Slashdot Mirror
Open Source vs Affordable Indie 3D Game Engines?
TBBScorpion asks: "Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, and the like. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades). I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page). Now for my questions. Now, here's my dilemma. Which of the engines are worth investing in? Should I buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or should I start with an indie engine and switch later if open source catches up?"
"Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.
However, there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support, the Atlas terrain paging feature, and a few other nice features, but since is DirectX9 based it is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial engines. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine, or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but might it potentially be a more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
Here are the features I am hoping for are: a cross-platform engine, if possible; modern shader support; a built-in terrain paging system; and model, material and animation import from Blender 3d.
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing that seems to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002, so I'm ready to dive into the engine code."
However, there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support, the Atlas terrain paging feature, and a few other nice features, but since is DirectX9 based it is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial engines. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine, or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but might it potentially be a more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
Here are the features I am hoping for are: a cross-platform engine, if possible; modern shader support; a built-in terrain paging system; and model, material and animation import from Blender 3d.
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing that seems to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002, so I'm ready to dive into the engine code."
From what I've heard, you will be investing hours to get Torque working on linux. And forget about updating it (which is pretty useful for added features like the shader functionality). I am, though, not sure if this is still true. Ogre3D is slow. That's just not what you want. If speed is all you want, and don't care about the interface, Irrlicht is nice. If you want both, crystalspace is really nice, but there's not a lot of documentation about it.
I can't stress enough to avoid TGEA. I can't speak for the original engine (TGE) but the new version has no documentation, and a pervasive attitude of "If you can't figure it out without help, you shouldn't have gotten the Advanced Engine".
The engine is simply not geared towards direct interfacing. If you're happy using TorqueScript to do everything, then give it a shot. If, like me, you need to interface with other C++ components, you're in for a tough ride.
The time spent trying to figure out the Torque engine is better spent just developing your own engine, the documentation is terrible, tools for torque are outdated, just don't waste your time.
... for what??? Ogre, Torque, C4? ... I think we can safely conclude that you don't know what "/vertisment" is! This is a relevant slashdot question ... someone needs a product comparison. If you don't have anything to contribute then don't.
Have you investigated the open source versions of Doom and Quake? While maybe a bit dated (the Quake III engine is from 1999), they are GPL and have a lot of community support.
The original Doom engine has been used in a shit load of games since (including games available for a wide variety of platforms, such as portable music players).
The Wikipedia page, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_III_engine has a lot more information about the Quake III engine, and a lot of handy links at the bottom (such as http://www.icculus.org/quake3/ "A project to remove bugs, clean up source code and to add more advanced graphical and audio features via SDL and OpenAL, and to act as a clean base package to build other projects on.")
Go get it!
I wank in the shower.
What exactly do you want to hear? You'll be using it for "games and scientific stuff"? There is no single engine that will fit all those vastly different needs. Tell us what specific game you want to develop, then we might get somewhere. Scientific stuff? With a GAME engine? Oh please.. what do you want to simulate using a CFlyingLaserShootingOgre class?
This whole post seems to me like an advertisement for the Torque engine to be honest, but it's kind of silly because the Torque engine is really only useful for 3D FPS games. It's what it comes from originally.
jmonkeyengine http://www.jmonkeyengine.com/
Runs on OSX, Win, and Linux. Advanced Shader Support. Open.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
After going through all the choices and possibilties, I ended up with Ogre. It's true, it's 'just' a graphics engine. But it's made that way. The designers have many times over said they don't wish it to be anything more than that. But that doesn't mean you can't use it in conjunction with other packages out there. Projects like Yake are attempting to do so.
It in some part depends on specifically you want to do with the engine. For example, physics stuff can be handled with ODE, Newton, Novadex, or others. There are even Ogre bindings to use these (Gangsta wrapper abstracts this process, though there does exist OgreODE and OgreNewt as well). You'll also find, basically all open source projects end up using OPCODE for collision detection, though you might not want to use it directly (there is also a wrapper for Ogre and OPCODE).
