines that attempt to provide a degree of programmatic control and allow loading of large numbers of objects.

**Has anyone attempted to implement a scene graph inside an RDMS?

A pre-calculated scene graph cache on clients that is refreshed from a b-tree indexed set of related tables might work. The cache would be pushed down to the client on login. The list of quadrants and groups to render could be sent downstream to the client based on the result of a heartbeat driven procedure call.

I thought maybe PlayNC was going down this path after I read some of their developer's writings.

--

I've been doing engine reviews again for a new project I'm on that has a 'game-like' need for a high performance graphics engine. The engine would need to load scene graph elements from a large dataset.

Here are my current requirements for the engine:
1) .NET support a must since most of the code on a current project is C#
-I plan to interface with my C# code which periodically retrieves datasets from six SQL Server Wintel boxes over the internet at anywhere from 28.8 - T1 speed.
My data size is fairly large - 330 million records, 900 GB.
3D scene graph data and business record data is retrieved to cache on remote client machines. I would write a C++ plugin or wrapper to do this if necessary.

2) Some way to hit remote RDMS over TCP/IP for ACID transactions. UDP, Directplay or custom multiplayer code could also be used but not for required save points and transaction management.

3) Cost under $500. If it is much more would use DirectX w/o an add'l engine

4) Working samples on install. If bugs occur off the bat, forget it.

5) Sizable forum community or diverse product offering
I've been burned by the folding of engines in the past (Intel 3dr for example)

6) Easy import/export of digital assets. I use Photoshop, Caligari, Bryce, 3DSMax, and some in-house tools that store and interchange data using XML and BLOB fields in SQL Server.

7) Windows 2003 compatible with an array of video cards. XP Home & Pro compatible with same. I have ten machines that represent different combinations. Some engines have performance differences or strange crashes on 2003 and I'm not sure why. Some engines also run faster on 2003 surprisingly if given ample RAM.

--


Here are my recent test results looking for an engine that fits the requirements:

Quest3d Lite
-$89.00
http://www.quest3d.com/index.php?id=8
-House demo failed under Win 2003
-Rendering quality is fantastic
-Fur and crowd demos are amazing
-Useful but overpriced add-ons. The multi screen flight demo is wild.
-$2000 for Enterprise which includes all add-ons. Still not very programmable
-Poor RDMS support - better off hitting RDBMS (OLEDB, ADO.NET) than using ODBC interface.
-This could be the best if I can create an interface layer or wrapper. Check out Monster Mayhem demo.


Truevision3D
-$150.00 single product, $500 multi product
http://www.truevision3d.com
-Flexible. I write alot of code so this appeals to me.
-Visual Basic.Net, C# support
-Unresolved bugs in Visual Studio .NET 2003 such as crash on close
-Graphics are a lacking due to lagging DirectX support.
-New version coming soon which supports DirectX9.
-Spooky and dated humankind demo
-Mesh soup. Performance problems with lots of objects at 1920x1440.
-Might be easier to use C#/DirectX tutorial code from DirectX SDK

Torque Game Engine SDK "Indie" License
-$100.00
http://www.garagegames.com/pg/product/view.php?id=1
-No .NET support. Would need to write a wrapper object in C++.
-Nice editing environment for menus. Created a usable menu in 15 minutes.
-Great demos. Very playable.
-Problems connecting to master server from Windows 2003. Worked from XP.


gameSpace1.5 (best tool add-on)
-$299
-MAP export
-WAD import/export
-Have purchased Truespace several times in the past and used it with DirectX

Gamestudio / A6
-$199.
http://conitec.net/a4info.htm
-mp3 and mpg playback are nice to haves
-4 players is limited in $199 version
-CScript, Would need to write a wrapper object in C++.
-DLL interface, COM in future (.NET integration looks somewhat difficult)
-Pyrotechnics demo was nice.
-Great plug in support.

**I notice one Gamestudio plugin from Mythic Entertainment. Does anyone know if Dark Age of Camelot uses this engine? Do Mythic's other games use it?

3dlevel
-Free, VB.NET based
http://www.3dlevel.com/index.php
-Might be easier to use C#/DirectX tutorial code from DirectX SDK
-Still evaluating

Cipher
-$100
http://www.cipherengine.com/licensing.php
Very nice demo graphics quality and speed
-Still evaluating to decide if useful

DarkBasic
-$90
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/
-Cheap. Lots of Samples.
-Poor language support and integration capabilities.
-Difficult to integrate RDMS and multiplayer networking code.
-Still evaluating to decide if learning Darkbasic would be a waste of effort


3Impact
-$100
http://www.3impact.com/
-Simple C++ (very elegant)
-Decent performance. Nice graphics.
-Small following.
-Write own C++ multiplayer code.
-Still evaluating

-Sash

[DanSilverman]

For the record, I use 3D GameStudio and have been doing so for years ... since version 3.9 (and we are now on version 6.31). I have also used (though to a lesser degree) several other engines and have licenses to Torque, Cipher and DarkBASIC Pro. I have a healthy respect for all of these engines (including the ones that I do not currently have a license to or do not use).

When evaluating an engine there are so many things to consider. I have seen people "slam" one engine or another and the fault may not have been the engine at all. Instead, the fault may have been that the end user simply chose the wrong engine for the project. For example, if I choose an engine that is primarily an in-door engine and attempt to make an expansive terrain-based game with it ... well ... then I am in for trouble. This seems to happen quite a bit and is, in my oppinion, a lot of the reason for negative input from people on many of these game engine's boards. So matching a game engine to your needs and the needs of your project is paramount.

I am not a programmer, but a CG artist. As such, using an engine that requires programming is not something I can do if I am to work alone. I have licenses to Torque, Cipher and DarkBASIC, all of which require programming to use, because of projects I have had to work on in the past and because of possible future projects. But, for the most part, my business is made from 3D GameStudio.

With 3D GameStudio I can create a complete level and have it up and running with absolutely no programming at all. I don't even have to tweak a script or any of that. I simply build the level, place my entities, build the BSP and go. I can also use the new scripts (and tweak them without ever once touching code) to do basic things like player movement, doors opening and closing, create lifts that will carry the player or an object, create basic enemy AI, etc. And all this without touching code (and be able to custimize it as well ... either without touching code or by creating custom code).

The scripting language, called C-Script, is certainly advancing. It is going to be changing a bit more and become more like C. But if someone does not like the scripting langauge then they can program with C, C++ and Delphi using the SDK. So there is flexability there for both the non-programmer and the programmer.

The engine is currently BSP based, which some people do not like nor do they tend to understand. BSP is restrictive when it comes to the types of geometry you can use (no concave surfaces) but it makes for very fast frame rates. Even so, the company that makes GameStudio is planning to implement Octrees in the near future. The GameStudio user will have the choice of using either BSP or Octrees for their level. Once Octrees are in place, then arbitrary geometry can be used for level geometry.

One of the best things about GameStudio is it comes with a suite of tools. While MED, the Model Editor, is out-dated, at least there is a modeler there to use. Its main purpose is really for converting models from other programs over to GameStudios' own MDL format. The other tools are great. WED, the World Editor, is a lot like Hammer/Worldcraft, and is specifically designed for BSP level creation. There are also plugins that allow you to use 3D Studio MAX to create both models and level geometry as well as for Lightwave. And WED will also take MAP files. There is also a script editor called SED so you have an IDE for coding as well. Other tools are in the words such as a shader designer to help the non-programmer (as well as the programmer) create custom shader effects for their games.

One of the nice things about the tools is that you don't have to look for tools to use and you don't have to worry about a restrictive EULA. For example, the EULA for Hammer/Worldcraft does not allow you to use Hammer for commercial games. WED can be used with no restrictions what-so-ever (as with the other tools).

GameStudio is also advancing. Some would say that it is advancing a bit more slowly than other engines in its class and, to a degree, I would have to agree. But there is a difference. Many of these other engines seem to release updates with fairly fresh code and, while this allows the user base to get updates and features more quickly, the users tend to become a beta testers group and encounter bugs and instabilities. This often can lead to user frustration. The programmers for 3D GameStudio have their own beta test team and all features go through various iterations and tests before going to a public beta (and all users are warned that the release is a beta). Once the official release is out, it is fairly bug-free and extremely stable. So, development with current releases is a dream. I rarely have problems using a current release of GameStudio in my projects and I use GameStudio professionally.

Some have stated the graphical output of GameStudio is a bit low. I would disagree and agree :) . The graphical display of GameStudio is bright, crisp and accurate, not muddy as I have witnessed with some other engines. On the other hand, only recently did we get 24-bit textures for level geometry and shaders. So, the graphical output has increased. The weakest area graphically, in my oppinion, is the lightmapping tool. While I like WED because it will automatically generate your lightmaps, you currently have no control over the quality or size of the lightmap. The result can be banding from time to time if things are not well thought out. I believe that Conitec is planning to work on this in the future, but it is not even on their forecast list at the moment.

There is a lot more that I could say, but this post is long enough as it is. I will say this, though: I am using GameStudio as the core of my business and have been doing so for a few years. Therefore, GameStudio can certainly be used professionally and holds up in a professional environment.

[spakman]

I haven't seen this solution mentioned yet. http://www.renderware.com.

I've worked with this engine personally. It's being used on a game I worked on that's due out this Christmas. I've seen some good results and some surprising results, and was wondering what others thought.

Thanks!

[Tocpe]

I haven't seen this solution mentioned yet. http://www.renderware.com.

Hmmm....maybe it's just the lack of sleep, but I couldn't find a price on their site. :shrug:

...course, then again, like they say: "If you gotta ask how much it costs, you probably can't afford it".

[Oblivionbringa]

This might be of interest..

www.artificialstudios.com (http://www.artificialstudios.com)

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=26

http://artificialstudios.com/licensing.php

[gordon7up]

just spent the last hour or so reading this thread, very informative, I am a Maya user, I seen a few references to maya in this thread, is there any engine which works particularly well with maya models, textures, maps etc or are they much the same??

thanks,
Gordon

[spakman]

Anybody have any personal inisight on Microsoft's new XNA standard? (I'm just reading throught this link (http://www.microsoft.com/xna/) right now).

peace d=^)

[gameboy]

One concern about XNA that may portend it being another attempted standard that bites the dust is that Microsoft says the DirectX API will continue to be a baseline development technology for the standard. My understanding is that DirectX 9 will be the last iteration of DirectX, to be replaced by a newer API (Avalon) once Windows (Longhorn) is shipped, although it sounds like from this (http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1586741,00.asp) article that the existing DirectX may continue to be a subset of Avalon's graphics technology:


Avalon will be the replacement for the existing Windows desktop graphics technologies, and is built on XML and DirectX. Avalon itself is an API framework, much like the GDI interface on which the current Windows desktops are built.

[spakman]

*bump*

(mods, u guys should prolly make this thread a sticky)

Thanks gameboy!

peace d=^)

[spakman]

just spent the last hour or so reading this thread, very informative, I am a Maya user, I seen a few references to maya in this thread, is there any engine which works particularly well with maya models, textures, maps etc or are they much the same??

thanks,
GordonI'd wager they're all much the same. I've only worked at one game company that didn't use Maya. (At that place we used SoftImage 3.8). Maya has all sorts of things to make game assets engine friendly, like individual f-curve output control for example. (I only bring that up, because I've heard horror stories about Max and f-curve data wrangling - don't know much about Max personally...)

peace d=^)

[EVIL]

This might be of interest..

www.artificialstudios.com (http://www.artificialstudios.com)

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=26

http://artificialstudios.com/licensing.php
I am constantly visiting their website if there are new stuff or anything about a licencing price

[DevilHacker]

I have always looked at DarkBasic, but it seems that everyone is bashing it...
Why? I really want to know why I should not get it; it looks to be very good?
Any one work with it first hand?
Also, I am not trying to start a flame war, just find out more info, everyone seems to just be saying its not good... Please explain.
:shrug:

[gameboy]

Well, in the past, they've had a poor reputation for producing buggy software (and somewhat slow - although I've seen some efforts that used it produce high frame rates - at least with DarkBasic Pro). I got rather fed up when the debugger kept crashing on me! :rolleyes: In times past, fixing errors wasn't a high priority on their list. It seems they would rather rush to put out the next great new feature of DirectX 9, etc. but would tend to leave many previous bugs unfixed.

However, a few months ago they added some people and finally took some time to fix outstanding bugs. Judging from some of the comments their developers posted in their "diaries", they seemed surprised the code was so buggy. Perhaps now they've learned from their mistakes and are putting out better tools. :D Their upcoming FPS Creator (http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_22.html) product does look rather promising. Check out the videos on it there (http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_22.html) also.

[DevilHacker]

Any word if there will be another update to the DarkBasic engine...
Or is it stopping at Pro right now?
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Also, has anyone used the Nebula Device (http://nebuladevice.cubik.org/) engine?
It looks really good… :shrug:

[gameboy]

The 3Impact engine has recently released a new version, 3.7, which now supports bump-mapping and per-pixel lighting, in addition to its already existing features such as car and ragdoll physics, volumetric shadows, reflective surfaces, alpha transparency, network gaming, etc. This engine is coming along quite nicely, and I've yet to come across another engine which is as elegant or quite as easy to use. It also doesn't cost a lot. It currently supports development using C++, Delphi, and IBasic. (A port to BlitzMax (http://www.blitzbasic.com/logs/userlog.php?user=1&log=1) would be great when it is released for the PC).

The 3Impact engine is definitely worth checking out! You can view information on its features and download a demo of it from here (http://www.3impact.com/). :thumbsup:

@DevilHacker: The creators of DarkBasic Pro have released a new SDK that allows you to program the game engine behind DarkBasic Pro with another language like C++, and since they say it is also compatible with Visual Studio .NET 2003, it should be possible to make it work with any .NET compatible language as well. Check it out in their latest newsletter here (http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_23.html).

