Reality Factory

if ogre wouldnt compile on dev-c++, it would on SOME free compiler - most likely .net 2003 command line (which can be given an excellent ide with codeblocks).

to anybody who will want to compile reality factory 2 on the best IDE available for free - go to the microsoft website and download the visual c++ cd image, burn it to cd, and keep it somewhere safe while you can still get it!

Irrlicht seems to have problems when you get into more complex development. In my opinion Ogre seems that it may be better overall to use. (although each of them have their problems) you could also look at things like..Nebula 2 or Crystal Space (although that doesn't have the best documentation) in my opinion you should check at devmaster.net (although you probably allready have) Just remember to stick with an engine after you choose one, good luck! Merry Christmas (if you celebrate it)

p.s. Quest of Dreams thanks alot for the latest version.....wow I love it.

I want to keep RF free. That is why I have it to begin with. Now I found this game engine a while back and it looks like it costs money so it might be out if RF is to stay free. But here it is, it already has physics, ragdoll, and multiplayer built in. http://www.3impact.com/index.htm They require email to get a demo of the engine which concerns me. That doesnt seem right, also, they dont have a section to download the software(meaning to buy it). I couldnt find it. I guess they only give it out after you contact them with email. Sounds fishy to me but looks like it has some cool stuff. I'll let you see for yourself what to think.



Happy Holidays everyone!

I have 27 minutes left downloading the vc iso image will see how it goes

good news! check out the news post from december 28th on the Irrlicht site!

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

Irrlicht Site wrote:I'm glad to announce that there are several changes in the software development process of Irrlicht:

* Irrlicht now is accessable via CVS. You can grab the latest development version of the engine directly as described in this FAQ entry and it is also possible to browse it via html.
* We've now got an Irrlicht Engine team, I've updated the author page. If you would like to join the team, please take a look at the FAQ entry. Currently, we would be glad to find someone to create and maintain a Mac port, for example (also mentioned in the FAQ entry).
* I've written some basic Irrlicht coding rules you may want to look at, if you want your additions to be merged with the development code.

this means that it will likely quickly get the features we need! if it does, irrlicht would be ideal for rf2!

also, Nout, have you decided whether you would like to work on RF2?

I'm considering to use another engine, called Apocalyx
Major reasons are that it has alrzeady most of the things we look for:
- Open source
- Supports Mesh, Quake3 BSP, animated Actors, terrain, heightfield terrain etc...
- Build in ODE + particle simulator + collission detection
- Build in LUA scripter, TinyC compiler
- Support hardware accelleration, bumpmapping, programmable shaders, textures
- Overlays, sprites, backgrounds etc...
The full engine is script based aswell by interpreter (lua) and by build-in compiler (TinyC). This allows high flexibility, development by lua and completion by TinyC (compiled) without updating the source code !

I'm considering to:
- Create the brushes for a level by a Q3 editor + create a BSP without entities, but only with brushes
- Create an in-game property editor. This editor allows to navigate through the game and to add objects. When you add an object, in fact we will add a line to actual the LUA-game-script. By the property editor, you can change all properties of the object added. Any change made to a property will be updated in the LUA-script and is directly visible in the engine. At the end you save your LUA script + run it with an engine-only executable and ready is your game !

It's a bit different then RF, but still easy
To support better RF, we can consider to add support for reading .ACT files. The brushes of your RF levels we might support by adding GBSP or MAP

I see this as a good approach that quite fast can result in a powerfull engine. What do you think?

i think it sounds good, but there are a few problems:

if we wanted to use the q3 bsp format, we would have to either axe the idea of anyone making a commercial game with rf, or force them to pay a hefty license fee to id.

how fast is it? with all those layers, then rf being built as a layer ontop of it, i would think it would be rather slow.

what kind of next generation features doies it have? parallax mapping? shaders? soft shadows? with artisan, i've been working with things that are so new they wont be mainstream until about late 2006, and im wondering, if this engine dosent support those, whats the point of writing a "next-gen" rf, if it wont be next-gen?

if we retain the existing gen3d file formats, in any way, i believe we'd still have to show the gen3d logo at startup and be bound to the gen3d license, which is something im sure many would be glad to shake.

in my personal opinion, IF irrlicht can have the features we need (and it isnt too far off), and IF this engine dosen't have those features, it would be better in my opinion to go with irrlicht. irrlicht is easy enough that its pretty close to a scripting language, so building rf ontop of it would be easier than with, say, ogre. it builds under every good compiler i can think of, and is renowned for it's speed (using parallax mapping in a one room test on a low-end gaming desktop, i get over 200 fps in many cases, with full antialiasing etc.)

what do you think? if Apocalyx has all the features we need, do you think it would be ideal build rf with? I'll have to download it and test it out, see what it can do. do you think Irrlicht would be a better choice?

if we wanted to use the q3 bsp format, we would have to either axe the idea of anyone making a commercial game with rf, or force them to pay a hefty license fee to id.