I ended up writing my own code for interfacing with ODE, since I desired collision detection, but not physics. Since the code you can find is open sourced (a good amount is free use without any restrictions -- I believe this is true for anything posted or related to Ogre).
Not having an editor is somewhat problematic, though there does exist world/terrain editors out there -- both free and for pay (some are reasonably priced). For basic 3d modeling there is of course Blender, which can also do scenes, though it does have a fairly large learning curve. If you search around Ogre's web page, it actually provides a ton of links to the other resources out there.
For input management, the new version of Ogre comes with OIS (open input system), which is cross-platform. And you can use OpenAL for sound. So all the components are there, but you do have to assemble them. I like this strategy, as each component has its own dedicated group of people who worry about it, and try to make it the best possible.
However, if you like things prepackaged, you might also want to look at the Irrlicht engine. They've taken the opposite approach to Ogre, and provide a self-contained engine. I haven't used it myself, but I am of the understanding it is much faster to learn and use than Ogre, though I don't know how the performance compares..
One last thing I would add about Ogre, and what convinced me to use it was that there are a bunch of profressional games out there that use it. Again, if you go to the Ogre web page, you can peruse the comercial games made.
To give you my background, I'm a TGE, TGEA licensee as well as a licensee of the RTS kit and many of their content packs. I imagine I'm going to get shot for this post, if even half the Torque fans from Gamedev.net visit here also then I'm expecting a -1 Troll moderation within around 30 seconds, but seeing as I can give an honest, first hand, from the trenches opinion of Torque, here goes:
It's probably one of the things I truly regret spending money on the most. Garagegames put a lot of money into marketing and hype but never pull through on their promises. TGEA arrived 2 years late and by the time it arrived had many major features cut from it such as the promised built in terrain editors, OpenGL support and so forth.
The RTS kit was another scam in this respect, it doesn't contain pathfinding, support for RTS AI or anything of the sort by default, Garagegames claim this is because "all games need different pathfinding/AI requirements" however this argument is extremely weak - let's face it, core AI is pretty standard and surely it's better to provide at least some AI to the demographic they sell the engine to on their "why make a mod when you can make a game" premise that provide nothing at all. Also, the RTS kit is about 3 versions out of date with the main Torque Game Engine - Garagegames don't keep it up to date with the main codebase, they simply tell you to do it yourself.
TorqueX is yet another example of Garagegame's cutting of features and delays, it was meant to be ready with 3D support included for XNA GSE's release in their original press release, now however it's still entirely unreleased and anything other than basic 3D has been cut from the initial release.
Do not trust Devmaster.net, it's sponsored by Garagegames and is heavily biased, in it's top 10 list of commercial game engines (http://www.devmaster.net/engines/) Torque is always listed first, even when the site's very own ratings system shows TGE as only have 3.5 stars when the likes of C4 has 4.5 and TV3D SDK 6 has 4!.
Other than that the issues with TGE and TGEA are that the engines have just turned into such messy hacked together swamps of code over the years they're really tough to use. Many features of the engine are also half-assed or extremely dated compared to other offerings on the market, some are even suffering from long running bugs that can even result in fatal crashes - physics and vehicle support for example really need a complete rewrite for anything other than the very simple games that you see in the Garagegames store. The other problem that plagues all GG's products other than TGB is a severe lack of decent documentation - this is really bad when the engine is such a nonsensical mess. The Torque code base is ancient and new features have been hacked in through the years - it's either time to write it off and start from scratch or a MASSIVE refactoring session to clean up and update the code base. The sad fact is, the learning curve for the combination of such a messy engine, non-intuitive scripting system, poor documentation, requirement to fix a lot of things yourself means that you're not far off writing your own engine from scratch over using TGE/TGEA.