[pixeloddity]

how did you even get the thing working.. we've almost given up cause our programmer is trying to just get it started but has like 90+ errors. Maybe theres a simple setup out there, and we'd like to use Truevision as its powerful.... but im leanin toward Torque unless we get it going :(

[gameboy]

3Impact comes with several tutorial code files, and searchable reference files for programming 3Impact in several languages (C++, Delphi, IBasic). I suggest your programmer start out by playing around with modifying the demo code that comes with it. One thing to keep in mind though; the prefix name of the .dll file you produce should match the name of the 3Impact executable. For example, if you are running the 3Impact debug version (3Impactd.exe) the name of the .dll file should be 3Impactd.dll. When you're ready to run the release version of 3Impact (3Impact.exe), the .dll name should be 3Impact.dll. :)

[PeterTable]

This is a very informative thread!!
About 3 weeks I bought Indie Torque engine and returned it becouse if you want to get the juice you have to program with their scripts and buy the other plugins they sell.

Now I am deciding between Cipher and 3impact.
Both have almost same feature levels, are in the same budget and allow me to do all in C++

I hadn´t bought either of them, which do you prefer?

I plan to work on a persistent world 3D space RTS game and a persistent world multiuser 3rd person RPG.

[Strang]

I skimmed this thread to make sure. I didn't see NeL engine up here so here it goes

http://www.nevrax.org/tiki-index.php?page=NeL

NeL developed by nevrax is a mmorpg based engine, although its open to any interpretation.

NeL is designed around a typical client / server setup

it was used to develop The Saga Of Ryzom (http://www.ryzom.com)

It is developed for a GNU General Public License...

I haven't seen many MMO engine solutions so I think this is something good to post about.

BTW.. if you make it to the site.. go down to the bottom right and vote for more 3dsmax examples for water/tree/sky/skin

getting content into the engine is still a task because of lack of examples.

thanks

-Steven

[PeterTable]

Nel gots a lot of features but its GPL licensed.
In short words our game´s code must be released to the public, thus allowing skilled people to develop network "pluggins" or 3rd party tools that would help others cheat.

I know that some skilled persons could reverse engineer any network code but opensource GPL licenses serve the network protocols on a silver platter to malicious hackers.

I´d better use RakNet (rakkarsoft.com) for networking, it has lots of features only rivaled by Torque Networking Library and other higher priced libs.

[Strang]

I am glad you mentioned this...

I hang out on the forums and irc channel and have heard of going commerical with NeL.. so it would still be open source, but if you purchase you would then be protecting your intelecutal property. thus making your Network code that is based on NeL's but obviously for hacking/cheating reasons you would refine and rework to fit your need.

I hope this will also bring more people to NeL, now that it could be of interest to larger developers

stay tuned on

www.nevrax.org

[raimo]

Awesome thread!

I have done quite a lot of research conserning different game engines in the past few days. I don't have any formal game developing experince (At the moment I'm in a HL2 mod team thought) but I'm now going to get into it :) I have some experince about coding (C++, turbo pascal, java and basic) so I know the basis but not much more. I have being using 3dsmax for 3 years.

At the moment I don't have the time (exam week.. :( )to test the game engines but when I find the time I will probably test these wich I have found to be the best alternatives. I will post what I found out.

- 3impact: http://www.3impact.com/index.htm
- cipher: http://www.cipherengine.com/
- Torque: http://www.garagegames.com/
- Truevision 3D: http://www.truevision3d.com/
- Quest3D: http://www.quest3d.com/

Hm... I hope I get the change to test them all :)

The Nebula Device ( http://www.radonlabs.de/nebula.html ) is now updated and as gameboy already mentioned about the first version it looks very impressive to be a TOTALLY free package. You can use it for anything and only thing they want you to do is show the copyright mark. Please check it out and tell us what you found :)

Some additional URLs you may find usefull. Please do not let this thread die. Game engines keep on updating, why wouldn't this thread :)

- http://www.ambrosine.com/resource.html
- http://www.devmaster.net/
- http://www.gamedev.net/

And still something :D I found this trought the devmaster.net. The deep creator: http://www.righthemisphere.com/products/dcreator/ . It costs around 2000$ but looks very good and it contains all you need to make a game e.g a modelling tool wich they say to be far more advanced that other gd packages offer. Opinions please :)

Btw. Urls are not linked.. sorry about that. My first post here :)

---edit-----

Ok well that could have been a little bit better organised post. :P
Firstly I didn't notice this a sticky thread and there is a whole part of the forum about gamedev. Secondly It seems to make those links automaticly.. Now I know. Can't get any worse :D And some more edit... I actually not sure about that Nebula Debice update. It may just be the alpha that gameboy talked about. But there is a version 2 (maybe it's that alpha) and a version 2cvb wich, as far as I it understood is a users updated version.. I dunno. Tell you :\

[gameboy]

Right Hemisphere's Deep Creator is really what used to be Radishworks' Cosmo Creator. It may be good for whipping up a simple 3D interactive flyby demo, but it really isn't a full-blown powerful game engine. Judge for yourself whether you think it's worth it's $2000 pricetag for making games. :hmm:

[gameboy]

Today the people at TheGameCreators released their newest product, FPSCreator (http://www.fpscreator.com/). It currently is being released in that quasi-beta form known as "Early Adopter". This basically means that you can use it, but they don't want you to sell anything you've made with it yet.

This software is the latest in 3D game authoring systems to come out, and after viewing some of the demo videos (http://www.thegamecreators.com/data/newsletter/newsletter_issue_22.html) showing the system in action by one of its programmers, I must say it looks impressive, especially at how quickly an FPS game can be created. It contains built-in level making tools, its own scripting language, and comes with prefabricated items as well as allowing users to import their own artwork and custom shaders. The game engine is built upon DirectX 9.0c.

The system is not a general purpose tool, and specializes in the creation of only FPS-type of games, and is missing some major functionality at the moment like multi-player online gaming, but this has been promised in the next release. Slapping together an FPS game has never been any easier than this. :thumbsup:

[Master Of Sweep Picking]

Gameboy, hi man!, I am developing my game in allegroGL.
As you may know allegrro is freeware, it seems you know a lot about 3d libraries, for that reason I am asking to you, what do you think about this library? is good enough?

[DonMeck]

You might want to checkout ClanLib: http://www.clanlib.org/index.html
Maybe easier and better in design, but I don't know Allegro.

[spakman]

Just saw this post in the general discussions thread - not sure if it's already mentioned. Thought I'd pass it along to this thread just in case.

well , reality engine site is www.artificialstudios.com (http://www.artificialstudios.com/)

download the tech demo vids before posting :)

peace d=^)

[gameboy]

@Master Of Sweep Picking: I haven't used allegroGL, and I'm trying to stay away from opensource products at the moment due to licensing concerns (I know they say it's gift-ware, but it seems to have at least a moral obligation to open up your source code ;) ).

I came across this (http://www.softwire.com/) on gamedev.net. Has anyone tried using SoftWIRE for Visual Studio .NET to make a game? On the surface, it seems like a productivity dream, but I wonder what the performance of applications generated with this tool are like? I felt for awhile now that the future of programming lies with Computer-Aided-Software-Engineering tools, with easy-to-use graphical systems that will tend to look something like this application. Just consider how CPUs are designed today - with computers helping to design computers - usually the hardware guys are ahead of the software guys when it comes to automated design innovation; perhaps its just the nature of the beast of designing and implementing software versus hardware. :hmm:

[Iridium]

If anyone is interested in a fairly new open source game engine check out Delta3D (http://www.delta3d.org). It's currently in development (fully funded) and is becoming a feature rich API. It already includes many recognizable open source API's for physics, character animation, etc. It's based off the open scene graph (http://www.openscenegraph.org/) engine but makes game dev. muuuch easier. If you get a chance check it out, I believe it just hit v.0.8.

Just thought I would throw that out here ;) Hope someone finds it useful.

[cg_doctor]

well , I am shocked by this thing reality engine, it's very powerfull , and I rate it just next-to (if not side-to-side) with Unreal3 engine


check the tech demos on their site www.artificialstudios.com , it's quite awesome! :)

[DonMeck]

The reality engine's price is certainly way too hight for amateur or hobby game developers.

Using OpenSource doesn't imply that your code needs to be open and free too. It depends on the licenses. There is no moral obligation if the license is not GPL-like. It's silly to not consider the usage of open source software because of such a point of view!

Isn't openScene-graph not using a VRML-like scenegraph? Purely event-based scrripts like EMCA scripts in VRML? But i guess via the c++ interface you can do anything without these mechanisms of VRML ROUTEings. But interesting link.

The SoftWIRE for Visual Studio concept can be found for game dev inside Virtools Dev since late 90s. Quest3D has also such a concept. Other product are using the visual programming concept nowaydays too (coffee in cinema4d?, particle flow in 3ds max, shader programming in RT|shader ... just to name a few). IF these components represent high-level concepts, you are extremely fast with it. But not if they are low-level logics (tests, comparisions, programm flow etc). Such a system should have a script language - like in Quest3D (LUA) or Virtools Dev (VSL).

[gameboy]

My concerns about LPGL-like licenses stem from the response I got from the Open Source people earlier in this thread about using such code for commercial products - they basically were non-commital, and said I should consult a lawyer who is an expert in this area of law - I guess this scared me off - but if you carefully read the LPGL license, it appears that any executable produced from using an LPGL product is subject to the license (see sections 5 and 6). This put me off from using any such engine I guess.

Regarding "visual programming" tools, I am aware of Quest3D and Virtools; Virtools looked promising (but too expensive for me, and outside the guidelines I set out at the beginning of this thread). I've tried Quest3D and found it to be too "low-level" to be sufficiently productive (Don, was it you that mentioned this also in this thread?) - I find their graphs become too quickly a spaghetti-like mess of criss-crossing lines to be easily decipherable, and found it easier to read formatted programming language code instead. I tried in vain to offer them some suggestions in how their product should "self-organize/adjust" its tree diagrams to keep things "neat" and therefore more intelligible. But they have a couple of good features like the ability to place entire trees into folders and zoom-in/out to simplify the views somewhat, and make it possible to make "bigger" building blocks out of many smaller ones, or make your own building blocks (templates) from program code. So they have potential, but I feel still have a ways to go before their tool is productive enough for serious game development.

However, I see that there are a number of tools (http://www.objectsbydesign.com/tools/umltools_byCompany.html) now (like Nucleus BrigePoint (http://www.mentor.com/products/embedded_software/nucleus_modeling/nucleus_bridgepoint/index.cfm), Visual UML (http://www.visualuml.com/default.htm), MagicDraw (http://www.magicdraw.com/), Sparx Systems' Enterprise Architect (http://www.sparxsystems.com.au/), etc.) that claim to produce executable code from UML diagrams, and this may represent the best potential at present for realizing truly practical "visual" programming. A new emerging standard coming out of all this appears to be xtUML (http://www.techonline.com/community/tech_topic/uml/37519) (Executable and Translatable UML). For more, check here (http://www.techonline.com/community/tech_topic/uml/36794) or here (http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/crosstalk/2004/09/0409Mellor.html).

[Suricate]

Highly informative thread ! :thumbsup:

I've been researching myself about game engines over the last few days, mainly using this forum and the devmaster.net site. A couple of points I would like to add:

- OGRE:
A few days ago this package made its 1.0 release. Especially appealing is the fact that it is multi-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac). On the downside it is 'only' a graphics engine, so you will be missing game engine components. For me personally it is probably not a feasible solution, as it doesn't yet have a DirectX (.x) importer for animations (I would like to do my animations in messiah:studio, which has an .x export option).
There have been several discussion in their forms whether OGRE can be used commercially due to its LGPL licensing. The main essence was:
1. OGRE can be used in commercial projects (and already is).
2. If you don't make any changes to the core, you don't have to publish your source code. However, you have to link your program to the graphics engine dynamically (i.e. under Windows via a .dll) to your program rather than statically. The main reasoning behind this is that the end-user has the option to upgrade the graphics engine if a new version of OGRE should come out.
3. There is a fishy part in the original LGPL about header files that contain inline macros which leaves it unclear whether using such headers actually is a modification of the core. However, the OGRE team has made it clear that from their point of view incorporating these headers does not midify the core.
So basically it seems rather safe to use OGRE in commercial applications. But please, don't quote me on that in case you are getting in legal trouble ! :deal:

- Truevision3D:
Currently this engine is going through a major rewrite from version 6.2 (which was written in VisualBasic) to version 6.5 (which is in C++). Users that buy v6.2 have access to v6.5 Beta. According to their forums, v6.5 will be a major step forward.
It is possible to use their watermarked demo of v6.2 for evaluating. It took me some time to get it to compile with C++ under Visual Studio 2003.NET, but thanks to a recent post in their forum I finally managed. I'm currently evaluating.

- 3Impact:
This package is also very appealing. The ragdoll physics are really great, it looks almost like Endorphin, but at only $100! On the downside I am wondering whether their programming framework is not a little bit too restricting: Basically you program a .dll with callbacks for input, rendering etc. that get called by the engine. Also, it has a very small community.

[IslandDreamer]

Gameboy,

I'm curious how you're progressing with GameStudio. I downloaded and purchased it on the basis of this thread, but I'm not thrilled with the WED editor's limitations.

I'd appreciate hearing the thoughts of someone who has been working with it for some time. I'd also like to know what software package you're using to create your 3D models and learn what you're doing to import the files into GameStudio.

[rakmaya]

The main problem with Gamestudio is their lack of support for 3D packages. There are many 3rd party import tools out there for Gamestudio now, but nothing comes close to the things that some other engines gives you. Even if the BSP and static levels limit such smooth import, it is time for the Connetic to get some of the important tools for fast production.

Defenitly, WED and MED are something that is a problem. HOWEVER WED is very good in a lot of cases but the usage is beginning to diminish in many sense.