I do not know if the Q3 BSP format is licensed and if no free alternatives exist? An alternative is to insert Genesis-BSP, but it is not compatible and will require additional code

how fast is it? with all those layers, then rf being built as a layer ontop of it, i would think it would be rather slow.

It's quite fast... even when it's an interpreter. The demo game runs at about 85 FPS on my PC

what kind of next generation features does it have? parallax mapping? shaders? soft shadows? with artisan, i've been working with things that are so new they wont be mainstream until about late 2006, and im wondering, if this engine dosent support those, whats the point of writing a "next-gen" rf, if it wont be next-gen?

It's based on openGL, and supports most of the openGL stuff.

if we retain the existing gen3d file formats, in any way, i believe we'd still have to show the gen3d logo at startup and be bound to the gen3d license, which is something im sure many would be glad to shake.

Gen3d file formats are today not supported. The only benefit in supporting .ACT files + GBSP is the ability to reuse what was created for RF

in my personal opinion, IF irrlicht can have the features we need (and it isnt too far off), and IF this engine dosen't have those features, it would be better in my opinion to go with irrlicht. irrlicht is easy enough that its pretty close to a scripting language, so building rf ontop of it would be easier than with, say, ogre. it builds under every good compiler i can think of, and is renowned for it's speed (using parallax mapping in a one room test on a low-end gaming desktop, i get over 200 fps in many cases, with full antialiasing etc.)

The major difference is in the amount of coding required. Apocalyx seems first glance to offer more (at least now) with less effort to make a game suite

what do you think? if Apocalyx has all the features we need, do you think it would be ideal build rf with? I'll have to download it and test it out, see what it can do. do you think Irrlicht would be a better choice?

Apocalyx and Irrlicht are not directly comparable. Where for Irrlicht you need to write C-code to make a game engine, Apocalyx is already a ready to go game engine, that you control and customize by scripting.
Just download it and try

Here the feature list of Apocalyx: http://apocalyx.sourceforge.net/info.php
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First of all: Nout thinks a lot and talks a little, so... if he thinks THAT HE CAN REALLY DO what he wrote, well guys, you have to expect that he'S REALLY PLANNING to do that crazy plan, and probably he'S REALLY WORKING on it! So, thinking of it, I can't wait for some techno-gossip by Nout!
Being serious, I think that if we really want something 'next-gen' we have to use Ogre. But how simply this can be? I really don't know. Probably the Apocalyx solution is a fast and really reliable way to have a real result.

Andy, are you really implementing Irrlicht on RF? This would be great. Can you provide a road-map? Have you planned to cooperate with QoD or Wbx1? In your site there is some announce in this way, but in the RF forum I haven't noticed anything.

i'm downloading the demoes, see what it can do. thanks for the link! yeah, i heard the q3 bsp format is $10,000 for a commercial license to use it. there is an alternative named OpenBSP.

federico wrote:Andy, are you really implementing Irrlicht on RF? This would be great. Can you provide a road-map? Have you planned to cooperate with QoD or Wbx1? In your site there is some announce in this way, but in the RF forum I haven't noticed anything.

yes, i am, and i havent announced anything on the forums because it isn't NEARLY far along enough to really announce. I have been planning it, thinking it out, comparing engines for it, doing test builds of various it, etc for about half a year. i dont want to show screenshots of it right now, but suffice it to say the tiny test builds ive done have had the capability to produce graphics of a quality well over that of unreal engine 2.5, given the right artist at the wheel, thanks to irrlicht. im not going to mislead people; there currently is no real "rf on irrlicht"; however, there is an aweful lot of planning, thinking, and tech demos which have made me realize just how possible this is.

i have not been cooperating with any of the other developers until now for this simple reason: if i could not complete it, i did not want to go down in history as "the guy who taunted us with a next-gen rf, then cancelled it". the thread about doing exactly what i have been doing kind of flushed me out of hiding.

as for a roadmap, please forgive my ignorance, but what is a roadmap? a schedule?

ya might wanna check this out : http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... php?t=9254



it's called "irrwizard", and if you scroll down a bit from there you'll find "Visual Editor V.0.3".A very basic game creation system right there, with those 2 programs.Irrwizard creates all the files needed for a basic fps-style game, and you can create levels for it with visual editor v.0.3.You still need to recompile the code.This, extended a bit into a full blown general game engine, with the programs we have here, would be interesting to see.

