Simple Open Source 3D Game Engines?

Zenitram asks: "I'm trying to find a good open source/free, 3D first/third-person game engines. I can write basic scripts and make basic programs in various programming languages, but when it comes to making 3D worlds I do not have the skill set. Most of the Open Source programs I've found are not for beginners. I've found some pretty good commercial programs, however the game I am making has no chance of ever making a profit. As such I don't really want to invest money on a personal project. Any advice?"

Comments

Mod mod mod

[sd.fhasldff]

"If you're not interested in building a game from scratch, have you looked into implementing your game as a mod for some already existing game?"

Mod parent up for suggesting a mod.

Seriously.

Unless you have VERY specific requirements for your game, you should be able to get quite far by creating a mod for an existing game. Now, that could either be a close sourced game or an open sourced game, that's entirely up to you.

Since you stated that your game is never going to make any money anyway, going with a commercial, open source game seems viable. This opens up the possibilities even further. Depending on the type of game you had in mind, Quake3 and Descent2 are both mod'able and both have their source code freely available.

If you don't want to use a commercial open source game, you could use one of the many "free" open source game (feel free to insert the obligatory speech and beer comments here), e.g. Vegastrike ( http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/ ).

All that said, you don't NEED the source if you can keep it 100% in the mod realm - and people have done some amazing things with mods!

A bit of a contradiction

[Yst]

"I'm trying to find a good open source/free, 3D first/third-person game engines. I can write basic scripts and make basic programs in various programming languages, but when it comes to making 3D worlds I do not have the skill set.

So let me get this straight: you're looking for an engine which allows you to build something you readily admit you are unable to build?

This is rather baffling. It seems like your skillset (scripting, basic coding, no modelling or worldcraft) would strongly recommend itself to modding or storytelling within existing commercial engines where there's a huge base of art, maps, models and media inherently available, which let you do the scripting and writing with little compulsory art design. If you want to do something FPS style, why not Source? If you want to do something RPG style, why not NWN2 when it comes out, or NWN now? As nice as it would be to have an open source alternative, a high quality open source game SDK with all the functionality of the more comprehensive commercial equivalents (with the various fan-made tools which have been created to complement them) simply does not exist.