With that said, I love the engine's scripting and the overall architecture. Very robust. This is one engine that can go beyond many professional high-priced engines IF they add more fluent support for external packages.

[gameboy]

Sorry IslandDreamer, but I'm not using 3D Gamestudio. I was all set to purchase it at one time, and was even going to buy the "Professional" version, which at that time was over $1200 US. Back then it looked like the most suitable solution for what I was looking for, and seemed to have a good track record. I was never really impressed by the rendering produced by their engine, but it seemed with version A6 that things would be getting much better soon with many improvements scheduled to be implemented in the near future. However, I ran into a problem with them in actually trying to purchase it, and I also didn't like their 'key' disk copy protection scheme (the use of dongles is a better solution IMHO - they are more durable - I didn't want the functionality of my purchase to depend upon one frail floppy disk), so I ended up not purchasing it. However, that being said, there are many developers out there that seem to be very happy with it.

There are three commercial engines at present that I am keeping an eye on that I think could significantly influence indie development (I'm not considering LGPL licensed engines over concerns listed in prior posts):

There is GarageGame's Torque Shader engine (http://www.garagegames.com/mg/projects/tse/) - it looks powerful, but perhaps the hardest to code for. I haven't bought it, so I can't vouch for the quality of its documentation, but they seem to have a large userbase which may help to overcome the current Torque engine's reputation for scant documentation. They have proven, solid networking code which is a big factor to consider if you're making a game with online capability. The Torque Shader engine looks like it will blow many other games engines out of the water graphically. :eek:

Another one to consider is the 3Impact engine (http://www.3impact.com/) - easy to use, with good built-in physics (ragdoll, spherical collision detection) and decent graphics. It has online capability built into it, although it is unproven. The engine is regularly updated, with new releases coming out every month or two. I'm not crazy about its animation functions, which work only on a time-based fashion instead of by frames. Overall it seems fairly easy to get something up and running. You make .DLLs instead of .EXEs, so the engine is like one big black box (which suits me fine, although some of you out there won't like being able to not modify the engine's source code). Also the game engine executable has it's game loop locked at 75Hz, so you won't be able to run a game with a higher frame rate than that. But it handles a lot behind the scenes, including all the physics and rendering for you, so it seems to me to be a reasonable tradeoff in simplicity versus performance. :thumbsup: One other thing about this engine is that it only handles DirectX (.x) files at present, so make sure you have a reliable production pipeline that can output to the .x file format. I've had quite the nightmare finding applications that do a good job of outputting to this format, complete with animation and texturing data. GameSpace (http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/) seems to work, but I hate it's icon-based interface (I guess one can bind everything to keys). DStorm (http://www.dstorm.co.jp/english/index.htm)'s plug-in seems to work better for Lightwave (http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/) 8 than it did for Lightwave 7 (where it constantly crashed on me). Other applications like messiah animate (http://www.projectmessiah.com/) have been nothing but trouble trying to export to DirectX. Even SoftImage (http://www.softimage.com/home/)'s XSI DirectX exporter doesn't produce .x files that will load correctly into 3Impact.

Then there is the TrueVision3D engine (http://www.truevision3d.com/home.php), with its version 6.5 expected to be released before the end of the 2nd quarter of 2005. (The beta version of 6.5 is available if you buy the current version 6.2 license). I haven't bought this engine, although I am think about it. You can freely download version 6.2 and try it out - it seems to be fairly easy to use, but I think 3Impact's approach may be a little easier and it has more built-in functionality than the older TrueVision3D 6.2 engine, but this is offset somewhat by the ability to program TrueVision's engine in a variety of programming languages besides C++, such as Visual Basic or C# (yes, it is .NET compatible). Version 6.5 is a significant upgrade to the engine. It looks very good graphically, and will come with built-in physics and networking, and will have converters available to get game content into its engine from some of the major 3D graphics applications out there. I expect it to compete toe-to-toe with the Torque Shader engine for overall engine performance and capability. I seem to remember coming across something one of their programmers (Arli, I think) has posted somewhere mentioning that there are several commercial companies waiting to use version 6.5 when it is released. If TrueVison stays within the same price range as its current engine, it will be affordable for small indie developers to use for commercial applications. In terms of ease of use, it will probably triumph over the Torque Shader engine, and it will also be both .COM and .NET compatible, giving the developer a wide choice of programming languages to choose from. :buttrock:

[IslandDreamer]

Do any of the engines you mention have a graphic frontend similar to WED or (better, IMHO) UnRealEd? I'm not a programmer. What I'd like to do is ease myself into scripting by first exploiting everything I can do graphically.

[gameboy]

IslandDreamer, I urge you to follow the links in my post above. They will provide you with the kind of information you're asking about. Here is a feature list (http://www.truevision3d.com/tv3d_65.php) for the TrueVision3D engine, another one (http://www.3impact.com/3Impact_Engine/features.htm) for 3Impact, and another (http://www.garagegames.com/products/28) for the Torque Shader engine.

All three of these engines basically have their own utilities to convert 3D content of various formats to their own "internal" format that is used by the game engine. 3Impact does not use BSP maps; you can model what you want in your favorite modeler as long as you can get it into DirectX (.x) format, then run their conversion utility on them to produce collision-aware 3D objects. TrueVision3D 6.5 will come with something called "ModelView" which lets you edit and view how your models will look inside the game engine; the models must be converted to their own TVA or TVM format to be used in the game engine. The good news is that they already have plugins for most of the major 3D modeling/animation packages that will convert what you make to those formats. The Torque engine has a couple of utilities for making game content; the Torque Constructor and Torque ShowTool Pro. Check here (http://www.garagegames.com/news/7317) for more information and links.

One tool to keep in mind if you're looking to work with 3D GameStudio or one of the engines listed above is gameSpace (http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/). It has a unique sort of user interface which takes some getting used to, but it does seem to work well with most game engines. It has plugins that work with directly with 3D GameStudio, Torque, and the upcoming TrueVision3D 6.5 engine. You might also want to check Greenbriar Studio (http://www.greenbriarstudio.com/3D/index.htm) - they offer plug-ins that work with various 3D tools that can export to 3D GameStudio, for instance.

The three engines mentioned in my previous post require programming to get something up and running; however, the Torque engine does have a scripting language you can use instead of C++, but overall I think TrueVision3D and 3Impact are probably easier to get something up and running quicker - they both have code samples and tutorials that really help.

If you really want to avoid coding at all costs, you might want to try FPS Creator (http://www.fpscreator.com/), but you're going to be pretty much locked into making a first person game with it (e.g. no third person camera is available, at least not for now) but it does allow you to import your artwork directly into the engine, which is DirectX 9.0 based, so things won't look too shabby. This product appears to be a direct competitor to 3D GameStudio - check it out and see if it will better suit your needs. As technological improvements keep emerging and the market changes, what was once ideal at the beginning of this thread may be obsolete by the time of the latest post. :D

[Fuell]

i'm just curious iw as reading and wante dto knwo your opinion on this


http://www.artificialstudios.com/

the Reality engine

[gameboy]

Looks like a fantastic engine. However, they wouldn't bother returning my email asking about the price of the SDK version of this engine. I guess it must be priced high enough so that "if you have to ask, then it's too expensive for you". :sad:

[Vendetta7]

Gameboy and all others:

Good evening all. I have read this thread in it's entirety, and I must admit that from all the 'searches' I have done, this is probably one of the most informative and well spoken advice threads I have ever seen. Thank you all for your time and efforts. :D

On to my reason for posting...

I am in search of an Engine / Game creation package that is basicly as much of an 'all-in-one' as I can possably get. Additionally, I need it to have MMO capabilities.

My budget is approx. $500. I can spend more if I rwally have to, but I would like to avoid it as much as possible.

Every single game engine link posted within this thread has been placed into my bookmarks, and I am quite impressed with them. But I really don't want to do the 'puzzle-piece' thing of using too many 3rd party programs and bringing them all together under one roof to create the game I have storyboarded out.

Does anyone have a hardline recomendation for an MMO supported package that has internal editers?

Your help is once more, very appreciated. Thank you.

V/R,
Vendetta7

[Fuell]

yeah same with me thanks for the reply

[jaydmax]

That Reality Engine looks sweet. I am seriously contemplating applying for the eveluation copy to play around with it. In their comparison sheet they compare the engine to gamebryo (which costs around 50K) and also mention virtools (around 10K) so im assuming the pricing ranges from 10-50k. I really wish these companies would advertise their prices. Anyone know whats the price for Source engine?

Gameboy its been awhile since this thread was originally started, so which engine did you decide to use or are you still evaulating. For affordable engines IMO its really between Truevision3D (especially once 6.5 comes out) cipher (best suited for Max users) and than Torgue. (minus their licensing).

[gameboy]

@Vendetta7: I haven't really focused on looking into MMO-specific engines, but it seems that based on your criteria, such an engine would have to have excellent networking capabilities (don't underestimate the importance of good netcode) and good built-in editing tools. Possibly another feature to have is good built-in camera capabilities (so you don't end up getting the camera "stuck" or jittering against walls and/or other objects) and would also allow the use of several different camera settings, depending upon what kind of views you want to give your users (e.g. First Person, Third Person, Isometric, perhaps a combination of all three..). Of all the engines priced in your budget, the Torque engine (http://www.garagegames.com/makegames/) has got proven, solid, networking capabilites, and because of the size of its user base, an increasingly number of internal or plug-in editing tools. It may have a steep learning curve, but if that is not a problem, then at the present time it may be the best option available to you for the price mentioned. 3D GameStudio (http://www.conitec.net/a4info.htm) is available, it has its own editing tools, but I'm not sure if anyone has created a MMO game with it. TrueVision3D (http://www.truevision3d.com/home.php) may be a good alternative, as they will also feature their own built-in editors, but the quality of the netcode is an unknown at this point. However, there seems to be a lot of interest in the upcoming 6.5 version this engine. (TrueVision3D currently ranks #2 in favorite commercial game engines just behind the Torque engine on devmaster.net (http://www.devmaster.net/)).

@jaydmax: I'm currently playing around with the 3Impact engine (http://www.3impact.com/), but I'm having problems finding a problem-free workflow getting 3D content into the engine. This underscores a problem I've been coming across a lot and wish to rant on about it for a bit...


[Begin whining: :cry: ]
(3Impact uses DirectX - I'm really beginning to hate the DirectX format). I never thought it would be such a pain to get 3D content into game engines reliably. I've tried all sorts of 3D packages, plug-ins, and conversion programs (like Deep Exploration and Polytrans), but at least as far as DirectX is concerned, they each have their problems. I've not found anything yet that will work consistently across any application that has any real complexity built into it. It must be incredibly difficult to write a reliable DirectX exporter. (I can't seem to find a good reference that actually describes the file format in detail). I've messed around with gameSpace (http://www.caligari.com/gamespace/) a little, as others have said they've had good results using it with DirectX, but its navigation controls and user interface are so awkward it takes me a lot longer to edit anything using it compared to other applications out there like Lightwave (http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/), XSI (http://www.softimage.com/products/), modo (http://www.luxology.com/), etc. that gameSpace seems like just a "toy" in comparison. When I began to read in their forums others complaining about how poorly its boned animation worked, that was enough for me. I initially decided against using Cipher (http://www.cipherengine.com/) because it did not support a file format that any of the tools I had available to me used (it used the unusual .ASE format). I also was not thrilled that its demo frequently crashed on my system, and that it is based upon a non-object oriented language (C). I think the near future in programming belongs to software tools supporting a model-driven architecture (http://www.adtmag.com/print.asp?id=8154); a lot of programming in the next few years could be accomplished using UML-to-code tools in combination with languages that support OO programming (even Bill Gates seems to be in support of it). So anyway, I think Vendetta7 is wise to consider using a game engine that has its own built-in editing tools, or at least will work directly with the file format your favorite modeler/animation package natively supports, unless you feel like rolling your own custom importer/exporters.
[/end whining: :scream: ].

[Vendetta7]

Hmmm...., intersting.


Gameboy:
Am I to assume then, that since you didn't mention Darkspace that it wouldn't be a viable option?

I currently own Torque... and your right, the learning curve is.... overwhelming.

3D Gamestudio had my attention for a bit... untill I saw the price tag of $899 to get more than a 4 player net support.

.... sigh.... what to do with a dream that will crush Planetside...

[gameboy]

@Vendetta7: The reason I didn't mention Darkspace is because I don't know anything about it. (Is Darkspace a game, or a game engine? It would be nice to include a link to what you're talking about). I can't and don't know everything about every game engine that is out there. That's one of the reasons I started this thread, and it's called Feedback on Game Engines. I look for input from others on various game engines they've tried or come across. This benefits others who may also be looking into finding a game engine suitable for their needs. At the start of the thread, I listed some criteria I was looking for in a game engine - namely something that would be suitable for a one-man development team looking to produce commercial titles and that doesn't cost too much. If Darkspace looks like viable option for you, then go for it! Perhaps someday we'll see your comments on it even in this thread! :thumbsup:

[Vendetta7]

Gameboy:

My apologies, I believe I meant DarkBasic: http://www.thegamecreators.com/

I've combed through their forums and apparently the Pro versions net code will support 256 players (well, 255 and a place holder), so it might handle it if used as a 'zone' type of system.

However, as you mentioned before, the quality of the net code will be a big factor in failure or success...

Opinions?

p.s.: I know I'm bugging the heck out of you, I apologize. I would like to say however, that I really do appreciate everyones time in this research. :)

[Joyo]

The best 3d engine is TrueVision 3D 6.5. This is not my opinion, it's objective thinking. Torque is very close, but not too strong. With TrueVision 3D You can make graphics better than Doom 3 using every last one of DirectX 9 features, it's ultra easy to use, and very fast. Also comes for C++,C#,VB.Net,VB.6,Delphi. What more do you need?

