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Game Dev software recommendation?


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  • Advanced Member

Hi all, I'm interesting in tinkering with preferably open-source or low-cost game creation software for what in my head seems a fairly basic requirement.

If I wanted to make my own "Virtual Aquarium" type of screensaver, would anyone have any thoughts on complexity of requirements and/or software to use such as Ogre, etc?

Appreciate any comments. btw this is a longterm hobby "goal" to inspire all-round learning/creativity rather than looking at making $$$ in a hurry :)

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im pretty sure there are some variants of crystal space for beginners. also dont under estimate the role your content creation app will play in this. a good pipeline can make or break it for you

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  • Contributor
Hi all, I'm interesting in tinkering with preferably open-source or low-cost game creation software for what in my head seems a fairly basic requirement.

If I wanted to make my own "Virtual Aquarium" type of screensaver, would anyone have any thoughts on complexity of requirements and/or software to use such as Ogre, etc?

Appreciate any comments. btw this is a longterm hobby "goal" to inspire all-round learning/creativity rather than looking at making $$$ in a hurry :)

I have been involved with a number of Ogre projects, Purely on a Content creation capacity, Its is growing in abillity in leaps and bounds, I guess it depends on your coding abillity. Unity Indie is quite reasonable at $200 for waht is offers over other competitors that is well worth the price.

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yeah unity indie is fairly well priced, doesnt have all the cool lighting and stuff but you can bake lights. Best thing about unity in my opinion is the interface, its easy to use and makes sense and imports models etc really easily.

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Esenthel is one of the best SDK's in existence. The toolset is extremely professional and impressive. C++ is a requirement.

Esenthel aside I would recommend Blender Game Engine. Blender game engine was plenty powerful on my 8800GT but when I upgraded to a GTX 275, the power of the engine has scaled really well. Moreso than in another engine I'm using I think For instance there was a complex scene with high res textures, logic, and soft shadows, that normally ran at 120fps on 8800GT it now runs at 210fps on GTX 275. I suppose blender has a lot of issues with distrobution for the time being but at the same time, it's probably one of the most intutive game development suites in existence.

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thanks for the comments all.

Was looking at Blender last night but made the mistake at getting put-off by some user posts in their forums. I should know better than that hehe! One thing that amazed me about Blender (I haven't used Blender seriously for about two years) was how far the video compositing tools had been developed.

I haven't done any real coding since dabbling with PHP for an ecommerce site, or 15yrs earlier in my Uni days. Coding doesn't scare me that much, but the maths side of things would be my biggest hurdle.

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Unity would probably be a very good bet, although the amount of DRM crap that installed itself alongside the demo ticked me off to no end and was difficult to remove. The resulting bad vibe I got from that lost them a sale, since the software seemed pretty solid otherwise.

ShiVa seems pretty good, although to be fair I haven't played with it a whole lot. At least it didn't crap up my computer like Unity did.

Link: http://www.stonetrip.com/

If you're looking for something more in the 2d arena, I highly recommend Construct. It destroys Torque 2d(or whatever they're calling it now) in every way and it costs nothing.

Link: http://www.scirra.com/

As a matter of fact, unless you are an experienced programmer, I would stay away from Torque products. They are all aimed at coders and not artists, and you MUST have the source code due to the VERY infrequent updates and bugfixes.

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to be honest blender is just as powerful if not more powerful than shiva 1.7 however blender doesn't have a roadmap like shiva does and that is what the price tag is for - but yeah shiva is pretty great to say it's not blender ^^

I'm still keeping an eye peeled for "the 3d-Coat of game engines". Blender is pretty darn close. Maybe it actually already is although maybe I can't say/see it right now. I just want blender to have better distrubution options...and roadmap. It's so good besides those things.

Well it's between ShiVa and 1-2 others. I'll continue using blender while dabbling in this candidate until December. I think I should be able to tell by then which game engine to commit to.