So is all of Garagegames stuff bad? No not at all, Torque Game Builder is pretty good if it's 2D your after, that's one product that has a whole lot of polish, good documentation, a good toolset and so forth. Arcane FX is absolutely fantastic too, but this is a 3rd party addon to TGE and is hence unfortunately absolutely wasted on this engine.
I think the problem Garagegames has is bad management and a marketing department that doesn't seem to worry about outright lying to make sales (not that that's a rare thing in marketing of course!). The management problems I'm referring to is the fact they keep announcing new engines or product lines without completing their last projects! Torque Game Builder game along when they were claiming they were too busy to fix the RTS kit. TorqueX came along when not only was the RTS still neglecte
http://panda3d.org/
I did my masters' thesis using Ogre3D, and i'd choose Ogre again immediately. I also evaluated Torque and Irrlicht, but Torque is just a mess, and Irrlicht didn't seem as complete ( as far as graphics functionality goes ). Yes, Ogre3D is a 3d engine, not a complete game engine, but it does that ( graphics ) really good. If you need Physics, use ODE or Newton, networking can be easily implemented using RakNet, scripting with python (or lua, or...) and for sound there's OpenAL. In my eyes, using a specialized library for the different things is a real advantage - if something doesn't work as expected, you can replace that part. And Ogre doesn't need to cath up to Torque; Graphics-wise it's more than on par, and the api design is (imho) far better. Ogre has also been used for commercial games already; Ankh comes to mind...
The world always seems brighter when you've just made something that wasn't there before. - Neil Gaiman
I couldn't agree more. I loved TGE when I first started, but eventually I spent so much time wading through WTF moments of poor documentation, broken functions and the like that I could have brewed my own, or used a well-crafted engine like Irrlicht.
./Khak
Don't even get me started on its Linux "support." Linux is a second-class-citizen in Torque, the engine even stubs out(!) some important things like joysticks.
If your projects are small, I'd recommend homebrewing your own framework. If you're really not into graphics programming, try Irrlicht or Ogre.
Aaaand, if you want a full-fledged game engine that's easy to use, with Windows/Linux support (Mac support is dodgy at the moment), try Panda3D. I don't know how freely-usable it is in commercial projects (something about the libraries it links to), but it's a kickass engine, so much so that I make all my stuff with Panda3D now.
Basically, just don't be swayed by Torque's shinier logo. I mean, damn, it really is a nice logo.
OMG! Wau!
Than Spring, for pure RTS games (with novel FPS functionality thrown in). It was built in the spirit of Total Annihilation originally, but is flexible to accommodate a Star Wars mod, Gundam mod, a visually stunning (think Darwinia) mod, various World War II | I | III mods, etc etc. Also has some very intelligent AIs built for it, along with
;) )
full 3D maps/units/features, full LUA support, totally scriptable, dynamic particle effects, shadows, cool terrain. Very very active community.
http://spring.clan-sy.com/
If you're looking for something more in the vein of a tried-and-true scientific engine (you mentioned something like that), give ORTS a whirl (http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~mburo/orts/). A couple of seniors at my school (University of Michigan) did some cool senior projects with it, its very useful for AI work, backed by a very smart community (several well-know professors work with it), and is also really stable. The graphics are weak, but its not meant to be a "fun" engine so much as a research engine (although you can have some interesting experiences playing it
Of course, depending on your ultimate needs, you may be best off simply making a mod for another successful game. There are very very rarely situations where you'll need a full engine of your own creation. Most engines nowadays can accommodate your needs in some way or another.
They say that all of the stuff will be GPL. SVN repositoryies seem to work on Sourceforge. Originally based on Quake III: Arena as a mod. Changed to full game. Only Multiplayer right now, but has a decent engine.
http://www.worldofpadman.com/
It doesn't have the cross-platform compatibility you're looking for, but you mentioned you're a Python programmer so Panda3D might interest you. I've been learning Python and decided to learn by making a game, so I've been using the Panda3D engine because it has Python bindings. I think it also has a blender exporter, but I'm not 100 percent sure about that.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
At http://www.geometrictools.com/ you'll find the Wild Magic engine, an lgpl'ed 3d engine with excellent documentation. The author, David Eberly, has written several books about his engine, describing all the innards and workings of the engine and design. I highly recommend it.