[DonMeck]

Hm, strang way of 'objective' feedback that is! "Objective thinking" ... hehe ...

An engine is only one thing. The workflow for adding content and interactivity counts a lot.
You need to specify what the good points are and what the weak one are - compare if you can. "This is the best because it is", doesn't help.

[DonMeck]

Just read the last, longer answer of gameboy.
That's exactly the point. And believe me, even commercial products that costs a lot of money have weak points in that domain.

Maybe you want checkout OGRE3D again and look into the framworks available by the community. The good think is, it support now XSI (I think) and the basic XSI package comes for 500€.

[gameboy]

Since the current discussion is about getting 3D content into game engines, some of you may be interested in this thread (http://www.cgtalk.com/showthread.php?t=229083), in which kees of Bioware was kind enough to tell a little bit about how they get 3D content into their games (thanks kees :)). It basically involves a mixture of off-the-shelf and proprietary custom in-house tools.

I suspect most commercial game companies find it necessary to write at least some of their own tools to use in their 3D content pipeline. I would expect this condition to persist until there ever comes "One 3D Format to rule them all...". With the ever-changing nature of technology, and the realities of the commercial marketplace, this seems unlikely - someone always seems to come up with an equivalent or better way of doing something that requires a format that is different from their competitors (partly necessary to survive commercially I suppose), causing incompatibilities to perpetually exist between the latest versions of various 3D software packages.

[DonMeck]

Actually - for the "one format that rule em all" - there at least 3 bigger efforts to do so where also big players are involved. Now, if I would remember their names .... :rolleyes:

About puppet shop - it's a custom rigging system for 3ds max. Mainly done using maxscripting and some SDK i think. If you read the discreet forum you would have noticed how keen more and more digged into that topic, reached the point where he asked if anybody is interested in rigging videos and later this puppet shop project popped up onto the surface - at least it's how i observed it over time. An older versionn can be downloade from his site. Btw. he has some other nice scripts i.e. for skinning. There's also another scripted rigging system available, it's from the game company that did Gothic. There's somewhere a thread about it in thie forum.

I think both game companys have their own engines therefore they build-up their own export/import chain. But if you invest in a 3rd party product, you usually don't want to deal with these issues too much ... only if you need something very specifique to your project. But basic, common tasks should be solved by the product you buy (if the price justifies it).

So how goes your engine evaluation?

[DonMeck]

One of these efforts for an exchange format is collada, check it out:
http://collada.org/public_forum/welcome.php

[rakmaya]

Major reason for different format is to protect the art work from being used externally. I doubt a common format will ever come into place among prof studios.

[Aritz]

Another engine for the list: Shark 3D (http://www.shark3d.com)

[DonMeck]

rakmaya (member.php?u=146958),
of course open formats might not be useful for product distribution, but very useful for the production itself - to get data from one tool/middleware to the other ones easily. Look at the companys that are participating ... they wouldn t if it not useful.

[rakmaya]

That is something that has been in effort for years. Yes in that stage it is very important. It is sort of MORE important for the 3D Modeling Applications such as Maya, Softimage, Max, LW to do that than Game Programmers. With the next generation, not only Mesh/Texture but also a lot of features of 3D packages are being used in games. To do that for every package is not good. That is why they are supporting it. It is not because they want to put their artwork in such a format.

For long time industries have also used .X file as a meduim for importing in data from other packages. A common and better format is defenitly useful in that sense.

[derED.de]

Hi all,

i've read this thread and want to add one or two comments.

first of all its one of the most informative threads i'd read about 3D (Gaming) engines so far.

Now to the points:

i - respectively my company - had been one of the major competence centers for virtools and it's add-ons in the german speaking countries for more than 2 years.
We portet such famous engines as ODE (www.ode.org)
or the opensteer library (http://opensteer.sourceforge.net/) to Virtools and did a lot of other development with it.
Some of our most famous costumers are e.g. the Max-Planck Institutes or the ZKm (www.zkm.de) - not to forget - we are in Joint-Venture with Pininfarina (the not so unknown [automotive] designers).

Our focus was never on gaming or game design, but many of the applications in the "serious" industry became more and more "game inspired" - e.g. ease of use, concepts in general, etc..

In many ways we struggle with the same problems: scene graphs, (geometry and texture / material) complexity and so on... especially the point of (model) data import and - never forget: the ease of authoring: Virtools is realy a great tool to get the job done.

IF: you've got the data in an appropriate format and its not too complex. Virtools has problems with large amounts of textures and complex geometries. Though, even if you get some cad model imported (e.g. by deep exploration) you can't tell whats happening with it in Virtools. Experience tells us that you can't set up meshes with more than 64K of vertices. Eventualy you have to split complex meshes which imposes other problems ...

Now, in February 2005 we startet an "European Community Project" which will become quite interesting (i think), more about about this: http://vipa2.adm.at/

We are still in the research phase, and since then, i've evaluatet a lot of engines...
some quite promising like the Croquet Project: http://www.opencroquet.org/

On the other hand, i've found that many of the engines which startet enthusiasticaly vanished meanwhile or are not fullfilling all requirements... GPL or LGPL are even a problem here as they won't fit the EC-Requirements: one of the major requirements of the EC is - as for similar US or compareably structured systems: a (commercial) advantage for the LOCAL market.

Though, we aquired a license of the most suitable engine: the Reality Engine from Artificial Studios... but wait: it's not all over yet, as we are still in the research phase.

And don't be jelious: we got the Reality Engine with a special aggreement. This is something lot of other engines (including Virtools) luck: a REALY usefull policy for Research & Development and Educational Structures!

If you want to know more feel free to contact me at egabriel @ egabriel.de - as my page is www.egabriel.de

Have fun and keep on with your good work here!

Best regards from Germany,
ED

PS: two things to mention - somebody might be interested in this "open scene graph" http://www.opensg.org/features.EN.html (site down at the moment, but normaly active)

and news about Reality Engine: the company will soon be aquired by a "former competitor" - what this implies can't be foreseen right now...

[gameboy]

Thanks for the info, derED.de.

I caught news of another new engine to enter the fray in the commercial arena. It is called Unigine v0.3 (http://unigine.com/). It appears to be an engine that started out as open source, and has now gone commercial. It's list of features (http://unigine.com/features/) looks impressive, and has plug-ins for Maya and 3D Studio (although seems geared more toward 3D Studio - not sure of the support for animated Maya models at this point). Apparently it doesn't have built-in networking capability. Its price is not outrageously expensive for small development teams the way some of the AAA 3D engines are, but it is not really priced for the hobbyist or low-budget indie developer either at $1995 per seat for each title released (but it is royalty free). :hmm:

Also, I've come across some promising technology that may be just what I've been looking for to raise programming productivity via node-based graphical programming - The Netron Project (http://netron.sourceforge.net/ewiki/netron.php?id=Home). Evidently creating applications with visual UML tools is now behind the times ;) ; now you've got to think about creating applications via software factories (http://msdn.microsoft.com/architecture/overview/softwarefactories/). The Netron Project is an open source application that allows creation of custom development tools utilizing a visual programming paradigm. :cool:

[the rookie]

I enjoy the information given here at this forum and thread, I am a rookie start on game design period, I have been working on and with the Torque Game Engine, and this engine does really offer alot, budget means and open source code, for adding modifications, as far as graphics rendering you may want to go into the Torque Shader Engine that's still under development but the key element behind all of this is you get to download the demo's that damn near give you the full access to the engine itself, the reason I posted is, there is a article by a skilled Programmer that uses the Torque Engine and goes into Visual detail of what the other engines provides in comparision, then he goes over budget cost and time frame of working on projects, This a must read article, the reason being is that he shows the flexability of the Torque Engine with it's open source code, so if your skilled with programming or want to insert new features that other engines have it can be done.

Time is a factor you say? I completly understand that fact of not re-inventing the wheel factor, but the engine really does work within graphic means, but like everything else in the world you really have to work hard especially producing a real quality game here is the article just read it and you give me feedback on it http://www.student.dtu.dk/~s958608/GameEngines2.pdf it is a .pdf file so you'll need a arcobat reader to open it

[DonMeck]

Well ...

currently I have a simple mesh with over 73k vertices and over 144k triangle-faces in Virtools running. What is your experience with the Reality Engine?

About file formats. XNA will also have some kind of all-in-one file format or so. MS is intending to streamline the content flow of the different partys that do participate in the game development process.

DonMeck aka Dom, who is working for another 'major german competence center for virtools'
(derED.de: greetings to Günter.)

[gameboy]

I came across a very interesting site (http://www.greggman.com/pageparts/categories/games_alist.html) by an individual called greggman I thought I'd mention. He has obviously worked as a professional in the gaming industry for awhile and has posted reviews of games, engines, and software tools, along with a lot of practical advice for those seeking to make games. One of the tools he reviewed was Virtools 3.0 (http://www.greggman.com/games/Virtools-Review/Virtools-Review.htm). He seemed to think it (or a tool like it) is the future of creating games. Too bad Virtools is so expensive (for me, at least). Another good read is Effective 3D Exporter Design (http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20040910/tavares_01.shtml).

[DonMeck]

yep. He also wrote a review for the gamedeveloper magazine (10/04). He posted a couple of issues that he thinks needs to be addressed in the Virtools forum. But for a while he didn't post there. I guess he went on to new topics (I think he closed his evaluation by considering virtools as not ready for real production in larger teams).

[ncpiment]

Great topic, really informative :)

I been doing some research for some time now since I m making a fps game with some friends.

I found a few game engines that look very good.

1. http://www.kjapi.com/
2. http://imtane.de.vu/
3. C4 engine http://www.terathon.com/index.html
4. http://www.bf2engine.com/index.php?pid=1
5. http://www.v3x.net/v3x/v3x_3d_engine.html

Hope its useful

If some one have used one of these it would really great if you post here your views about the engine.

Nelson

[visionist]

ok I my my own post on this but i'll just put it here. I want an engine that can make a game thats harvest moon and animal crossing styled, can anyone help me in this department?

LmB

[gameboy]

I posted this in your other thread but thought I'd add it here for others looking into game engines:

If you're looking for a good free engine that you can use on commercial products, check out the Irrlicht engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/). It has been recently updated, is programmable in several languages, handles several different rendering APIs, 3D model types, etc. It has a large user community and looks like it is becoming a rival to several commercial engines. It should be able to handle any type of game you want to make. :)

[Onisama]

I created a game demo using Virtools 3.0 but the colission detection is not perfect :sad: .
It was a hassle using it because it has lots of bugs but if they keep improving Virtools it will become the futur of game develloping. Syberia I and II was made thanks to virtool and I'm sure it won't be the last. And yes Virtools 3.0 costs about 20 000$... No, I didn't buy it but I had to study it from one of my class of 3D game programmer since they judge it is a must.

[DonMeck]

Virtools 3.0 costs about 20 000$...

The standard base package (Virtools Dev) is around the half of the price you mentioned - per seat. Then you have - after the first year - to pay some kind of subscription, called maintenance - it does include all updates for one year. It's around 10% of each license.
At least AFAIK.

If you add the physics pack and maybe the AI pack - you are certainly in the price range you mentioned.

p.s.
Can you talk in detail about the (collision) problems you had? I am very interested in issues related to Virtools.

[steffenoid]

Coupla Questions that maybe someone who has used any of these could help with

1st of all, my game(in theory) is a 3rd person, mnostly indoor shooter
my budget is about $100-$200, so, as i see it, my options are: tenebrae2 (will it ever come out?), Cipher, 3impact, TrueVision3D, and torque

I've pretty much decided to not use torque, b/c everything looks like tribes 2(not that impressive anymore)

Cipher looked cool, but I have no idea about its AI or physics(ragdoll even?), so enlightenment would be good

3impact was the polar opposite: great physics, but nothing was graphically very impressive. how is it on that front?

tenebrae2=never coming out, so probably not

also, someone posted BF!2Engine, which had great screenshot and neat specs, but not much else. Enlighten?

TrueVision3d seemed pricey-ish, at least more than the others, and it seems like only a rendering engine (e.g. no dynamics, AI, etc.) is this true, and is it still worth it?

And, IDK who it was, or if its even been mentioned, but is RealmForge (http://realmforge.com/) a viable option, why or why not. Thanks for all help ppl!

I am a very experienced java programmer, so I will pretty much have to learn whatever script/language my engine chooses, so I have no bias, but Im not afraid of extensive coding, if necessary.

Thanks!

[gameboy]

If low-cost is your main concern, I would recommend the latest release of the Irrlicht engine (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/) for reasons stated above. They've incorporated some state-of-the art graphics (i.e. Unreal 3-like Parallax mapping support) in their latest release. Check out their website for details.

On a further note, the next release of the 3Impact engine (http://www.3impact.com/) will include a release as a .DLL library. This should open up the options for developing with even more language options, 3rd party libraries, etc.

[Vendetta7]

Hello again everyone! :)

So, I`ve been paying close attention to all the replies in this thread (Gameboy... you`ve been super helpful, ty) and have been whittling my choice of engines down...

However, 2 engines kind of jump out at me... If it`s not too much trouble, can someone give me a realistic report on the differences between 3Impact (http://www.3impact.com) and 3DRad (http://www.3drad.com)?

What I`m most interested in is the network code... How many clients can they handle? How stable / secure is the engine from intrusion?

Also, the learning curve... Will I need a friggin Masters degree, or are these honestly geared for newbs like me?

What about 3D Modeling? Which engine Imports with ease? Which one makes you want to eat raw blowfish?

Scripting... Newb or MicroMonopoly certified?

Hmm... my pocketboock is burning and wants to be opened. I did it once already, but Torgues learning curve made my brain fry...

Again, ty2u all for your wasted time on this newb!

