3D engines

[Allanon]

When making a game you have to get past the trade-off between jaw-dropping graphics and making the game playable.

You assume the slowness is due to jaw-dropping graphics but I would put forth that most of the stuff that makes an engine slow is not due to the graphics but due to what the engine allows you to create. Good artists, modelers and level designers can make jaw-dropping graphics for any engine but developers need the engine's technology to implement their game play. If your engine can't do outdoor areas very well, or doesn't have physics then you are limited on what you can do in terms of game play. Do you think Half-Life 2 would have been as enjoyable if it didn't have large outdoor areas and physics?

[Destron]

When making a game you have to get past the trade-off between jaw-dropping graphics and making the game playable.

You assume the slowness is due to jaw-dropping graphics but I would put forth that most of the stuff that makes an engine slow is not due to the graphics but due to what the engine allows you to create. Good artists, modelers and level designers can make jaw-dropping graphics for any engine but developers need the engine's technology to implement their game play. If your engine can't do outdoor areas very well, or doesn't have physics then you are limited on what you can do in terms of game play. Do you think Half-Life 2 would have been as enjoyable if it didn't have large outdoor areas and physics?

Hmmm.
I don't really understand your point. The graphics/playability ratio of a game is determined (mostly) by the graphical content, the engine, and the system you are running it on. The problem with Crysis was that while CryEngine2 was capable of rendering very good graphics on a really fast computer, it had bad scalability and ran poorly on lower-end systems (read: mine).
Good gameplay does not mean good graphics, and good graphics does not mean good gameplay. But when you try to combine the two, things often get a bit wonky.

[Allanon]

My point was it isn't the jaw-dropping graphics slowing most modern engines down, it's the technology used to create the engine. It takes processor speed to do large open areas, the algorithms take a lot of computing power. Newer faster graphic cards handle these algorithms better than older graphics card thus making the scaling of the engine not so good. The same goes for physics and shaders. Yes, the developer can opt not to use an engine that has these newer technologies but it limits their game play choices. The Crysis developers could have probably got the same jaw-dropping graphics using the Quake3 engine and it probably would have run fast on your system but the developers would have had to sacrifice using physics and large outdoor areas. Of course then there wouldn't be a point in making Crysis because it was the large outdoor areas and physics that made it special.

So what I'm basically saying is that yes the developer should be worried about playability on older computers but there is only so much they can do until it starts hurting game play. And that it's not as clear cut as dropping a few graphic features in order to get the engine running faster. There was a major shift in technology when Direct3D 9 came out and if you don't have a newer graphic card that supports Direct3D9 but the game does then odds are the game is not going to scale very well.

[Jim]

GameCore is located at www.gamecore.ca (not .com)... I can't believe the argument that it is not much better then RF.... I'm not trying to bash RF, RF is a great opensource project.... But it is pretty darned old... I'll admit it's been a long time since I've used RF but it is still based on genesis is it not? GameCore is easy to use in my opinion and allows you complete freedom of how you want to setup your game... It has also come a looooooooonnnnnnnggggg way from the initial Beyond Virtual releases.... The GameCore Beta 1 alone is an amazing step forward from the alpha builds.... The engine is completely shader driven now..

The editor itself has evolved completely, and been integrated with the fx editor, object viewer, and the gui editor... It now has built in bitmap font generation, auto-road/spline system which includes banking roads, and auto path generation. Among so many other features... I will admit I am a fan of this engine, because it is the best engine I've used, I may not have used aas many different engines as many of you, but out of all the ones I've tried it is by far the best (though I am a fan of lithtech aswell, but I think gamecore is definitely easier).

You should check out this multiplayer demo Christian setup, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTxFzOijj3U no actual multiplauer action in the video, but he does great work.

[Juutis]

Wow, that video looks great. I don't think RF could ever produce such graphics. But GameCore isn't free, right?

[Danimita92]

250$ apparently

[Trougedoor122]

thats alot, but nothing compared to some engines out there where your billed per use and it runs about $300 dollars a use.

[Jim]

Yeah I believe $250 now, it was $150 for BV, with a free upgrade to GameCore... If you just want something to play with for free.... rf is probably a good choice, if you are looking at buying an indie engine, it is on par with "comparable" engines as far as price goes.... Then again, It sort of blows torque out of the water in my opinion (I do really like torque game builder for 2d though)... I have only limited experience with a6, GameCore was just so much easier to learn.... I tried Realm Crafter but their support is rubbish in my opinion I can't even get it installed with their weird licensing system... I don't have much else to compare it to really, the Lithtech engine I'm familiar with is out dated compared to GameCore, though I think Jupiter is capable, and the same basic idea for development as lithtech...

Anyways, there was a free "starter kit" version of BV, but even the release of BV for licenses was far updated compared to that, and it has evolved by leaps and bounds since then... I believe there is plans for a trial version after GameCore is out of beta, but I have no idea when that might be...

[Allanon]

The Leadwerks Engine 2.0 has an evaluation kit you can download. It seem to cost $150 to purchase a single-user commercial license. I'm downloading the evaluation kit right now.

[darksmaster923]

What about Panda3d? This engine is awesome

http://panda3d.org

[paradoxnj]

There is also Sauerbraten (Cube 2).

[Matte]

There is also Sauerbraten (Cube 2).

It's kinda more like a moddable game I think. It's really easy to use, but not very powerful.

[paradoxnj]

Uh...that's what RF is. A moddable game engine. Sauerbraten also comes with full source and does contain a scripting language.

[Allanon]

What about Panda3d? This engine is awesome

http://panda3d.org

I've seen the Panda3d engine a while back but was turned off by the price tag, but now it seems to be free and licensed under BSD. Might give it another look.

[Trougedoor122]

What about Panda3d? This engine is awesome

http://panda3d.org

downloading right now.. whoa 80meg installer!