8 replies to this topic

[soulvoid]

Does anyone have a tip for a good 3D engine for fast production of content? Both the work flow for the graphics artist and the programmers are important, so good export, level design and programmer tools are essential.

As a die hard C/C++/Java programmer I've previously been very reluctant to use any engine that rely heavily on any kind of 'weird' scripting language for the game code, but lately I've been thinking that being able to create game content at 'runtime' without having to recompile and restart will greatly speed up production time. However, we might need to be able to 'extend' the engine to support point and click behavior if this is not possible through scripting. We don't need the absolutely best visuals as most of our target customers will most likely not have the hardware required anyway, but we do need Newtonian physics. Ideally, I'd like a scripting language that support OOD but I guess that's asking too much.

I've been looking at a dozen different engines now, but I don't have the time to do an in depth study to get to grips with how productive it will be in a working environment nor does the company want to spend the resources needed to do so. Any advice appreciated. Thank you.

Sorry about starting another 'what is the better 3D graphics engine for xxx' thread.

[phildart]

Hello,

you should take a look on ShiVa game development kit.
http://www.stonetrip.com

the engine is great and the dev kit can make game very quickly.

coding is in LUA object oriented, point and click gameplay can be made in few hours.
ShiVa able to develop at runtime (no compilation).
to finish the Ston3D server make very easily multiplayer online game.

the community around ShiVa is active and StoneTrip team seems to have a great road map for their ShiVa tool.

To finish, the INDY version is at real low cost!

take a look.

[Harrier]

Hi try the Wintermute Engine. It's exactly for Point and Click and allows 3D animated characters and stuff in that new 2.5D style.

Never tried it myself but, I did download one of their demo's and thought it was really good.

Free for commercial dev work also, if I'm not mistaken.

http://dead-code.org/home/


Sayonara!

Harrier

[soulvoid]

Harrier said:

Hi try the Wintermute Engine. It's exactly for Point and Click and allows 3D animated characters and stuff in that new 2.5D style.

Harrier

Thanks,

I guess I should be more specific with my request for help. I need a full 3D engine, I do not need any code specifically for adventure games. The only thing I really need for the adventure games is to be able to do a ray intersect with on-screen geometry when clicking. Other than that I need fast prototyping (where I do think good scripting support and tools are the key), with the capability to go all the way to a full game with reasonable graphics quality and animation.

I've looked at powerrender, truevison engine, c4 engine, torque engine, quest3D, beyond virtual, unity (ruled out because the tools only run on mac), blade3D, 3D game studio, neoaxis engine, nebula device, dx engine, trinity, lawmaker, etc. Honestly, most of these if not all look like they could do the job(and then some). However, I believe the choice is vital to the success of the project. Therefore I'm hoping to learn from someone else's mistakes and experiences so I don't have to make too many on my own.

regards,

Håvard

[fireside]

I would recommend staying away from a scripted engine. They tend to not do as much, or you have to do major work-a-rounds. I was using the Blender game engine, which admittedly is not the best example, but it became a nuisance doing workarounds that are better done in c++. I'm currently using Irrlicht and setting up virtual classes but not recompiling the engine every time, using a dll, which is a nice inbetween way of doing it. In a 3d game, you pretty much need to pass pointers. It will look like you're saving time at first, but after while you'll regret it.

[soulvoid]

fireside said:

I would recommend staying away from a scripted engine. They tend to not do as much, or you have to do major work-a-rounds. I was using the Blender game engine, which admittedly is not the best example, but it became a nuisance doing workarounds that are better done in c++. I'm currently using Irrlicht and setting up virtual classes but not recompiling the engine every time, using a dll, which is a nice inbetween way of doing it. In a 3d game, you pretty much need to pass pointers. It will look like you're saving time at first, but after while you'll regret it.

Hi,

From lately doing some work in java using the Eclipse IDE I've become extremely fond of rapid development, edit&continue. Going back to Visual Studio 2005 with C++ has been a pain in the ass afterwards where edit&continue only works sporadically, no highlight of syntax errors, long compiles, long startup times, etc. Since it is possible to write most of the game logic in a scripting language where the script can be changed at runtime, I'd rather do that than having to start the program over and over and over again. Of course it is no good if you are limited by the scripting language and/or access to the underlaying system is limited from the script and/or the script makes the engine crash all the time if you have the smallest error and/or the IDE for the scripts are useless. Secondly, I would not choose an engine that is limited to using only a script language for development, I would prefer an engine where you can write most of the game logic like events/responses/gui/etc. in script but the engine is extendable/customizable in C++.

[SamuraiCrow]

If you think that the commercial game engines are overkill, you could build up something around Ogre and, if you want to use Java, also look into Ogre4J for Java bindings to Ogre. As long as you don't statically link to the Ogre library it won't cost a thing but if you MUST statically link, you can get an unrestricted license for a price.

[fireside]

"I would prefer an engine where you can write most of the game logic like events/responses/gui/etc. in script but the engine is extendable/customizable in C++."

That would work. There are some around. The important thing with a rapid development system is to have a built in world editor, sound engine and probably physics engine along with pathfinding. All those things take a long time to get working properly, and make sure your modeler exports to it or it uses a file system that your modeler exports. Also, now days it should be able to import bump maps from the modeler so you don't have to write shader code for it. It should do shadows and also do light maps in the editor.

[Harrier]

Soulvoid


It looks like you don't want to be hindered with the tangled mess of thousands of lines of C++, where it's difficult to get to the underlying C++ code and separate it from the Scripting code, for example. Many engines are like that. So, most end up using, almost exclusively, the scripting engine. Except, the few that can untangle that mess and get down deep to the C++.

So, in the same vein as SamuraiCrow's suggestion, I would recommend something like Horde3D. It's cutting edge graphics rendering technology with a very clean and compact C++ interface, that can probably be accessed without too much hassle from other languages....Not a full 3D engine but a renderer. It uses tiny XML script for a few things, though. It's a small download at just a few megs. http://www.nextgen-engine.net/ But, be forewarned, Horde3D need a powerfull 2.0 shader capable graphics card. There are examples on the Web Site of cards that work well, I think.

Also, to get a better handle on the scripting engine itself, you might want to bind one to it yourself, to suit only your needs. Like Lua or Squirrel, for example.

Squirrel, should'nt be hard to compile from source. I think it comes with binding examples too. http://squirrel-lang.org/default.aspx this scripting dialect deserves a closer look, imho.



Sayonara



Harrier