V7

[jaydmax]

I would recommend anyone interested in really checking out the Reality Engine www.artificialstudios.com (http://www.artificialstudios.com). Yes Epic did buy the rights to the Engine and hire their founder / lead programmer. (They must have really sensed the potential of this engine.) But they are still licenseing the engine for the next few weeks after that they will not be selling it anymore. So anyone interested must act quickly. I cannot give the price due to NDA but I must say that it was very reasonable and trust me, i am not rich. And the rest of the development guy are extreamly knowledgeable and helpful. You can develop as many games as you would like with the existing engine and there is still support and bug fixes.

[DevilHacker]

I would recommend anyone interested in really checking out the Reality Engine www.artificialstudios.com (http://www.artificialstudios.com). Yes Epic did buy the rights to the Engine and hire their founder / lead programmer. (They must have really sensed the potential of this engine.) But they are still licenseing the engine for the next few weeks after that they will not be selling it anymore. So anyone interested must act quickly. I cannot give the price due to NDA but I must say that it was very reasonable and trust me, i am not rich. And the rest of the development guy are extreamly knowledgeable and helpful. You can develop as many games as you would like with the existing engine and there is still support and bug fixes.

I don’t guess that you could PM me the price of the engine...?
Also, when applying for an license, it asks you for an website for your project, ect, ect.
Did you give them one? How far along was your project when you did so? Our project is still in the planning stages, so we don’t have much in the way of content to show off (hence the website stilling being made), but we all agreed that this (or Source) is the engine for us, and as you can see, we must apply as fast as possible... So any help would be greatly appreciated.

Also, Does anyone know how well (if at all) this engine integrates with Softimage, as this is going to be our primary Molder.

[Renderman_XSI]

another game engine to the list, for future reference(Offset Engine):

http://www.projectoffset.com/

[broli4000]

i need to know what engine i would use for a game that incorporates both a look of lord of the rings and morrowind, with large lush landscapes and alot of npcs

we will be having dragons on which you can fly and you will be allowed to play online.

Price is not a problem!

any feedback would be great!

[DevilHacker]

Hey everyone…
I was wondering which is the best game engine out there for an RTS game.
But the engine has to be able to handle very detailed graphics and advance physics, I am talking about being able to simulate physics, such as when an cannon fires on a wooden house, the player can see the house fly apart with wooden pieces flying in the air…

Any Ideas?
Max budget willing to pay is $20,000…
So price should not be a problem.

[podperson]

Going over your list and having been through the same selection process as you describe multiple times, I'd recommend Blitz3D, live within its capabilities, use one of the free physics libraries, and migrate to BlitzMax when it has 3D support.

You may not agree with my reasons, but I can at least tell you what they are:
1) Blitz3D is rock solid, easy to work with, and runs well on even quite ancient hardware.
2) Blitz3D is astonishingly productive to work with.
3) A lot of the stuff you think you need DX9 support for ... you don't. Plenty of games which don't use DX9 features look better than anything but the best-looking DX9 games anyway.
4) You can always get pixel shaders etc. when BlitzMax supports them -- and your game probably won't have shipped by then, so why sweat it?

Anyway -- engines like Torque and 3D GameStudio are fine if you're producing an FPS. If not, you'll spend time struggling against their base assumptions. DarkBasic is defunct.

[DonMeck]

Sounds like very ambitious projects here.

For the MMORPG-like project, maybe NeL - GPL or Custom License available
http://www.nevrax.org/tiki-index.php?page=HomePage

[podperson]

I took a look at Quest3D again. Its demos are beautiful, but I wonder if you can really produce any kind of complex interactivity with it short of coding a boatload of new channels in C++. If you're going to write your game logic in C++ then use C++ with a free 3d library.

[horseshoe]

Sincerely....... A low-cost/free engine having as features:

1) a built-in *decent* world editor - yes; *decent*. External tools like Quark or Cartography shop are far from being usable........ -. 3d game studio got one, albeit it is sloppy (it seems to be the one among the bunch of engines listed so far in the thread. Correct me if I'm wrong).

2) Suit of shaders/effects (which among?)

3) a decent engine (so far, Irlich and Torque seem to win the prize, among low-cost/free ones) and fair usability specially for newbies.

IMHO such an engine would be optimal; but I think it is still utopia so far ('cause it seems that developers aren't in the range of ideas to keep good features, whilst preferring some often useless or redundant). It is outta here such an engine?

[operativem]

what about a truly affordable, really well-engineered scene building tool that was like maya or max [but lighter in features], and allowed you to export your files to a variety of engine formats? */mike

[sarjil]

i found a very good engine you should you all should check it out www.realmforge.com (http://www.realmforge.com)

[DevilHacker]

Hey everyone, thought that everyone would like to hear about an new engine called the 'Unigine'...
What is Unigine?

Unigine is a cross-platform engine of virtual worlds, standing on the bleeding edge of technology.
Main fields of application are cross-platform games and virtual reality systems.
Unigine provides magnificent 3D graphics and outstanding physics.
There are also flexible GUI, scripting system, sound support and much more.
Powerful well-documented Unigine API gives creative freedom to the developers.

Unigine contains most of the modern features and more... (http://unigine.com/features/)


-- Link to Website -- (http://unigine.com/)

[IslandDreamer]

This should really knock your socks off...
http://www.projectoffset.com/

[gameboy]

Yeah, that Offset Engine (http://www.projectoffset.com/technology.html) really looks good! :eek: On their site they said they would be happy to answer any questions about licensing the engine, but unfortunately I got no response. :sad: I guess I'm too much of a small-fry for them to notice. (Not to mention they're really looking for financial backing at this point).

My earlier predictions about which engines I thought would influence indie development in a significant way for this year seemed to have been a little off. With the quality of engines like Unigine (http://unigine.com/) and C4 (http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/index.html), it looks like even the Torque Shader engine (http://www.garagegames.com/products/28) could be left in the dust. Ah, the march of technology never ceases, and perhaps the rate-of-change of advancements keeps increasing as well.

Of the engines listed above, only the C4 and Torque Shader engines are really affordable for small indie development concerns at this point, with C4 being the best bargain, priced at $100. However, a big drawback (at least for me) is that at the present it only works with the now relatively expensive 3D Studio Max, although the developer (Eric Lengyel) has promised to release plug-ins for Maya and most likely SoftImage XSI in the future. Furthermore, the Unigine people seemed to hint that they might be willing to change their pricing structure somewhat to make it more affordable to small indie developers. (I tried to convince them it would be in their best interest to increase the size of their customer base :D).

[vand]

but who will be next gen??

Torque
C4
or Offset


or alltime runner such as unreal, doom etc

[IslandDreamer]

Unfortunately, despite its indie origins, the Offset Engine is geared toward higher end developers. A bargain compared to Unreal, but several hundred times more than Torque!

For the moment, I'm sticking with 3D GameStudio. The newest version (6.4) is about to be released and Matt Aufderheide has just created a plugin called The Sphere Engine that adds some great rendering capabilities, including real-time dynamic soft shadow maps, water with realtime reflections, and fullscreen bloom and HDR effects.

[DevilHacker]

Is there still not any decent game engines designed for a RTS game? Or are we going to have to build one from scratch?
:D

-Side Note: Torque Engine does not suit our needs, its too outdated-

[jorritTyb]

Hi all,

I would like to add Crystal Space to the list of engines here. Crystal Space is a free (LGPL) 3D engine that runs on linux, windows, and MacOS/X. It has a lot of features (like stencil shadows, lightmaps, shaders, physics using ODE, skeletal animation using cal3d, ...) and it is still in constant development.

In addition to Crystal Space there is also Crystal Entity Layer which is a game entity layer sitting on top of Crystal Space. Together they form a powerful combination to make any kind of 3D game (FPS, MMORPG, RTS, ...).

The url of Crystal Space is http://www.crystalspace3d.org

Let me know if you have further questions.

Greetings,

[the rookie]

Hey Devil Hacker, Torque Supports RTS games and they actual have a demo for free to check out, if you purchase the Torque Game Engine for a $100 bucks then the other RTS and Torque Shader Engine are discounted, you have to apply strategy upon purchasing, 1st know what exactly your going to do, with the $100 indie license, you can sell games but with royalites, if you get the $500 liu get full documentation and you can sell games without royalties, thoe Torque Shader Engine is still in development, it's price may range, Crystal Space engine seems that it offers alot on some very basic ends on what I need to create my demo

I guess me coming from a 3d artist end,I ned core tools, environment effects, lighting (core), shadowing effects, sprites, and particles for smoke, fire or what ever's needed, and the portability to import from Maya to a Engine, Design and Functionality is very important to me and key, Torque does supply alot of documentation, and has a huge community, but it's based on tools, I've spent almost 6 months learning and reading documentation on Game Engines, on what they can and can not do, and structuring my game based on a game engine requirements,

I have toyed around with the Unreal Engine 2's Runtime to do various things, but I have been back and forth on these various engines, I like what I seen for Crystal Space Engine, and the plus with that engine is the shaders and lighting on what I need

As far as Next Gen, I have reviewed Unreal Engine 3, and it is very powerful indeed, and looking at the Offset Engine is looking pretty good also, as far as next gen games goes, I look at a couple of things, yeah graphic wise you can do tons of stuff, allowing more artist capablitity, but it's all about how a story is played out...I think...as me trying to become a game designer, there are new challenges to take on and with the next gen games I think that key componets are More world and environment envolvement, example final fantasy and so on I await to see games like Gears of War, Unreal Tournament 2007, Metal Gear Solid 4...

I still believe good games can and will still be created with what I call Gen 2 games (Xbox and Playstation 2) based on the creation of games like Shadow of Colossess, Onimusha 4, Final Fantasy XII and, Metal Gear Solid 3 and subsitance and others that are pumping out more graphics on it current technologies, us as indie gamers have a wider range to work with, on visual storytelling and interactivity

(Please excuse my rambling, but that was just some of my ideation on application with this game engines and what were looking for, budget and to be able to produce some what of the games we want and that are not already out there, back to work for me, Thank You guys for sharing the info on the engines, I myself will look further into these)

[Iridium]

Ok here's a shameless plug for a 3D Game engine that just hit 1.0.

www.delta3d.org (http://www.delta3d.org)

It has many features you may be interested in.

Creation of HUGE worlds is possible especially with our recent development in tiled heightmap terrain based off of SOARX technology.

STAGE - Simulation Training and Game Editor - Let's you build a world through a simple interface. The most shwing thing about STAGE is the use of Actors, which will be featured in the Game Programming Gems 6 book. In short an Actor in STAGE was designed to hold information related to a specific object type such as a character, a helicopter, sound, triggers, game logic etc. If you want more information on this click here (http://www.delta3d.org/article.php?story=20050720133707287&topic=tutorials).

A feature that i'm excited about that is in the works right now is a game manager to handle more advanced game logic, which will facilitate everything from states, timers, triggers, and the ability for massive networking.

The physics engine is based on ODE.

The import of art assets will take .3ds, .ive, .osg etc.

This is a very short list of the engines features. Check out a more detailed list of features here (http://www.delta3d.org/article.php?story=20041110105239504&topic=docs).

Even if this engine doesn't meet your needs as of yet, keep your eyes on it. There are many features in development with a fully qualified and ambitious team of developers (not to mention it is a funded project).

Did I also mention it's free?

I would also like to point out that the community for Delta3D is very strong. Developers and members are very responsive to help with any engine related problems or questions.

Anyway I hope this shameless plug is helpful to someone.

Cheers!

[gameboy]

Some interesting middleware for indie developers that I came across today is the SARGE Animation SDK (http://www.sarge-sdk.com/). The demo looked pretty good. It supports both boned and morphed animations, ragdoll physics, and animation mixing and blending, among other things. If you're interested in implementing good animation capabilities into your game engine, this looks to be a good choice, especially if you use Lightwave 8 in your 3D pipeline. It's not free, but looks to be affordable for a small commercial indie development effort.

[dudethedreamer]

Hey experts, would 'people' have to become a programmer to make games?

It would realy help if there was an engine that helps artist aviod such troubles but still giving us the ability to script and code without having to be a programmer

[IslandDreamer]

That's the idea behind 3D Gamestudio. You can get away for a while without writing any scripts, but you eventually have to roll up your sleeves and learn C-Script.

If you want to do first person shooters, you should also check out FPS Creator. I don't think that one requires any coding. But be warned, because it's based on Dark Basic, framerates are pretty slow.

[dudethedreamer]

LOL so Dark Basic sucks i guess?

I saw 3dgamestudios once (few months ago) but it looked very weak least from the screenshots i saw. I might consider it though if all else fails

Is there any other artist freindly game engine besides 3dgamestudios?

[IslandDreamer]

Take a closer look throughout the Conitec website and forums. There are actually a lot of great looking screenshots produced with 3DGS. Since most of the users are hobbyists, though, you do have a very large number of butt-ugly results! But you can't blame the engine for that.

Another product to look at is Quest3D. It seems pretty straight forward to use, although the price is very high.

[dylanjones]

I got alot of engines in the past, and recently downloaded a couple of the ones mentioned above. I like the truevision 3d one because of the Visual basics programming. However most, and almost all of them are written in C++

I have a question, how can I compile and run one of the tutorials in truevision3d SDK? In VB all i need to do is press run! When I try and complie the C++ I get an error, and it will never make the .exe Ahh...I was always confused with C++

I got the Cat Mother engine with that game prototype, and I want to use that in a game, but I dont know to get the damn thing running in C++

Any help?

[Eric Lengyel]

Of the engines listed above, only the C4 and Torque Shader engines are really affordable for small indie development concerns at this point, with C4 being the best bargain, priced at $100. However, a big drawback (at least for me) is that at the present it only works with the now relatively expensive 3D Studio Max, although the developer (Eric Lengyel) has promised to release plug-ins for Maya and most likely SoftImage XSI in the future.

Hi --

Our next release of the C4 Engine (build 113, coming in 1-2 weeks) contains a Collada importer. Collada is an emerging standard format (see http://www.collada.org/) and is already fully supported by Maya, 3DSMax, XSI, Blender, and others. With this release, the C4 Engine thus supports all of these packages and can import geometry, materials, skinning data, scene hierarchy, and animations from any of them.