I recommend that you do it with raw OpenGL. I like it when I have full control over what's going on. Write your own engine if you want, in the process you definitely learn a lot. See, if I took an engine, it'd be limiting my creativity. It'd be limiting the way I think and lock me into cages of its API. That's why OpenGL is good: it allows tons of different approaches, and most will work just as good as any other. With an engine, you're locked into a way of arranging objects, launching physical processes, etc. Not my way of doing stuff. I wish you good luck in reading the OpenGL Red Book, coz I'm sure you'll eventually go "my way" ;)
You. Your Ideas. Newsletter. NOW
I like the documentation on CS because it is an API that's easy to understand. But what really shines in CrystalSpace's favor is it's community. I wouldn't be able to code in 3d if it wasn't for handholding by the developers. They walked me through compiling and building, and then they answered my questions when I got stuck. I think they're so friendly, that I casually talk about my game I'm making in help questions that I post to the mailing list. CS is the 3d engine that I am writing: www.roamingdragon.com
I'm not saying the other engines could be bad, but I know that CS is awesome.
God spoke to me.
How do we know that that was a shill?
Here are the features I am hoping for are: a cross-platform engine, if possible; modern shader support; a built-in terrain paging system; and model, material and animation import from Blender 3d.
If those are your what you're after as well as ODE integration, I think crystalspace3D would be ideal, the blender importer is perhaps the only mature one for the engine but it's a lot of work has gone into it and even integrating it with CEL entities so that you can load up a level straight away and provide small game play scenarios right out of blender.
That said, documentation is still a problem and crystalspace seems to have a stigma associated with it of being antiquated. Certainly not the silver bullet, nor the engine for everyone but it does reach your posted requirements.
Answer: It's a joke. It's funny. Laugh.
Whatever engine you choose, make sure it's small enough (or you're prepared enough) for you to read through the entirety of its source code. There's tons you need to know if you're starting with an engine you've never used, and something specifically designed to be an engine alone (CrystalSpace, Irrlicht) doesn't give you a solid game codebase to start with, as the Doom or Quake engines would.
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Nice troll, but could you use English next time?
stay away from the Lawmaker engine. Sure it seems affordable, but it has no fucking documentation, and a severely buggy and outdated editor. This is not to say it isn't awesome, it is just extremely lacking those departments.
This is a great thread. There are so many 3D alternatives out it will be great to see what this thread comes up with. I am only disappointed this topic didn't get rated as a major story on Slashdot.
;-)
u res/lua.
Not to downplay the benefits of programming in C++, I think it is better to focus game development using scripting language rather than for C++. When I started writing games on the Apple II+ I wrote everything in 6502 assembly but with lores B&W graphics. Today the successful game developer no longer has that luxury.
Game development now requires imagination, creativity, artistic talent and often times story telling ability in addition to programming talent. IMHO it is better to balance your time developing all the different parts of a game than to waste cycles on the ins and outs of C++ (or assembly). I believe this is why the LUA (open source) scripting language has seen so much success in the development of video games. Games such as Grim Fandango and Escape from Monkey Island published by Lucasarts and Neverwinter Nights and MDK2 developed by Bioware were written in LUA. More information about LUA can be found here: http://www.lua.org/ and here: http://www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/feat
There are no less than five (and probably more) major 3D engines tied to LUA: Ogre3D (using Emma3D http://emma3d.sourceforge.net/, Irrlicht http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/ (using https://sourceforge.net/projects/irrlua/, Apocalyx http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/, Luxina http://www.luxinia.de/, and Electro http://www.evl.uic.edu/rlk/electro/index.html
I am just getting started learning LUA (for a 2D game - another advantage of learning LUA - the ability to grow) so I make no claims to know which 3D engine is the best. There may be other 3D engines integrated to LUA out there and I would love to hear from other people who have experience developing games using LUA and from people developing 3D games using LUA.