That's right do you think there is a "3d-Coat of game engines" out there? :lol:

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theres lots of options for game engines tourqe is pretty good and comes with basic fps started kits and so on , xna is good for game developers if you have a community account you can post to xbox servers .

we have some nice games on there atm , selling atleast 10 units a day . "decent enough " .

have a look on google im sure the half life or equvilant engine is free and kicking about somewhere .

start with a mod first if its your first time , even just changing a user model . quake was a good start for me , building envoriments .

or if your really good write your own engine (",)

↓ Primary programming language ↓ Bindings ↓ Primary platform ↓ Cross-platform? ↓ SDL? ↓ Scripting ↓

Aleph One (computer game) C N/A Mac OS Yes Yes Lua, Marathon Markup Language

Skylight C# Unknown Windows No No Unknown

Allegro library C Ada, C++, C#, D, Lisp, Lua, Mercury, Pascal, Perl, Python, Scheme Windows Yes Yes N/A

Box2D C++ Java, ActionScript, C#, JavaScript, D, Python, DarkBasic, Lua Windows Yes No N/A

SLGame C# N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

ClanLib C++ N/A Unix Yes Yes N/A

Crystal Space C++ Python, Perl, Java Windows Yes Yes N/A

Cube C++ N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Cube 2 C++ N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

DarkPlaces C N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Delta3d C++ N/A Windows Yes No Python

Doom engine C N/A DOS Yes No N/A

DXFramework C++ N/A Windows Yes No Python

Exult C++ N/A Unix Yes Yes N/A

Game Blender C++ N/A Linux Yes No Python

Genesis3D C N/A Windows No No N/A

Genesis Device Object Pascal N/A Windows No No Pascal Script

Glest C++ N/A Windows Yes No Lua

id Tech 2 C N/A Windows Yes No N/A

id Tech 3 C N/A Windows Yes No N/A

ika Python N/A Windows Yes No Python

ioquake3 C N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Irrlicht Engine C++ Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, FreeBASIC, Lua, Delphi, Game Maker Windows Yes Yes Squirrel

jMonkeyEngine Java N/A N/A Yes No N/A

Jogre Java N/A N/A Yes No N/A

Lightweight Java Game Library Java N/A N/A Yes No N/A

Nebula Device C++ Python, Java Windows Yes No Lua, Tcl/Tk

OGRE C++ PureBasic Windows Yes Yes Ogre scripting language

OpenSceneGraph C++ N/A Windows Yes No N/A

ORX C N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Panda3D C++ Python Windows Yes No Python

Quake engine C N/A DOS/Windows Yes No N/A

PLIB C++ N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Retribution Engine C++ N/A Windows No No N/A

Second Life C++ N/A Windows Yes No N/A

Sphere C++ N/A Windows Yes No JavaScript

Spring C++ N/A Windows Yes No Lua

Stratagus C N/A Linux Yes Yes Lua

Troll2D C++ N/A Windows Yes Yes N/A

Verge C++ N/A DOS Yes Yes Lua, VergeC

Xilon Engine II Visual Basic .NET N/A Windows No No N/A

Elf2D C++

Freeware engines

These engines are available for free use, but without the source code being available under an open source license. Many of these engines are commercial products which have a free edition available for them:

* Adventure Game Studio Mainly used to develop third-person pre-rendered adventure games, this engine is one of the most popular for developing amateur adventure games.

* Build engine A first-person shooter engine used to power Duke Nukem 3D.

* dim3 Freeware 3D javascript engine for the Mac (although finished games are cross platform).

* Game Maker Lite Object-oriented game development software with a scripting language as well as a drag-and-drop interface.

* M.U.G.E.N A 2D fighting game engine.

* Panda3D (Releases prior to May 28, 2008) A relatively easy to use python-driven game engine made by Carnegie Mellon University. Disney uses it to produce some of their games.

* World Builder A classic Mac OS game engine.

* Wintermute Engine A runtime and development tools for creating 2D and 2.5D point'n'click adventure games.

* RGSS - A engine made by enterbrain to create RPG's using RPG Maker XP. RGSS2 was used for RPG Maker VX.

* Wild Pockets - An engine designed for 3D hardware accelerated web deployment. Uses Lua as a scripting language and has integrated physics, shader support, global art & script library, and transaction system for selling your game.

[edit] Commercial engines

* Gamestudio - A 2D and 3D game engine for beginners. Uses the Gamestudio development system and the lite-C programming language.