-- Eric Lengyel

[infocyde]

After reading this thread, here is how I see game engine selection playing out for indie game developers. I'm more of a .net developer then a game developer, but my company is getting into game development, so I have been kind of tracking things for a few months. Here is my take, all you true game developers please correct me if I am off. Also I've found this thread extremely helpful, and I'd like to thank everybody who took the time to post to this thread. It is helped solidify some options.

Little or no programming - Go with A6. It is limited, but them's the breaks.
A little more programming - Torque/Gamespace combo. Or DarkBasic Pro
A lot of programming - C4 engine.
A whole lot of programming - Cipher

It seems like if you can affort a legit copy of MAX, then maybe you should be exploring some lower tier commercial options as well.

Also, for the MMORG developer there were a few options listed in these threads, though the choices to me where less obvious. I think if relmforge continues to mature, I might take a look at it.

There seem to be a lot of great engines out there, each with pros and cons. I'd say these look like they will be around for a while (especially A6 and Torque). I'd say longevity of the supporting company/community should play a big factor in your engine selection as well.

Free ones that look promising are Ogre and it's ports (Axiom, Irrlict, etc...).

Also, any thoughts on a game engine (for under 10K) that supports in game lip syncing? That is a requirement that I have that hasn't come up in the forum yet. Thanks,

[DevilHacker]

Hey everyone.
Just curiosity on my part… but, I constantly remember the game Red Fraction, when I play a FPS, and how cool its destructible environments were. Are there any mods to make HL2’s Source engine like this? Does anyone know of any other Next-Gen engine that has these features?
:curious:

[StratusFarm]

Free ones that look promising are Ogre and it's ports (Axiom, Irrlict, etc...).
I don't know about Axiom, but IRRLICHT is not a port of Ogre.
Irrlicht was built from the ground up by Nikolaus Gebhardt.

On that note, I'd like to plug Irrlicht a moment.
You may be surprised how fully-featured it is.
It is written with C++, but its API is very straightforward and is very easy to pick up on with little programming background.
It has a very active community, and most things you would want to accomplish has been tried before and a quick search should come up with something.
Collision detection is already built into it, it can load many mesh formats, including *.3ds(static only), *.x(static or animation), Collada, and many others.
Little to no library dependencies...you're up and running with its own SDK.
It is also cross platform, and it is zlib'd for the license, making it free to do whatever you want with it.

I was turned off by Torque because I had to jump through hoops to move anything from 3DsMax into it (very limited on file types it can load)
Ogre looked good, and indeed I have heard many good things, but the dependencies started driving me nuts, and I wanted a simpler approach.


Also, any thoughts on a game engine (for under 10K) that supports in game lip syncing? That is a requirement that I have that hasn't come up in the forum yet. Thanks,

Couldn't that just be done with an animation? That is, if you have your mesh animated for speech, just call those frames and the WAV at the same time?

[AD Edge]

Actually Renderman, there is an all-in-one modeling/animation/rendering tool that includes a game engine; it's called Blender. http://www.blender.org/ It is open source however, and therefore its licensing is not really suitable for commercial development.

I agree - Blender is a good game engine. Ive used it a lot and I am currently making several games.

[IslandDreamer]

Gameboy, it's been a long while since you've provided an update to this very useful thread. I'm wondering what engine you're using now and whether you've changed your opinion on any of those you've listed up til now or come across any new contenders.

I've hit a wall with 3D Gamestudio. I just can't get my imported Max objects to look any good with their engine. The 6.4 Beta is now available publically, but I don't see much of an improvement. A7 is probably a year away, although an in-game editor that looks very promising should be available sometime in '06.

I like Quest3D a lot from a graphics perspective. You import an object and voila it looks like what you intended. But the documentation isn't very thorough and there are very few presets or templates. I can't imagine producing a very complicated project with it without getting lost in the interface.

I'm also demo'ing Virtools at the moment. Very easy to import projects, but that's about all I know so far. The workflow is not as interactive as Q3D, but it is pretty straight forward for an artist. Programming is another story. The schematic approach gets very complex very quickly. I also don't know about their graphics engine. They've got a great looking shader demo, but the game demos (and everything I've done so far) all look very flat as if every object is self-illuminated.

[DonMeck]

AD Edge, any links to screenshots of games you have done with blender?

Regarding Virtools:
you need to use more "encapsulation" "wrapping" of logic to get a better organization of your logic. In addition to that use more scripts and dont do everythign in one script. Need to think "behavioural" for as many cases as possible - or 'manager'/'service' like scripts.
The render engine offers HLSL (GPU Shader) supoort under DX9 - thus it's at the end up to you how it looks. Besides this it supports all the standard stuff from fixed-piplines.

[dudethedreamer]

Anyone heard of Panda? Its a game engine made from/for disney games. It was the engine that created the tiny toons MMORP (were kids expose themself to the interent)... I dont know if they want their engine being exposed (sorry if ya want it private) but id like to know what people think about it. To me from browsing their site it looks like a BADASS game engine. And iv downloaded it already and tested it a little but since im not a programmer... I got nothing but failure

Panda as of now seems to be the most advance game engine but too bad i cant use it yet

[Ozren]

the best engine you can buy :


http://www.valvesoftware.com/sourcelicense/enginefeatures.htm

[IslandDreamer]

Right. And how much does it cost to license? The engines we're discussing here range in price from free to about $10K on the high end. Most are under $1000.

[Ozren]

Yap. I agree. But i look at it from another perspective. If you want to develop a game, a good game, then you must buy the best engine out there. If you dont, and can always buy an engine for 1000$ instead of 10000$. At the end, you will eventualy spend more then 9000$ to improve the cheep one to suit your needs, and at the end, and looking just a fiew months in the future, you will see that its cheaper to buy a 10000$ engine then a 1000$ one. Been there, done that, just talking from my expirience and point of view. Ofcourse, it all depends what you are trying to do, and what you need to do that.

[IslandDreamer]

I don't know the price of the Valve engine, but if it is anything like Unreal, we're not talking $10K, we're talking in the neighborhood of $250,000 plus royalties.

[DevilHacker]

Hi --

Our next release of the C4 Engine (build 113, coming in 1-2 weeks) contains a Collada importer. Collada is an emerging standard format (see http://www.collada.org/) and is already fully supported by Maya, 3DSMax, XSI, Blender, and others. With this release, the C4 Engine thus supports all of these packages and can import geometry, materials, skinning data, scene hierarchy, and animations from any of them.

-- Eric LengyelYou, and your team is pushing out an incredible looking software package…
I am sorry to ask, but I felt it was worth a short answer….
Who is doing your website, and why does it look so bad?
Just taking a guess here, but it is built/maintained by an member of your development with little time…

-Sorry for such a rude question, I was just overly curious…
:)

[Vashner]

I have been working with Torque for over 3 years. It's good engine for the money.

I don't know if you guys know but 1.4 version was just released (free upgrade for existing).

It's the last free upgrade. If you add the lighting kit to it you can still make a somewhat modern looking game. Also Blender support for it seems to be growing and the exporter from 3ds max works well.

The 1.4 let's you make versions of your game in Chinese and other languages etc.

$$$ sales potential...

[gameboy]

A new game engine/game development environment to consider is Beyond Virtual (http://www.beyondvirtual.com/sitenew/). Among its notable features is the ability to code once and cross-compile to different platforms, support for most of the major 3D content-creation applications, and comes with what looks like a nice set of tools for game asset integration (i.e. level and effects editors). It also supports pluggable physics and networking libraries into the engine, as well as external DLLs.

It comes in two "flavors" - Indie, which uses AngelScript (http://www.angelcode.com/angelscript/) to access game engine binary functions, and Commercial, which includes source code to the engine.

The published price for the Indie license is very reasonable, although the car demo included in the download seemed rather unstable regarding collisions and physics at times.

[the rookie]

I like Torque alot, it offers alot and once you learn the source code you can add in your own stuff, I think it's great learning engine for beginners who what to learn how to create 3d games, but most of the people here I think want to make the next RPG game, etc, etc, with the same graphic content as the current market, but most people don't understand the work that comes behind it, I think once torque shader engine is finalized it may be more suitable for ones needs, but for me, as time progesses, I see the potential in TGE and some of the items it can do, 3d Max exporter works fine, on the community page I think the creator made some modifications to it, I use Maya and using it's dts exporter, it is limited to shaders and bones aloud to port over, but you can still create good mods, I'm going to work with Torque more, out of two years of research and medeling around between Torque and Unreal Runtime Engine, I had to roll with Torque, I would love to work with the Unreal Engine, it has everything I need as a graphic artist, but studying some of the games created by Torque I can get pretty close, but will see, until $10,000 dollars magically falls out the sky for some where my demos are done with Torque

[DevilHacker]

Ah and also, anyone who has the 6.x license has of course automatically the 6.5 license as well, so the prices arent changing with the new SDK!

Have a nice day everybody!

Cheers.

- Arli Mujkic
Senior Developer
http://www.truevision3d.comWOW!
Thanks for that info.
Looking at the engine right now and I am like what I am seeing.
Only think that was holding me back was the issue of upgrading.

[gameboy]

Beyond Virtual (http://www.beyondvirtual.com/sitenew/) offers native Lightwave object and SCENE file support, as well as motionbuilder (.FBX) support inside the engine! :cool: Here is what one of their administrators said about these features on their forum (http://www.beyondvirtual.com/smf/index.php/topic,20.0.html):

you can even add lights and cameras in lightwave and load them directly into the engine, which will be a big time saver.

fbx support not only allows you to use motion builder, but there are plugins for maya (numerous versions), max (multiple versions), soft image and lightwave and many other 3d programs are adding support for fbx as well. fbx is a nice format because it provides full scene support as well, and is the primary format that we're supporting for animations (in addition to the native lightwave.



[Edit:] Just thought I'd add this additional bit about Lightwave support for the Beyond Virtual engine that I saw on their Forums - it's even better than I thought! :bounce:


The lightwave support does extend into morph targets and blend shapes - this is how the facial animation in Steer Madness was done.

There is even a tool that loads wave files and auto-generates a lightwave morph target (lws) for facial animation that you can load into lightwave for later modification as well. Allows you to quickly get facial morphs done for your in-game audio & dialog.

The lightwave support is fairly extensive - loads normal maps directly from the 'bump' material texture that you can specify in lightwave, etc...you can specify multiple materials for a group and show/hide them from script (allowing character customization / damage materials / custom clothing among many other things) and much more

Of any format that BV supports, lightwave is by far the most extensive currently.

They also have plans to release a free viewer application which will allow you to test how your models will look inside the game engine. At least One of Beyond Virtual's released games, Steer Madness, was created entirely in Lightwave.

If this works as advertised, it will remove some major obstacles that are prevalent in the artwork-to-engine pipeline. :thumbsup:

[Bliz]

Very interesting discussion.

I have a copy of 3DGameStudio v5 (not v6) but stopped using it after getting frustrated with the render quality. The textures would always 'muddy up' for want of a better term. Someone said the A6 engine now uses 24bit textures, maybe this has helped the situation.
Another big problem with it was wrestling with the bsp brushes to get them to shade properly. There's a flag that smooths between faces on a brush but this doesn't always work as expected. I'd get faceting or some verts would be a lot brighter or darker than their neighbours - very frustrating especially when you've done everything correct in the World editor.
Also, the psuedo raytraced shadows you see in the screenshots are a cheat. They are basically a duplicate of the object that has been flattened and shaded 50% transparent black. These fall down as soon as you get to the edge of a floor section or walk over a terrain (your shadow sticks out of the ground)

Maybe all this stuff has been improved in version 6?

On a different note (engine) has anybody seen this http://www.realmcrafter.com/ ?
It's a MMORPG making system that seems to be by the same people behind the http://www.fpscreator.com/ Realmcrafter was only released this month but I wonder if anybody has bought this and can report about it?

[IslandDreamer]

Version 6.40.2 of Gamestudio is now in public beta. I believe many of the issues you had with A5 have been rectified, but you should probably check it out for yourself. Most of the available demos on the site are old and don't show off the engine's capabilities. I know that the Conitec guys are planning to release a new tech demo within the next couple of months.

Here is a link to a shader plug-in that provides improved output: http://matt.brightwatch.com/sphere/sphere.htm

[IslandDreamer]

Here's a new engine coming next month. It's called the Lawmaker Engine from Darkroom Studios. Looks expensive, but there's no pricing details on the site yet. A source on the 3DGS website says it will be affordable for independent developers.

http://www.darkroomstudios.com/content/view/60/61/

[richcz3]

Beyond Virtual (http://www.beyondvirtual.com/sitenew/) offers native Lightwave object and SCENE file support, as well as motionbuilder (.FBX) support inside the engine! :cool: Here is what one of their administrators said about these features on their forum (http://www.beyondvirtual.com/smf/index.php/topic,20.0.html):

Well as nice as this looks (loads Lightwave models/scenes natively) there is no release date and the site has had no news updates beyond the preorder announcement.

[the rookie]

Thanks guys for posting this post, I'm not sure if anybody posted this game engine, but I stumble upon this engine by accident looking for something else http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

It is the Irrlicht Engine they got some pretty good screen shots, but if I read it correctly it said it was free, I'm not sure but I may be missing something, but it has quite a bit for it's engine, and review it's comparison, here's my dilema, I'm a 3d artist and what to work on my game, and I am more than willing to go thru the programming parameters to get what I want done

I am aware of functionality is key importance to a game, but also on the artistic end I need to have the lighting, (key) various lighting and enviroment fog and other aspects to create the game expected as a designer

I have been learning of Torque Engine and studying C++ and some other information along with this, but I would like to hear other people's aspect on this situation, as a indie game developer, I believe I have the skill for it, it's just selecting the right tools, budgeting, I understand and I'm willing to put in some low level money I have into it, but 10K is above the most for me at this or at anytime :D LOL!!