G3D http://g3d-cpp.sf.net/ is Open Source, provides pre-compiled binaries for Windows, OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD, and comes with support for ODE (physics), wxWidgets (GUI), FMod (sound). It has been used on commerical games and appeared in scientific (SIGGRAPH) papers. It supports importing from Blender through 3DS files and supports the latest shaders, with fallbacks for older cards that don't have them.
G3D is a "graphics" engine instead of a game engine because it provides the pieces you need to build your own engine in a few days. This gives you the flexibility to make something that isn't just another first-person shooter.
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It's a tad bit more expensive than Torque, and the development environment is Mac based, but Unity is awesome. It can make executables for OS X and Windows, as well as making use of a web-browser plugin for 3D in a web browser. It's filled with features and gaining more all the time, it's easy to install, easy to learn, easy to use, easy to update, and all around easy to get going with. It supports programming and scripting in many different languages, it supports all kinds of plugins. It gives you extensive control of shaders. It has an intuitive interface that allows you to string different parts together (models, textures, scripts, shaders, physics packages, etc) to make more complex things. It supports realtime updates of files from external applications like Maya and Photoshop (edit you model, edit your texture, it's there in engine as soon as you save, no need to reload anything or restart anything). Also, no need to export to any specific format, Unity can load the native file formats of most external programs that people use to make assets. Even if you don't use it, Unity is worth checking out, just so you're aware of what's possible.
Frag 'em all...
You're just pissed because you thought that since you're 35 and still live in mommy's basement that you should automatically know how to use linux, but couldn't get past having to be able to read and edit text files.
There are a lot of mods that have released code for Quake III. So not only can you get the source for the engine you can see how many others have modified it. It's really the fastest way to go in my opinion and a great way to learn. Of course the real hard part is finding open source sounds, maps, textures, images and models. Open Arena's goal is to make an 100% open source Q3 game with all the assests (models, maps, textures, sounds...) open source as well. Don't think the Q3 engine limits you to FPS either, there have been racing games like Quake 3 Rally, stratgey games, single player mods, and games where you can spawn opponents randomly. Someone has modded Q1 into a chess game and Quake 2 into a war game with airplanes and tanks. Their are quite a few people working on engine improvements and other mods, its still very much alive.
Nope, cool as a cucumber while fucktards like you are 50 and still in mommy's basement editing text files for Linsiux and all of your open-sores shit not getting anything accomplished. Go back to your failed communist mannifesto project commonly known as Linsux and eventually get together with you fellow shitdot sheeple and collectively slit your fucking wrists fucktards.
I've licensed both Torque, and C4. C4 is really very very good, and the development is consistently moving ahead at a rapid pace. The only area in which it falls down at all is the somewhat lacking documentation, but it has a very active user community. Its well worth what they charge for it.
The v6 / v7 version of the Conitec A6 engine is awesome and has a light and easy scripting language. It's the engine which comes with Gamestudio. Gamestudio itself (the tool suite) is crappy, but the engine is great, fast and inexpensive. It's marketed as having a "Click together" type development deal, but that is absolutely absurd, and if you want to write something hardcore, you can.
I'm developing an indie action platformer which you can see in action here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU9v30UDu2s
With a good art path, 3D programming skills, the right tools and sweat you can do something awesome with it. A game like Banjo Kazooie, Prince of Persia, Psychonauts, Animal Crossing, you name it--- the engine can do absolutely the same thing. Just takes the talent and programming skill. Plus its cheap and there's a strong, helpful community.
Torque's community is small and weird, you can't even ask questions on their forum or read the docs if you haven't got a license, and the engine doesn't do polygon collision nearly as well as the A6 engine.
Open Source engines are good to learn with but not very reliable.