* AbyssalEngine - A rendering engine and toolset.

* Alamo - the engine used in Star Wars: Empire at War by Petroglyph Games.

* Aurora Engine For Role-playing games.

* BigWorld - Server, client and development tools for the development of MMOG for games that run on Windows, Xbox 360, and PS3.

* Blade3D - A toolset for XNA based games that run on Windows and Xbox 360.

* BRender A real-time 3D graphics engine for computer games, simulators and graphic tools.

* C4 Engine A computer game engine created by Eric Lengyel.

* Coldstone game engine An old game creation suite for Macintosh/Windows to create role-playing or adventure-style games.

* CryEngine, CryEngine 2, CryEngine 3 The game engine used for the first-person shooter computer game Far Cry. CryEngine 2 is a new generation engine developed by Crytek to create the FPS game Crysis.

* Crystal Tools Square Enix's proprietary seventh generation game engine.

* Dagor Engine 3 A high-tech cross-platform game engine (3D, physics, game logic) with rich toolset for content development

* id Tech 4 (Also known as Doom 3 engine) Used by the games Doom 3, Quake 4, Prey and Quake Wars. Will become Open Source with the release of RAGE some time in 2010[1].

* id Tech 5 - Currently in development by id Software as engine for their games, Doom 4 and Rage, and as a general purpose engine to be licensed.

* DX Studio Engine and editing suite that allows creation of real-time games and simulations.

* Dunia Engine Engine (heavily modified version of the CryEngine 2) made especially for Far Cry 2 by Ubisoft Montreal.

* Earth-4 Engine The graphics engine used in Earth 2160

* Electron engine Developed by Obsidian Entertainment for their game Neverwinter Nights 2, based on the Aurora engine.

* Elflight Engine Cross-platform 3D streaming game engine designed from the ground up for use over the Web. Games can play in a web browser window, in a separate window or full-screen. Java and OpenGL based.

* Enigma Engine A real-time tactics game engine, used in Blitzkrieg.

* Esenthel Engine - Full-featured DirectX-only game engine.

* Esperient Creator A very powerful 3D modeler and engine, used world wide for training, simulation, architecture, and games. Built-in Scripting, C/C++, CScript, or Lisp, Shader Editor, import 50+ 3D formats.

* Euphoria This is a biomechanical Ragdoll engine by NaturalMotion.

* FPS Creator - A game engine by The Game Creators. It lets the user create their own First Person Shooter without any knowledge of scripts.

* Freescape (1986) Incentive Software; One of the first proprietary 3D game engines, used in Driller and 3D Construction Kit.

* Frostbite Engine Game engine used for the next-gen title Battlefield: Bad Company.

* Gamebryo Cross-platform game middleware for professional developers, notable for its rapid development.

* GameCore Powerful 3D game engine and interactive development tool set for Windows and Mac. Create standalone games or publish directly to web.

* Glacier, Glacier2 Developed by IO Interactive and used for the Hitman series of games. Glacier2 is a new generation engine currently in development for upcoming games.[2]

* GrimE - Used in LucasArts graphical adventure games starting with Grim Fandango.

* Hedgehog Engine - Created by the Sonic Team with the capability of rendering high quality graphics at high speed. It was first used in Sonic Unleashed.

* HeroEngine - 3D game engine by Simutronics for building MMOs in a live collaborative environment.

* IMUSE Specifically designed to synchronize music with visual action.

* INSANE Used in LucasArts games.

* Infinity Engine Allows the creation of isometric computer role-playing games.

* Jade engine Developed by Ubisoft, originally for Beyond Good & Evil.

* Jedi A game engine developed by LucasArts for Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws.

* Kaneva Game Platform A MMOG engine for independent and professional game development.

* Kinetica - A game engine developed by Sony for PlayStation 2.

* Leadwerks Engine - Leadwerks Engine is a 3D engine for rendering, sound, and physics in real-time games and simulations.

* Lemon Engine - Lemon Engine is a modular set of libraries for all aspects of game development across all major platforms.

* Lithtech Jupiter Ex Developed by Monolith Productions to create the game F.E.A.R.