@ andy
yes a roadmap is a schedule. I have a CNN-war-in-middle-orient vocabulary...
Can you show us some of your work? I think that here we are all much interested also if this doesn't become an RF2 project.
___
Instead thinking of RF2, I've seen the Apocalyx demos and I know what Nout is thinking. Here we are not talking about FPS creation. Here we are talking about a complete 3d framework with cross-genre capabilities. Irrwizard seems very good but Nout is thinking about a new engine capable, like rf now, to develop a race game, an RPG or a 3rd person shooter as well. Again, I'm with you captain! Let's give a try!

ah, if thats what nouts doing it sounds good, but im planning on simply making a version of rf that runs on a new 3d engine, with some new capabilities. if your right,m we should discuss it, thats an intriguing possibility, though i dont know if it could be called "reality factory" any more. i would prefer for now to simply build the original rf on a new engine with some logical new features.

i have not yet laid out a schedule, that should come when i have, say, finished a certain aspect of rf2, and have a better idea of the pace at which it can develop. as for samples of my work, on rf2, theres the inieditor, though im planning on re-writing that, and non-rf2, due to wishing to retain my employment ill have to keep that under wraps.

to give you a taste of rf2, if i use irrlicht (i cannot practically speculate if i switch engines since they all have different features which i can lend to rf2), it will have parallax mapping (feature found in unreal engine 3), have the ability to use... i believe over a dozen model formats, including .x, .obj, .3ds, .ms3d, etc. natively, have stencil buffer shadows, and much more.

this is really the hardest part, that is, laying the foundation to ensure that rf2 does not at x point in the future need to be re-written from the ground up.

what kind of next generation features doies it have? parallax mapping? shaders? soft shadows?

Engines do not have 'next generation features'. Graphics cards have next generation capabilities. To say that an engine will support these features outright is erroneous.

A modern engine/game will determine capabilities of the card and then fake or drop the feature. A good engine keeps the interface to the renderer and device wide open to the 'developer'. In other words, to support these features, the engine must allow the user full access to the device and complete control not only of the scene rendering, but of the individual models/polys as well. RF currently, does not extend the renderer past anything found in the Video Setup Application.

this is really the hardest part, that is, laying the foundation to ensure that rf2 does not at x point in the future need to be re-written from the ground up.

Then don't make the first big mistake again and build it on top of another engine.

hi Pickles! How's FreeVector coming? Let me explain why I'm building this when you're doing freevector; i wanted to create rf, as it is now, but simply on a new engine. from what i heard, FV is an entirely new way to develop games.

Yes, Irrlicht will "pass on" these features to RF2. It's true that the engine dosen't "support feature blahblahblah" and really simply provides an interface to the graphics card for doing blahblahblah, but you could say the same about DirectX or OpenGL. RF2 will simply utilize the features which Irrlicht has provided an interface for. Thankfully, Irrlicht is one of the fastest 3D engines ever created, so there would be little overhead due to not using direct opengl or dx calls (which could get rather messy)

A modern engine/game will determine capabilities of the card and then fake or drop the feature. A good engine keeps the interface to the renderer and device wide open to the 'developer'. In other words, to support these features, the engine must allow the user full access to the device and complete control not only of the scene rendering, but of the individual models/polys as well. RF currently, does not extend the renderer past anything found in the Video Setup Application.

true, but wouldnt that be overcomplicating it a bit, considering rf's target userbase?

Then don't make the first big mistake again and build it on top of another engine.

i've never done enough engine programming to create an engine for it; irrlicht provides enough power, speed, flexibility, and openness to be the next best thing; i can see where your coming from though, irrlicht gets dropped, rf goes 7 years (about, dont remember the exact amount of time) without a modern engine, developers have to pick up the slack by adding new features to the dying engine. but, wouldnt developing an engine at the same time as a GCS be a bit much? i mean, i can see your doing that with FV, and I am very impressed by that and respect you a ton for that and everything you've done, but wouldnt that kind of slow down rf's development, when we can simply inherit Irrlicht's features, adding them to rf as they become available, and then upgrade to a new engine if/when irrlicht dies?

Whats the mistake you speak of? I don't believe i get it, if what i explained isnt what your saying.

I really would like more of your input! nice to talk to you!