Or one could use the game engine built into Blender.
Having worked on a 3d engine for the last 7 years the most important advice I can give you is "only invest in a game engine that can do what you need right now".
Every game engine I've seen, ours included, have a list of great upcoming features. But there is no guaranty that any of those features will be implemented by the time you need them (if they are added at all).
Spell cheek you've failed me four the last thyme!
WorldForge, Delta3D, and CrystalSpace are all viable choices. Delta3D in particular has good physics, though I understand it currently has limited scalability.
The bottom line is that no engine is perfect. Some are better than others for certain tasks, and they all have shortcomings. You shouldn't tie yourself too closely to any one engine, because you may want to switch at some point down the road.
BuildaWorld is a project to create an abstraction layer which will make it easy to switch between engines, and to allow different versions of your game with different engines. Ultimately they plan to create tools to enable non-programmers to design their own game or game world. It's still in the early stages, but then, anyone wanting to design a game or build a world has to think long-term.
Ogre + Blender
The latest Blender revisions offer tight integration with Ogre, not entirely unlike UnrealEd.
...I paid for Torque, but never could get very far with it...documentation is pretty scattered.
Just seemed easier to start from scratch. I won't have all the cool stuff torque has, but at least I know what the hell is going on with the stuff i have.
BlitzMax compiles the same code for Windows, OS X and Linux. Although there's no official 3D engine yet, there are several engine wrappers available, as well as the excellent MiniB3D, an unofficial OpenGL-based engine provided with full source.
An OGRE3d based C# option is the NeoAxis Engine For a project that started last November it is quite powerful.
I've been using Irrlicht for about 15 months now. I started with TGE but after 2 weeks failing to get it even running on linux or on windows 98 (yes i know MS does not support it anymore, i still do...) i tried out Irrlicht out of curiosity and it did just work. It's a 3d-renderengine only, so for stuff like sound and physic you will need other engines. It supports shaders, but the renderpipeline is not build upon shaders (which i suspect is what you want). A very big bonus is the zlib-license which basicly does not set any restrictions at all. Besides some minor exceptions the code is generally good and very readable. I have also about 10 years c++ experience and found it very easy to do some modifications to the existing code.
I suppose no engine is perfect, but so far i was very happy with Irrlicht and plan to use it again in my next project. You can check my website if you want to find out what i used it for.
I think what game developers need most are tools to help them in the long development process in addition to having a good solid game engine to build on. Based on my experience as a shoe-string budget game developer working on a number of products on different game engines, I could summarize that it is rather unfortunate that you can't find the best of both in most open-source and indie game development solutions (I could be mistaken). I think the author might want to figure what features he/she wants from the game engine, and go through the list of available engines in their budget and finds the best fit. If a quick project is required, tools and scripting language might be high on the priority. If it is the wow factor, maybe an engine with a stronger graphical/rendering engine might be a good idea. Just a few more thoughts on this issue.
If someone spent all that time and energy in making a first-rate game engine, they aren't going to just give it away for free.
So what that leaves you with is... people who's work isn't worth paying for.
There are places where FOSS works, but niche needs like this is not one of them.
You are confusing the game with the game engine. Which is the product that a customer is paying for? They aren't buying the SoCool Engine; they are buying the Hot Barbie Surfing 2007 game.
For a very few developers like id and Valve, their engines are state of the art, and intended to be sold as products in their own right. There is an argument to be made that id is no longer a game company; they are really a middleware company that sells game engines, and releases tech demos every 5 years or so.
For all smaller developers, their engines are not that impressive. Most would much rather use an existing solution, and focus on game play instead. Those that can afford it license the big name engines. Those that cannot are forced to write their own engines. For the most part, customers are oblivious to the difference. A few hard core players know what it means when the game says it uses the "Source" engine, but most are just looking at the pictures. As long as it looks good, they will buy it. It doesn't matter what engine produced the graphics.