* LyN engine - Developed by Ubisoft, originally for Rabbids Go Home and Beyond Good & Evil 2.

* Medusa A C++ 3D game engine developed by Palestar and used in the DarkSpace MMO. It features distributed world simulation, single tool version control and asset realisation, cross-platform compatibility and an integrated client/server network system.

* Monumental Technology Suite A MMOG platform, including server and client technology and development / live management tools.

* Multimedia Fusion 2 A 2D game development system.

* Multiverse Network An MMOG platform, including server, client, and tools. (Free for development and use revenue sharing upon commercial deployment).

* Odyssey Engine Used to create three dimensional computer role-playing games, used in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic

* Onyx Engine Developed by Ubisoft

* PhyreEngine - A cross platform (PC & PS3) graphics engine from Sony Computer Entertainment.

* Q (game engine) - A fully pluggable, extensible and customisable framework and tools from Qube Software for PC, Wii, PS2, PS3, Xbox, Xbox 360, PSP, iPhone etc created by the team behind Direct3D.

* Quest3D A game engine and full real-time 3D development platform. Used in for instance AudioSurf.

* RAGE A game engine created by Rockstar Games to power their upcoming video games on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Implemented in Grand Theft Auto 4.

* RelentENGINE A next-generation FPS engine supporting massive destroyable city environments and realistic vehicle control, makes extensive use of shader model 3.

* RenderWare A 3D API and graphics rendering engine.

* Revolution3D A 3D graphics engine developed by X-Dream Project.

* RPG Maker VX A 2D engine to make top-down and isometric-style role-playing games for Windows.

* RPG Maker XP A 2D engine to make top-down and isometric-style role-playing games for Windows.

* SAGE engine Used to create real-time strategy games.

* SCUMM engine Used in LucasArts graphical adventure games.

* Serious Engine The engine by Croteam used in the epic Serious Sam: The First Encounter and The Second Encounter.

* Shark 3D A middleware from Spinor for computer, video games and realtime 3D applications.

* ShiVa - A game engine with an authoring tool to produce 3d real time applications for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and iPhone.

* Silent Storm engine A turn-based tactics/tactical RPG game engine, used in Silent Storm.

* Sith A game engine developed by LucasArts for Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II.

* Source engine A game engine developed by Valve Software for Half-Life 2.The SDK comes with Half Life 2

* Torque Game Engine A modified version of a 3D computer game engine originally developed by Dynamix for the 2001 FPS Tribes 2.

* Torque Game Engine Advanced A next-generation 3D game engine support modern GPU hardware and shaders.

* TOSHI A fourth generation cross platform game engine designed by Blue Tongue Entertainment.

* Truevision3D A 3D game engine using the DirectX API.

* Unigine Cross-platform middleware engine.

* Unity An open-ended 3D game/interactive software engine for web, Windows, Mac OS X, the iPhone, and Nintendo Wii .

* Unreal Engine A game engines for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 .

* Vengeance engine A video game engine based on the Unreal Engine 2/2.5

* Vicious Engine Available for Microsoft Windows, Sony PlayStation 2, Microsoft Xbox, and Sony PlayStation Portable

* Virtools A 3D engine combined with high-level development framework, used for game prototyping and rapid developments. Available for Windows, Macintosh, Xbox, PSP. Can publish standalone or for the 3DVia Web Player browser plugin.

* Visual3D.NET Game Engine - All-in-One 3D game engine and toolset, fully written in C#/.NET for Windows and Xbox360.

* WGAF The game engine developed by Guild Software which powers their MMORPG Vendetta Online.

* XnGine Developed by Bethesda Softworks, one of the first true 3D engines.

* Zillions of Games - used to develop games that happen on a grid, like chess

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Is there some engine, that would be already set up for a super simplified game so that I could essentially load in my environments, props, etc. without having to know any code, then export to Flash or something, just so that potential clients or studios would have a way of seeing, and playing with, my models and textures in a real game environment? (wow one heck of a run-on sentence!) It doesn't have to be a full game with stages and shooting and all that, just enough that someone could walk around in an environment I made.

