C4 Engine
Website:
http://www.terathon.com/
Developer:
Terathon Software LLC
Launched:
May 05, 2005
Status:
Active
Supported Platforms:
Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, Playstation, PS3
Languages Written In:
C/C++
Languages Supported:
C/C++
Graphics APIs:
OpenGL
Rating:
(127 reviews)
- Overview
- User Reviews
The C4 Engine is a comprehensive suite of robustly implemented game programming tools for the Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, PS4, and PS3 platforms.
- Screenshots
- Videos
Supported Features
General
- Object-oriented design
- Multithreaded job manager
- Resource manager
- Plug-in architecture
- Containers library (arrays, lists, maps, trees, graphs, etc.)
- Math library (vectors, matrices, quaternions, etc.)
Lighting
- Point lights, spot lights, directional lights
- Inter-zone lighting analysis
- Fully dynamic lighting
- Ambient lighting volumes
Shadows
- Stencil shadows
- Cascaded shadow mapping with smooth transitions
- Projected light source shadows
- All types of shadows can be combined
Texturing
- Multitexturing
- Bump mapping
- Parallax mapping
- Horizon mapping
- Diffuse, specular, normal, gloss, emission, occlusion maps
Shaders
- Large variety of standard shaders can be created with material attributes
- Complex custom shaders can be created with graphical shader editor
- Comprehensive bump/normal mapping capabilities
- Parallax bump texture mapping
- Horizon bump shadow mapping
- Bumpy reflection and refraction
- Cook-Torrance microfacet shading
- Cube environment reflections
- Realistic water shading
Meshes
- Dynamic level-of-detail
- Skinning
- CSG operations
- Import from COLLADA
Scene Management
- Portals
- Visibility graph
- Occlusion Culling
- Level of detail
- Fully lit impostors for massive forests
- Mirrors and remote portals
- Object instancing
- External scene referencing
- Game level save/load system
Animation
- Skeletal animation
- Hierarchical animation blending system
- Forward kinematics
- Inverse kinematics
Terrain
- Voxel terrain
- Transvoxel algorithm for dynamic seamless level-of-detail
- Cliffs, overhangs, caves, arches
Physics
- Rigid body simulation
- Real-time cloth simulation
- Real-time large-scale fluid surface simulation
- Continuous collision detection
- Contact forces and friction
- Precise buoyancy forces
- Customizable force fields
- Joints (spherical, universal, discal, revolute, cylindrical, and prismatic)
- Full networking support
Networking
- Client-Server
- Fast, reliable network implementation using UDP/IP
- Solid fault tolerance and hacker resistance
- Advanced security measures, including packet encryption
- Automatic message distribution to entity controllers
- Cross-platform internet voice chat
Sound
- 2D sound
- 3D sound
- Streaming sounds
- Doppler shift and other frequency effects
- Reverberation
- Atmospheric effects
- Directional sounds with cone attenuation
- Obstruction attenuation applied to direct and reflected paths
- Audio capture for voice chat
Tools & Editors
- Integrated world editor
- Graphical shader editor
- Graphical script editor
- Interface panel editor
- Animation cue editor
UI
- Built-in UI system includes windows, buttons, menus, scroll bars, icons, list boxes, sliders, etc.
- Unicode text rendering and user input
- Fully interactive in-game interface panels
- Custom scripts attached to widgets
- Panels have an extensible animation system with many built-in techniques
Scripting
- Graphical script editor
- Scripts are edited graphically for easy artist/designer access
- Games can easily define custom script components, and these automatically appear in the editor
- Controllers can advertise custom function calls that can be accessed from scripts
- Scripts support variables, looping, and conditional execution, all shown in a concise graphical manner
Input
- Generic treatment of keyboards and mice
- Broad support for USB devices (joysticks, gamepads, steering wheels, etc.)
- Direct support for Xbox 360 controllers under Windows
- Events reported to game through an action binding system
Special Effects
- Full-scene cinematic motion blur
- Distortion effects such as heat haze and shockwaves
- High-quality and high-performance procedural fire effects
- Volumetric fog with multiple density functions
- Interactive in-game interface panels
- Fully extensible particle systems
- Voxel-based blob (metaball) particle systems
- Surface markings / decals on arbitrary geometry
- Emission glow and specular bloom effects
Licensing
| License Name | Price in $US | Source Code Included? | Additional information |
|---|---|---|---|
| Proprietary | $750.00 | Yes | View Details |
| Standard Edition, source included, updates forever | |||
| Proprietary | $1,500.00 | Yes | View Details |
| Professional Edition, source included, updates forever | |||
Companies
The good and the bad
features:
- fantastic rendering features
- very clean C++ Code
- easy to use with the tools (world editor, material editor, texture importer, mesh importer)
- good support
- very nice price
- the documentation is growing
- active forums
The bad:
You and your customer need a highend graphic card. Intel graphic cards will not supported. That decimate the possible market, today.
Looks Pretty Good!
The engine looks to be well rounded. I haven't seen the source, but features in the demo look good, and the forum/creator support looks excellent. The only problem I have with this engine is the editor (demo I tried). I'd get aggravated trying to use it, but I'd say it's one to watch.
Last edited Apr 14, 2013 at 01:58