[the rookie]

okay I see that lucky mutt has mentioned the engine, but it looks pretty good and it has some of the same features as the up to date engines, except to a degree next gen engine stuff, but the key to the Irrlicht engine is that it's a GRAPHICS ENGINE and not a game engine, but doesn't mean that it can not be converted to one, the engine is created in C++ source code and is compatible with various IDE enviroments, I think this is something I can play with, also there's a company that did just that and coverted to there own game engine using it's graphic resource, not only that but they also use it and kicked it up to be able to touch Xbox 360, with some pretty nice stuff, I was really surprised, I think this will be a side project for me on the side, the engine is free... which makes alot of difference on a couple of things, but I'll keep you in tune and posted also, please if you have any info or insight to share on this let me know

[Dustin3KGT]

I didnt have a chance to dig thru this entire string of posts, but you might have a look at crystalspace, its opensource(free) and is configured to be used directly with other completely free programs for content creation. < but we are working on script so we can take maya and motionbuilder files to it directly >
i believe the addy is www.crystalspace3d.org

[the_zed_axis]

hi guys

a little off topic but i am a 3d artist and i would like to create a 3d showroom for my showreel

something like a standalone application.

basically what i would like is

camera navigation around the car
ability to change paint colour
add /interchange body parts like wheels bumpers etc

can you guys suggest a good software that i can use to create something like this ?

i am willing to go through the manuals but please i request something that requires minimal programming

thanks for your time:)

[IslandDreamer]

The 3D models on this site http://www.aticka.com/catalog/ are illustrated with Quest 3d (http://www.quest3d.com).

Also check out http://www.righthemisphere.com. The software behind Deep Creator and Deep Exploration has now been integrated into Adobe Acrobat and Reader (http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/pdfs/3d_pdf_demo.pdf).

[bigkahuna]

As IslandDreamer suggests, "Quest3D" and Right Hemisphere's "Deep Creator" will both do what you're looking for. Of the two, Deep Creator is easier to learn IMHO. Expect to invest a minimum of $2000 USD though. The "Home Edition" of DC ($250 USD) is watermarked. I don't recall the price for Quest3D, but it's also not what I would consider "cheap".

Another solution is the Blender Game Engine ( http://www.blender.org ). Version 2.41 was released last week and includes a major upgrade to the game engine. It's probably slightly more difficult to learn to use than Deep Creator (certainly no more difficult than Quest3D) but it's absolutely free and the support community is second to none ( http://www.elysiun.com ). There are literally -thousands- of sample projects and tutorials on line. Unlike either Quest3D or Deep Creator (which both rely on DirectX), Blender Game engine can save executables for Windows, OSX, and Linux.

If you want to include an interactive 3D display of your models on your website, take a look at "3DNP" ( http://www.thoro.de/portfolio/verschiedenes/3DNP.html ). 3DNP includes a script for Blender, requires no plugins, and, like Blender, is absolutely free.

[gameboy]

Came across this engine today which looks pretty impressive. It's called Haddd (http://www.funmangames.com/haddd/index.php?pagina=motor&idioma=uk) (currently at version 2), and it's written using C# and Managed DirectX. I just wish it didn't rely on using the expensive 3DStudio Max :sad: - but for all you Max users, it looks pretty nice. They have a set of tutorials (http://www.funmangames.com/haddd/index.php?pagina=tutoriales&idioma=uk) and demo movies (http://www.funmangames.com/haddd/index.php?pagina=videos&idioma=uk) showing the engine in action. :cool:

They summarize their engine and design philosophy as follows:


Haddd 3D it´s an engine developed in C# and Managed DirectX, focused in the render with 2.0 shaders, so it has per-pixel lighting and advanced materials.

The idea behind Haddd is to give the community a easy to use tool, fomenting the use of .NET over other more common languages in engine development like C++.

[the_zed_axis]

thanks for the replies guys...

no go on quest3d its just too expensive

will be going with blender:)

[Slapdash]

Have any of you guys looked at Beyond Virtual? www.beyondvirtual.com (http://www.beyondvirtual.com) I placed it in another thread but I think this is the thread that is more actively in search of engines.

I bought Beyond Virtual a few days ago and I am really impressed with it.
FAST art pipeline. Excellent developers that listen to what the community wants.
its still in beta but its maturing very quickly. It had 2 updates in less than 3 weeks.
The code is brilliantly easy as well.

Just check it out. i can really reccomend it esp, to the lone/ or small indie game devs.

[Slapdash]

Dbl. post sorry

[Bliz]

I just found this page that is a middleware page.

http://www.gamemiddleware.org/index.html

It encompasses all types of engines so some of them are gonna be pretty pricey but it gives a good overview.

[gameboy]

Thanks for the link, Bliz! There's some really nice stuff there! :eek: :drool: Never heard of the Instinct engine (http://www.torcinteractive.com/middleware.htm) before - it sure looks nice. It will be interesting to see what their price will be when they release their product at the GDC 2006. They're another engine designed to work with a 3D Studio Max art pipeline, however, so it may not be so cheap (I've always wondered why some groups who release budget engines design them to work only with the expensive 3D Studio Max). :argh:

That unity engine (http://www.otee.dk/) has a good price - considering that it comes built-in with the Aegia physX Physics Engine, and is one of the few engines targeted toward Mac users, and the first engine I've seen that supports the Boo programming language (http://boo.codehaus.org/) that some developers are really excited about.

[gameboy]

I see that the Sylphis3D (http://www.sylphis3d.com/) engine has become a commercial product. I really liked the way this engine looked when I first came across it awhile ago, and now it is even better. It has DOOM3-like graphics, including unified lighting and shadowing, built-in physics, and contains a ton of other features that blow away most other engines. It has its own integrated development environment, and you can program with the engine using either C++ or Python. (It has an internal Python compiler that creates an .exe from within the Sylphis IDE, so you can develop an entire game using only Python if you want).

With Sylphis, the game engine is like its own operating system, and game objects can be instantiated as "micro-threads" using the built-in Stackless Python, a version of Python which allows hundreds of light-weight threads and to be executing simultaneously (well, at least simultaneously in a 'virtual' sense) in the Python runtime. So for instance, instead of coding game objects in a Managed DirectX application to run under the .NET runtime, you can have several hundred self-contained game objects doing their thing under the Sylphis game engine via Stackless Python. It makes possible what the Sylphis creator calls "action-based" programming and seems a more truly object-oriented way of programming, since everything is an object "spawned" by the game engine 'operating system'. The Creator of Sylphis 3D talks more about it here (http://harkal.sylphis3d.com/2005/08/10/multithreaded-game-scripting-with-stackless-python/).

Although Sylphis doesn't have built-in networking at the moment (it is planned - it currently has only a basic networking layer for those wishing to build their own net code), for only 99 Euros, this has still got to be one of the best bargains around. :thumbsup:

My two favorite engines at the moment are Haddd (http://www.haddd.com/) and now Sylphis 3D. Although Haddd is not as complete as Sylphis, I like the idea of developing games using .NET, managed DirectX, and C#. But this Sylphis 3D engine is making me reconsider... :cool:

[freeschwag]

thanks for the info, gameboy. I went rummaging around the Sylphis website
and it seems to be a very robust engine with some solid thought behind it's
Python-based language choice. I was, however, unable to get a real feel
for the level of necessity one needs to be "programmer-minded" to actually
work with the engine. Is it strictly code-based creation at this time, or has
the developer provided gui-related interactivity(tools) with the engine?

Also lacking seemed to be a roadmap of where the developer planned on
taking his product, but maybe I just wasn't looking in the right places. Sadly,
the website's forum seemed to be pretty dated as well, so I'm wondering if
you've had any actual hands-on with Sylphis and if so, maybe you could
share your thoughts relating to my above "issues". :)

Cheers.

freeschwag

[freeschwag]

sorry...doubled-up :D

[gameboy]

It turns out that what you get when you actually purchase a Sylphis license is the following:

An example game level .exe (no source to it, though - at least that I can see). It tends to crash on my system, and when navigating through certain parts of it, slows down to a crawl.
Version 6.5 of Quark (Quake Army Knife) level editor.
Some exporters to the Cal3D format for Max, Maya, Blender, and Milkshape.
A whole bunch of python source code for the engine.
12 months of free updates.
What is missing is any kind of executable to run the so-called "Sylphis Development Environment" (SDE). I wonder if such a thing really exists. Maybe the Quark program is supposed to be the "development environment", but that just does geometry, not produce a compiled Sylphis .exe file. [Edit: the QuArK that comes with Sylphis is a modified version of it, which can load levels and compile Sylphis .exe's. So this modified version of QuArK is the SDE. However, these menus aren't available until a map is loaded].

It doesn't look like Sylphis 3D is user-friendly enough for the type of game development environment I was hoping for. [Edit: Now that I understand the modified version of QuArK is the SDE, things are looking better.] Additionally, what's bugging me is that I found this neat Python editor called Wing IDE (http://wingware.com/) I was trying out, but it won't work with the Stackless version of Python that is required by Sylphis 3D. :banghead:

According to the developer of Sylphis, documentation and tutorials are "in the works at the moment". I sure hope so, because otherwise to get anything out of this baby you're gonna be digging through a lot of python engine code. (I guess it's kinda like the early days of the Torque engine?) However, I'm not getting my hopes up, because the guy who says he's in charge of documentation said he didn't have much time for it, and people have been after him since October of 2005 to produce some. Moreover, response to questions in the forums can take awhile. :rolleyes:

Sylphis 3D may be technically advanced enough to produce commercial games, but its customer service is definitely lacking at the moment. :hmm:

[DevilHacker]

Hey everyone.
I was hoping that I could draw upon some help from our community in regards to finding an game engine…

Does anyone know of an game engine that meets these requirements? :curious:

Has good tools for large communities. Allowing people to easily contribute.
Has good multi-player support (looking for around 10 people an match)
Also, the engine does not need to be state of the art (graphics wise) as the target community will have an mixed set of computers specs, and we want to leave as little number of people the ability to not play due to their setup.

Any Idea?
-Daren Loney

[tburbage3]

Haven't read through all the posts in a while (so not sure if this has been mentioned), but this new development framework from Eric Lengyel looks promising:

http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/index.php

OpenGL rendering, C++ source, $100/user license, Win and OSX. Sounds like documentation is lacking for now, but support is active (see author and user comments on www.devmaster.net (http://www.devmaster.net)). Worth keeping an eye on.

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

so after all this discuss what is a best tool for build a first person shooter for a non programmer? forget about price or licence. is it un3? or anything else?

[IslandDreamer]

Because of its abundant templates, I'd have to say that 3D Gamestudio continues to be the best all-around tool for non-programmers. 3DGS's biggest weakness, in my opinion, is its art pipeline.

[davidhelgason]

If you have access to a Macintosh, do check out Unity: you'll not find any engine with a better art pipeline... and the IDE + engine is very powerful too. The price point is nice too (249-999 USD), and you can make games for both Windows and the web from the same source.

(blatant plug warning: I'm working with it)

d.

[DonMeck]

Hi davidhelgason,

indeed your product looks quite interesting. Unfortunally we are a PC house and it seems you can't port easily your .Net GUI from Mac to PC and therefore it's not available for PC (anysoon)?

Did you ever compaired your product to Quest3D, Virtools or Stonetrip STDK ?

[Bliz]

Because of its abundant templates, I'd have to say that 3D Gamestudio continues to be the best all-around tool for non-programmers. 3DGS's biggest weakness, in my opinion, is its art pipeline.

Quoted for agreement.

I own a copy of 3DGamestudio A5 but abandoned it because the graphic quality was too poor and the shading of the level geometry too unpredictable but I looked at the website again recently and saw that version A6.4 has DirectX9 shaders and some other new features. It's making it very tempting for me to upgrade and see if the product has come of age.

If you go to their download page, and download the GLIDER_demo you'll see that games created with the newer versions of gamestudio aren't too shabby at all.

[davidhelgason]

@DonMeck: Yes, we do. Or rather our users do.

In game engine features Unity excels: We use the Ageia physX engine for physics. We ship a lot of very advanced shaders and full-screen image effects, support render to texture, and as many cameras as you want. And the whole shader system is fully extensible.

We support skinned characters with advanced (but really easy to control) animation blending.

(a couple of pretty pictures for the screenshot addicted:)
http://otee.dk/gallery/main/cave-largegameview-large.jpg
http://otee.dk/gallery/main/cave1edit-large.jpg

For scripting there's C#, JavaScript and Boo (a very fast Python-like language), and you have acccess to a lot of functionality through the scripting API.

If it's extensibility you're after, you can integrate your own C/C++ libraries in Unity, extend the editor with menu actions and wizards (a simple menu-item or context-menu can be done with a 3 line JavaScript, a wizard may take some 15-20 lines).

There's a rich community (http://forum.otee.dk) and a community wiki with scripts, shaders and tips (http://unify.bluegillweb.com/scriptwiki/).

And then I didn't mention our unparalleled art-pipeline: Live updating of art files, even while playtesting: textures from Photshop files (even with layers); 3D models, bones and animations from 3D Studio MAX, Maya, LightWave, Cinema4D, Blender, Cheetah3D, and many more; pretty much any audio or image format.

It really has to be experienced to appreciate it: when these stupid import-export steps are removed, artists feel can stay in the creative flow, levels can be tuned much faster, and details given more love than otherwise.

I could go on, but I feel I'm already going to much into sales-mode for this forum ;)

But do check our website or drop me a mail if you have further questions...



Regarding your question about the GUI: it's not written in .NET but a Mac specific framework called Cocoa instead. It's a really good tool, but unfortunately not exactly portable.

But did you know that the new Intel Macs will boot into Windows? So now you can buy a Mac even if you don't think you'll be switching to Mac OS.

