I’m constantly updating my in-house game engine called GeoDyne and I was thinking about providing it as a tool from games developers, but I would like your opinions on a few things.
GeoDyne comes in 3 parts, the GeoDyne editor where you place your objects and collision maps, GeoAnim where you load your characters in DirectX form (hence the post on exporting anims from Lightwave) and set up phenomes, speech, sfx and animation cycles, and GeoStage where you set paths, patrols, events etc.
However at this stage to utilise these tools you end up with a 10meg file called <myGameLevel>.geo and several cpp and header files to implement the designs. So you need to know a little about coding to get everything up and running. The framework code will load the level for you and start playing anims, etc but it’s up to you to code the rest.
So my question are…
-
Are people used to this type of game creation? ie use the editor then start coding using predesigned classes with abstracted methods that are easy to use like LoadMySkinnedMesh(), skinnedMesh->Play() etc…
-
Do people prefer a Player utility as well, where there the only coding required is completely abstracted into a form of ASCII scripts? ie you never touch the underlying code.
-
How much would like to buy a game engine for (per seat). Disregarding the current pricing of Unreal / Quake3 etc.
-
How much would you expect to pay for support, and what type of support would you like ( bi-annually? weekly? custom mods?)
-
Would some people prefer the editor - no code option even though you can’t change the dynamics of the game (ie you can do a total conversion but it still runs like Quake)
-
Should there be a rising cost for more control? ie the Editor - No Coding package is the cheapest, the Editor - With Scripts is the next expensive and the Editor - With Coding required package is the most expensive.
Looking forward to your replies.
Andy H.