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download quake 1 or unreal tournyt for free theres loads of stuff you can do with it map editing ,player modding and so on . I used Torque for alot of my game development stuff , at the time i got it was beta , but i think now you need to pay , but that has FPS starter kit also Racing starter kit , easy to use .

the list above will give you a better idea of freeware engines , you need to learn to code , simple , if you cant code you dont have much controll over the varibles other than numerical changes . . .

goodluck

i would suggest getting into XNA alot of schools are using this for the computer games classes .

PEACE

OR

EDIT i would suggest 3D game maker from Darkbasic but it may insult your intellegence " click and drag stuff , but it does have the ability to import obj and max i think "

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Thanks, I have Unreal III here and have used Unreal Ed, but that wouldn't really allow a studio or even just a rtandom visitor to my site to easily walk around in an environment and with props that I made.

I have no need for coding, as I don't want to make a game. It doesn't seem like it would be so hard to find something like this. I'd think a lot of artists are not programmers, but would like to show off their stuff in game.

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If you want to show models of in a realtime envoriment there a few programs that can do that, including the people who make , swift3D variant app ,similar to Flash

I worked on a project and they used a java based program to display the model in realtime , .

or you could cheat and make it simple " looks good to clients aswell "

use google earth or ...............google new OC3D " have alook amazing , game engine for web browsers / i phone . FREE FREE FREE I say lol

http://code.google.com/p/oc3d/

PEACE

ohhh and blender

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Im going to sleep if you want ,post a model of anything "i mean anything " something youve downloaded ,made , 6 polyz whatever as long as its not a massive poly count .

ill stick into a game engine walkaround and post the capture footage on youtube .

its relativly easy to get models into a game engine its exporting them and compliling them that takes time .

it all factors down to what you want to do .

Game formats that i feel work best .

OBJ sometime Triple polyz .

MAX

Torque can take Blender .

thens theres the character rigs / motion files , what format does the game engine use for textures ...........blahblah blah

PEACE

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cool the offers open , if you need a hand . .

it does look good when something you have made is put into a realtime envoriment , even if its 2D sprite animation .

we had a project that we rendered out in MAX than created a 2d sprite sheet . think donky kong country .....

PEACE

OR

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what a coincidence. our company is looking into using realtime game engine for showing some presentation. they told me to look at unity if it can present graphics in high quality. which has the best looking engine that can output some car models in real time? we scrapped the idea of hypershot or modo since they had limitations.

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what a coincidence. our company is looking into using realtime game engine for showing some presentation. they told me to look at unity if it can present graphics in high quality. which has the best looking engine that can output some car models in real time? we scrapped the idea of hypershot or modo since they had limitations.

try blender game engine. It's fantastic. Free. And you can alter source code or scipt with python - do whatever you want. It has parallax occlusion maps, ambient occlusion, occclusion culling, etc etc etc

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I recommend blender definately. FYI 2.5 is set to add dynamic loading and realtime IK (out October). This should down loading times and increase a lot of possibilities. Biggest restriction is there's no way to port to a console so it'll be pc only games. Biggest advantage is the "what you see is what you'll get" factor when editing(and no need to code for simple games).

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I've decided on Leadwerks. It's making very good advancements recently. At first it was only for programmers, which is highly impractical for me; however now he's implementing a model level scripting system and since I have experience in scripting for blender game engine I think the new setup will be much more suited for me now. Only difference is Blender uses Python, Leadwerks uses Lua.

"Make a Game in Ten Minutes" : http://vimeo.com/5700094

Of course that's not counting modeling, texturing, scripting and importing. And that's just for the demo. Well anyway in this video the creator of Leadwerks discusses how to "make a game in ten minutes" But the video itself is so awesome I'll forgive him for the 'cheeky' title. ^_^

I'm approaching a point where I'm so impressed by Leadwerks that I may begin to refer to it as "the 3d-Coat of game engines".

And that would be the hugest compliment I could give it.

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Im experementing with Unity3d www.unity3d.com.

Its lowcost crossplatform game engine based on Mono, with ability to run in browser.

Its powerful and easy to use.

That's what our company is looking at. My employers were impressed with the browser capabality as well as Apples/Mac super cult following in japan.

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