The game industry has a long tradition of reinventing the wheel. If it wasn't written there, they don't trust it. This is slowly changing, and I expect to see a lot more adoption of FOSS, particularly at the indie and small company end of the market.
You're new here, aren't you? All people who praise Microsoft or proprietary software or admonish open source or Linux are automatically deemed to be shills.
Why not setup your own Slashdot style site praising Microsoft & proprietary software whilst admonishing open source and Linux? You can simply re-mortgage your house to get the necessary funding, because I really don't see any way in which an idea like that could possibly fail. Unless you turn out to be just a whiney bitch, so lacking in motivation that you'll spend years posting on a site whose views you fundamentally disagree with. I guess that could be an issue.
I'm not quite sure what the difference is between a game engine and a scene graph, but perhaps you should give Open Scene Graph a try. It's Open Source, well documented, supports import of models from many popular 3D modeling toolkits, and (I believe) recently added shader support. Works great on Windows and Linux (with a relatively even percentage of developers on both platforms who use it) and gives stellar performance. No licensing fee for commercial use either.
While it doesn't provide audio/input support directly, it's a good starting point for graphics (which, in my experience), is the most difficult part of development.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
Hey guess what? The rest of us lost out gay childhood handles when we grew the fuck up.
Love, the entire west coast.
P.S. Nice fucking pocket protector dipshit.
Hmmm is this even English ?
Why does that guys post remind me of hitler?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Check the Tenebrae engine: http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/ it is based on Quake1 but it's bulked up. Its graphics approach the ones of Doom3.
0 99.JPGg 1 01.JPG0 20.JPG
Screenshots:
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/shots8/TN_quake00
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/shots8/quake93.jp
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/shots8/TN_quake00
http://tenebrae.sourceforge.net/shots8/TN_quake00
I have always found the Torque engines to be very robust and the community at GarageGames to be very helpful and productive. Sure you won't get your hand held through the process (with TGE and TGEA at least, you will with TGB), though if your tackling 3D game dev it isn't going to be easy with any engine. The Torque communities are very productive if you bring the proper attitude. You can always ask questions and quite often will get answers (the engine devs browse the forums from time to time too) and you can even send an e-mail with a question to a dev and usually get a response back. Many people come to the forums complaining that they couldn't figure something out and bash the engine... thats why they get the response back that many people are posting here... It isn't a response of "If you can't do it without help" it's a response of "If you don't want to work to do it and want others to do it for you". I've always gotten prompt responses from the Torque community and it has grown rather large.
I suggest you take peoples posts here with a grain of salt and try out all of the said engines, there are plenty of trials out there. Also check out the forums for the engine's.
If you can do everything in assembly, why bother with a higher level programming language at all? Because it's easier to write and a lot easier to maintain. That's why. If a high level programming language like has low-level libraries for high performance stuff like this, why should you noot make use of it? Why not use the best of booth worlds?
You could, but you'd hhave to worry about the low-level programming stuff that comes with C++. Why should you not use a higher level programming language like Java (or Python) for that?
See, that's much better advice. Write the application-specific code in a high-level language, and make use of high performance libraries for the low-level stuff that every application is going to need. The use of Java is similar to the use of Python in this case.
It's an MMO engine under development built on top Ogre and a number of other packages. Price is free with Multiverse taking a cut if you charge for your game.
It's a little rough around the edges but it's a diamond in the rough with a lot of potential. The people behind it are top notch and a great bunch. Case in point at GDC this year, they filled their booth with 3d party teams developing games for their engine, and let them just talk. No scripts or minders, just saying what they thought.
Website is at http://multiverse.net/
There is a programming language called DarkBASIC that can be used for 3D games. It has to be used with DirectX and is $39.99 per copy. I found it easy and in some cases better than using a pre-programmed game engine.
Go slit your fucking wrists fucktard.
Here, here. TBBScorpian has stated that he's avoiding Torque due to overwhelming negative opinions... and not a single positive one, it seems.