[SuperDre]

@DonMeck: Yes, we do. Or rather our users do.

In game engine features Unity excels: We use the Ageia physX engine for physics. We ship a lot of very advanced shaders and full-screen image effects, support render to texture, and as many cameras as you want. And the whole shader system is fully extensible.

We support skinned characters with advanced (but really easy to control) animation blending.

Regarding your question about the GUI: it's not written in .NET but a Mac specific framework called Cocoa instead. It's a really good tool, but unfortunately not exactly portable.

But did you know that the new Intel Macs will boot into Windows? So now you can buy a Mac even if you don't think you'll be switching to Mac OS.

Well, I tried the unity demo a couple of times (different versions), but it ran slow as hell on my 3.2Ghz P4 HT 1GB mem Windows XP ATI 9800 Pro 128 MB compared to other engines..
And ofcourse you give the biggest drawback yourself, you have to buy a Mac to work with it, so that's also a nono.. Why would i buy hardware that I cannot upgrade as easily and affordable as a PC, the new intel Mac's are nothing more than not so easily but very (too) expensive PC's, and looking at the latest mac's I must also say very ugly....

[gameboy]

Zman's website (The ZBuffer (http://www.thezbuffer.com/)) mentions a review (http://www.mmoroundtable.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7) someone called Cael did comparing "Raw" OpenGL, DirectX 9c, Irrlicht (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/), Managed DirectX 9c (MDX 2.0), and Haddd (http://www.haddd.com/), using MS VC++ 2005 (for the "Raw" and Irrlicht tests), and C# (for Haddd and MDX 2.0 tests).

C# seemed to compare favorably overall (saving development time with hardly any performance decrease). It is interesting to note that Tim Sweeney (of Epic Games and Unreal Engine fame) mentioned during a recent talk (ppt slides (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~dpw/popl/06/Tim-POPL.ppt), pdf file (http://www.st.cs.uni-sb.de/edu/seminare/2005/advanced-fp/docs/sweeny.pdf)) that he would gladly sacrifice a little performance for a corresponding speed-up in development time (e.g. 10% performance for 10% productivity gain). Here (http://archive.gamespy.com/legacy/articles/devweek_b.shtm) is another article of his thoughts concerning programming languages from the year 2000.

I think when Windows Vista finally arrives, there will begin a mass transition to C# development (or some other .NET language) for game programming away from C++ development for new projects, although it may take some time to overcome the development "inertia" established by many years of worldwide C++ development and the resultant engine libraries and software development tools. This (http://www.tiobe.com/) website (click on the righthand sidebar TPC Index for the current month) shows the current and long-term trends of programming language usage. C++ seems to be losing popularity from a long-term view, while C# is gaining.

[Deathbliss]

I was directed here from a thread I started at 3D Buzz:
http://sv1.3dbuzz.com/vbforum/showthread.php?p=1062676#post1062676

I decided to sign up after I found out I wasn't already a member. I've signed up to so many forums over the years it's all just a blur... But I digress!

So far Q is looking AMAZING, and I'm going to try it first. I got the link here I think but just in case I got it by link hopping here you go:
http://qdn.qubesoft.com/index.php?main=home

My second choice will be Irrlicht:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

I'll be keeping my eye on Lawmaker. Anyhow I know some if not all of these have been posted before, but I figured I should post again for anyone who decided not to read the whole thread. I did - evey page - following every link and saving the whole shebang. Of course I am a bit of an info-hog...

OK, so I do have a question. This one is EXTREMELY hard, and I really don't expect an answer - I'm just hoping for one. Has anyone made a game creation enviroment (by this I mean engine, editor - everything you need to make games) that can handle Myst series and Uru game files? I don't have either game on my PC ATM but they typically end in things like .dni. This AMAZING tool can open some of the files from these games:
http://www.elberethzone.net/index.php?page=dup5&language=en

You see I will be ESTATIC, I will actually be happy if I find a game creation system as I defined above that is as easy to use as UnrealED 2.0 (for Unreal Tournament) yet extremely powerful and not clunky like the versions of UnrealED that came UT 2003 and UT 2004. Something that makes it easy for me to import my work from 3DS Max, or allows me to make something right in its editor. The ability to create indoor and outdoor enviroments. I believe finding this would be akin to finding a four leaf clover, a rare thing of beauty.

HOWEVER, to find such a thing that allows me to open up the levels in Uru or any of the Myst games and look around - especially if it allowed the opening of Uru levels - this would place me in an even rarer state of - well I can't think of the word right now. It's that few seconds of sheer happiness you feel during a particularily deep state of meditation. I've only experienced this once, but finding such a program would put me in that state again.

So yeah, if in your travels around the web and experimentations with various game creation systems if you have found anything that has this, or something that has plugins that add this support - a few of the extensions are located at the last link I posted above for Dragon Unpacker - scroll down and you'll see them. Anyhow if you could post them here I would be EXTREMELY grateful! Uru is an unfinished and abandoned game. It was supposed to be online, but Ubi Soft killed it and took down the servers hosting it. It should never have been online in the first place, this is an obvious sign of Ubi Soft's greed. So please don't give me a sermon about the law and rights.

Thank you, and I want everyone here to know that this thread has been very helpful. I appreciate every post placed. I gave up looking for a good game creation system a number of years ago, but now I have 3 new options to try at least. That really means a lot to me as I'm getting tired of UnrealED 2.5 or whatever the heck UT 2004 has included with it. I want to make adventure games, to move away from violence into the barely charted lands of exploration (at least insofar as adventure games are concerned. They never have been very adventerous, have they? o_0)
- Deathbliss

[Bliz]

I don't know anything about Uru but Myst was all pre-rendered graphics (which you could do in your copy of Max), and technically is a very simple game.

Here's a program that you can use to make point and click games like Myst.

http://www.adventuremaker.com/

[DevilHacker]

From GameDev.com:
-------------------------------

The powerful LawMaker game engine (http://www.darkroomstudios.com/content/view/61/171/) is now available to the general public.
Some features of the engine are:

Full feature editor supporting CSG, Prefabs, Terrain, Cinematic, WayPoint, Particles, WYSIWYP and much much more!
Powerful game engine
Comprehensive class API set supporting a extensible lua game SDK package
Physics integration
Ultra-fast 3D engine
Licensees and evaluators will have full access to the engine's wiki development site and developer forum. A wide variety of licensing models are supported to meet individual or team development requirements. Also included is a 'weekend warrior' indie license.

Please feel free to visit Darkroom Studios (http://darkroomstudios.com/) or contact sales@darkroomstudios.com (sales@darkroomstudios.com) for more information.

[Eclectic]

Looks like LawMaker is a nice piece of engine. When will the price and licesing info be available?

[Slapdash]

so after all this discuss what is a best tool for build a first person shooter for a non programmer? forget about price or licence. is it un3? or anything else?

Did you have a look at Beyond Virtual??
www.beyondvirtual.com (http://www.beyondvirtual.com)

Check out the forums to get an idea. http://www.beyondvirtual.com/smf/index.php
V1.0 RC1 is being launched this month.

These guys are really adding a lot of features that the community wants etc.
If you think that it was in 0.9 Beta in Feb. it's an awesome accomplishment what they have integrated thus far.

I love this engine. And I have used a couple.

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

I saw beyondvirtual before its a cool engine. is there any commercial game build with this engine?

[Slapdash]

I know that the group developed a game called Steer madness with a OLD version of the engine. http://www.steermadness.com/
And I know they use it for their internal projects as well.
If you want to know more just register and ask on the forum. The developers are sure to respond.

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

I saw the snapshoots of this game. its really poor in graphic. there is a lots of this type of new engines in market. but non of them have been used to build an important game. they just get People more confuse. but in action they are all week. iam afraid there is no choice for creating a professional games like hl2, un,... unless they own engines and editors, or am i wrong?

[SuperDre]

It's just what you want to pay... You can develop great games with HL2, Unreal Tournament 2004, FarCry as long as you got the original games.. Once you have your game ready you can find a publisher which then can buy a license of the engine (both engines are required to have a license per title, so it's not that you can write 10 games with only paying for 1 license)
So you can build your professional game on a professional engine for the price of a game..

HL2 should be very cheap by now (20-25 euro?), UT2004 is about 15-20 euro I guess, and FarCry can be bought for even 10 euro's...
They all come with editors, and they all have so much examples and large development communities, so it shouldn't be hard to find the info you want.. the rest is up to you....

I almost forgot to mention Doom3, or the soon to be released Quake Wars.. and let's not forget the soon to be released games which are using the Unreal3 engine.............

One advantage ofcourse of using the Unreal engine is that it's very crossplatform (even on consoles)...

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

Thanks. so what you mean is that the only real solution for now is to become a mode builder?

[Slapdash]

I saw the snapshoots of this game. its really poor in graphic. there is a lots of this type of new engines in market. but non of them have been used to build an important game. they just get People more confuse. but in action they are all week. iam afraid there is no choice for creating a professional games like hl2, un,... unless they own engines and editors, or am i wrong?

Well, like I said that was an OLD version of the engine. New version has realtime shadows, lighting, detail mapping, Bloom, HDR etc. So a massive difference.

It depends what you mean by weak.
Gameplay? Graphics? Physics?
If its graphics I suppose yeah, but then one can then argue that the PS2 is weak? One can defnitly accomplish PS2 quality graphics in Beyond Virtual. Even GC / XBOX graphics. That deppends on your artist. I dont think the Wii will be called weak.
To be honest unless you have a BIG team and you REALLY know what you are doing you wont be able to make a game like HL2. It takes a very experienced team ,years to do that.
Also don't confuse good game art with what the engine is capable off.

I recon its a trade off. One cant expect the Unreal 3 game engine for the price of $150 either.

Choose an engine and go for it. Ogre3D is very good graphically and its OpenSource (although its only a render engine ) - to me its a bit difficult and over the top for a small dev team. If you got the nack for it and you love it, then upgrade to something bigger later.

I own various open source engines, Torque and Torgue Shader Engine. But Beyond Virtual for me, is still the best and most fun to use.
I chose BV because of the features, and the ease of use and I can make assets and make them work inside the engine with relative easy scripting in no time
Research and make the choice thats right for you.
There is no such thing as te perfect engine in my humble opinion.

[SuperDre]

Thanks. so what you mean is that the only real solution for now is to become a mode builder?

There is not much difference between a mod builder and a 'proffesional' builder on these engines.. only difference for some parts is better documentation and in some cases you also have the original sourcecode of the engine itself, but building a game doesn't require the code for the engine itself...

It's not the only real solution, it's a very cheap and viable solution, as a lot of games these days started out as a mod and then got picked up by publishers..... And let's not forget that these days content does require almost more time than code... And the advantage (at least with the Unreal engine) is that once a newer version of the engine is out (before you have completed your game) you can port it to that without the need for buying a new license as most licenses are only for a particular version of the engine...

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

Thanks (Slapdash) and (SuperDre) i am completely agree with what you meaning. recently iam working with quest3d. my problem is that i dont want to waste my time on a weak engines and then switch to the next level. i saw lots of this engines. they are all good. but there is always a better choice like hl2, un, doom ,... this are the real game engines. i think become a mode builder is a best way. cus at least we can see what type of game have been made with those engines. i think its possible to build a one short level like hl2, its what iam doing. and this a test of it that i was build it in q3d.

http://www.ali-rahimi.net/exe/trap_5.exe

snapshoot

http://www.ali-rahimi.net/images/portfolio/3d-image/main/trap/Trap.033.jpg

[Slapdash]

Thanks (Slapdash) and (SuperDre) i am completely agree with what you meaning. recently iam working with quest3d. my problem is that i dont want to waste my time on a weak engines and then switch to the next level. i saw lots of this engines. they are all good. but there is always a better choice like hl2, un, doom ,... this are the real game engines. i think become a mode builder is a best way. cus at least we can see what type of game have been made with those engines. i think its possible to build a one short level like hl2, its what iam doing. and this a test of it that i was build it in q3d.

http://www.ali-rahimi.net/exe/trap_5.exe

snapshoot

http://www.ali-rahimi.net/images/portfolio/3d-image/main/trap/Trap.033.jpg


That looks awesomeAli. Reminds me of SHADOW OF THE COLLOSUS - PS2 Game.


If you want to learn and later get into the industry that is THE best training you can get. Using the HL2 / Unreal / DOOM enginers and mod for it.
You are using the tech that the main devs are using etc.

[ali-rahimi-shahmirzadi]

Thanks. yes i think thats a best choice. dose anyone know when un3 will lunch? it must be near.

[the rookie]

I agree there are many game engines out there, and it is a hard and daunting task to get your work into a good quality engine, as far as next gen engines forget it, unless you have the money for it, you'll have to pass, this doesn't mean you can make next gen content but if your looking at engines like Renderware, Unreal Engine 3, Project Offset Engine...

But there is a way around this to get what you want with the extra work, and without what I call trapping (modding), Graphics engines such as Quest3d (very Good), ORGE (very Good) can get you in that direction, and if you have programming ablities it can even take you further

I think it's a huge plus that some of these graphics engines are built off C++ and Object Orientation it takes just a little or more time to put it all together

It all boils down to what you want to create? and what are you trying to create? Are you creating a Full game?,it it just a demo? What's required? and how can others play it and view it?

Also you have to set the difference apart...is this a portofolio demo or a game project looking to go main stream? organization can same you alot of time

I fiddled with a bunch of game engines and some was lacking what I was looking for, so I just started over from the ground up, engine mechanics from scratch, alot of work yes, but I am able to stay on top of what the game industry is using and working on

The great world of game engines www.devmaster.net (http://www.devmaster.net), I think I took on one of the hardest obstacles and which was learning programming and 3d artwork and content, but it made me stronger in overall development, I love this thread about game engines and I'm always in tuned with it, when new information or questions arises