7 replies to this topic

[boedy]

I know this question has been asked over and over again, but I could not find a satisfying result. To be honest, I did not read "all" posts on the forum .

I've been learning c++ for the last 6-9 months and have been using Qt creator. I now want to do some experimenting with game engines. My purpose is pure educational, so I'm not going to make a full game and probably wont need to access the network.

Would it be wise to start with the ogre or should i go for a simpler engine like 3dgamestudio?

[fireside]

If you want to stay with c++, then you might not want an engine like 3d gamestudio. I think it does use c++, but most tutorials are for a c-like language they use. Ogre is a lot of work. You have to add sound, physics, etc. It's really up to you. A 3d engine with an editor like 3d gamestudio, Unity, UDK, is a lot easier to use, but you will be doing scripting which can be annoying as far as not being able to extend classes.

[khaos]

Maybe Irrlicht3D would be a good starting engine.
It's not this complicated and you will have results very soon. There are also Tutorials for adding IrrKlang and a physic engine like Newton.

[alphadog]

As fireside indicates, there are benefits to either approach.

OGRE is primarily a renderer. You need to integrate a lot of middleware yourself. However, you end up knowing more about the innards, have more control of the end result and can make your overall game engine do anything you want it to do.

Using a scripting game engine like Unity will make you more efficient, but within constraints.

You may also want to consider a C++-based game engine like C4 or Esenthel.

[boedy]

First of all, thanks for taking to time to write a reply. It's nice to have some input when making a choice.

fireside said:

Ogre is a lot of work. You have to add sound, physics, etc.

I don't mind the work if it teaches me something new. I like to learn more about the physics behind a game.

alphadog said:

You may also want to consider a C++-based game engine like C4 or Esenthel.

Ogre is C++ based isn't it? What would be the key differences in the engines you named comparing it to Ogre. And how is the community support?

Today I started experimenting with ogre (2 basic tutorials). After having problems getting Ogre to work in Qt creator I decided to switch to Microsoft Visual c++ express. I haven't used it before, but till now it works for me.

The reason I started working with Ogre today is probably because it's the first 3d graphics engine I heard about.

[khaos]

boedy said:

Ogre is C++ based isn't it? What would be the key differences in the engines you named comparing it to Ogre. And how is the community support?

OGRE3D is just a rendering engine while C4 and Esenthel are "real" game engines. They contain also editors and all the other modules like sound, physics, etc.

And OGRE3D has a really big community.

[TaggM]

@boedy: Unity or DxStudio should serve you well.

A popular solution for slightly more granularity is IrrLicht + Ogre3D + Blender + GIMP.

I've looked at Dx Studio, Unity, Delta3D, 3D Gamestudio, and IrrLicht. They are all good quality, and all provide almost what I want for free prototyping. Very good value for the price.

This is what I really want in an engine -- and it probably will come with a large price:
Rapid iteration cycles.
Easy connectivity with MySQL (server side) or OracleXXi.
Easy connectivity with SQL Lite (client side) or similar client-side database solution. (Not ASCII text files, XML, or spreadsheet solutions.)
Easy Client-Server solution for both TCP/IP and UDP -- including security and packet encryption.
3D graphics, physics, and sound.
On-the-fly text generation (2D and 3D) -- using values from variables for the text.
Rapid GUI design -- 2D or 3D.
World editor.
Asset management.
Scene management.
Character animation.
Event/trigger management.
Integrated or native Web browser.
It would be super awesome if it bundled Objects with their data, interfaces to and from datasources, meshes, multimedia hooks, events, triggers, and state interfaces.

[alphadog]

boedy said:

I don't mind the work if it teaches me something new. I like to learn more about the physics behind a game.

Unfortunately, integrating a physics engine doesn't teach much about physics engines themselves, just about how to put middleware together, which can be a difficult thing in and of itself. To know how physics engines work, you have to either write one, or study open source projects, or read books on simulating physics.

boedy said:

Ogre is C++ based isn't it? What would be the key differences in the engines you named comparing it to Ogre.

Well, it's been answered above. OGRE is C++ through and through, but has wrappers in any language you want to use. OGRE's advantage is it's focus. It's pretty much just a rendering and scene engine. It does what it does well, and it doesn't do much else. However, the community backs it up well with a wealth of editors, managers, libraries, etc.

It's also used by people who make game engines. See NeoAxis for example.

OTOH, Unity is great for getting a game up with less of a learning curve, but if you push the envelope, or if you want to do something like high-availability networking, you are up the creek and Unity doesn't make it easy to swap things out.

boedy said:

And how is the community support?

Huge. IMO, possibly the hugest, except maybe for Unity or the Unreal SDK. Torque, while having suffered due to business issues a year or so ago, was pretty big at one time too.