Reality Factory

Both sides have a good point.

This is my opinion.

First, let me say that I have enjoyed the demo in Reality Factory. You guys have done an excellent job. Your years of hard work in this engine have paid off, but; the "old style' quake engine is obsolute. You are stuck in an engine that will never get better. As each year goes by, RF will become more and more obsolute. The ID BSP is old technology. You can't see the forest for the trees.

Second, Jet3d is very impressive. It is a mapper's dream. It is also a mappers nightmare when it crashes. It has very few options, like cutting brushes or creating triangles, that I would like to see in the editor. The list can go on and on. But that is not to say it can't be fixed. You guys are programmers. And like it was mentioned here, it needs a good shell. It also needs a good cheap modeler with support for your bdy/mot format. The editor also needs a way to import mesh.

Jet3d needs good texture artist, modelers, and mappers. Reality Factory needs another good engine, like Jet3d.

I am very interested in Jet3d, but I cannot register in the forum. I get an error when I try. I had rather start from scratch with Jet3d, a better engine, than learn this Reality Factory (quake 2) engine. In time, it would pay off, where as in RF, it can't grow using this old engine. http://www.ca3d-engine.de/c_About.php would be a better choice than RF.

I'm not here to sling mud. I know what it is like for someone to come into my forum and put down my tools. I am just expressing my honest opinion.

I am more interested in Jet3d over Ca3D over RF, and I have tried several engines lately.

Jet3d guys, Fix your forum register thing so someone can help you. Currently, there is no way to get in touch with the developers of Jet3d. Even the webmaster email thing doesn't work.

Please don't take this as an insult on either side. I am speaking as someone from the outside looking in. I am giving my opinion as a mapper/modeler from another engine and have no agenda to disrupt either side of this arguement.

Just my opinion

Coty
http://coty.ms11.net/

This thread actually made me laugh out loud.

-psychopath

I have to say, if i WAS a programmer, i WOULD make my OWN engine and neither use RF or Jet3d.

But i am no programmer. So i use RF to get fast results without a headache because of the code.

This really sounds like two old men sitting on a porch. One in a eletric wheelchair, and another in a regular wheelchair but has hair arguing about who's younger than the other.

Jet3D may or may not look better render wise than RF.
However RF is a lot easier to get around with since it requires no programming.


Neither are going to be AAA+ engines anytime soon or ever. The only way to catch up to AAA+ engines is to stop "advancing" old technology and start developing new.

I mean you want to talk about awesome I saw a one level demo that looked as good as F.E.A.R. or Doom III but was only 1.98mb in size. Now thats friggin amazing. Given they used no textures but you couldn't tell.

Point being if you want a AAA+ engine your going to have to buy one, or hire programmers to write one, or promise to sell and give a % profits to programmers to develop it.

Which is why I have to commend anyone who takes their free time and codes for free. Heck I look at a script thats longer than 10 lines and start getting dizzy.

For one I have worked with 2 modern engines so far and neither had level editors. They both use 3DS Max for levels and one also uses Blender for levels.
Especially like Antiryad Gx is one of th friendliest most efficient engines when it comes to levels. Build in 3ds texture in 3ds light in 3ds and export. It optomizes all of the geometry removing any unecessary faces without affecting the way anything looks. Even allows for the setting of multiple materials within 3DS Max.

I'm not tooting it's horn but just using it as an example. BSP is old, and the unreal method while better than BSP is also old.

One would do good to use either to fill a niche market game or a unique game. Neither are going to go head to head with commercial engines.

The difference is with RF you can beg, borrow, and steal models etc and make a game. You could cut and paste C++ tutorials all day long and never make a game of any sort. As a non-programmer you do good to make an engine say "Hello World" and render a cube.

Especially it's the only engine where a solo artist can make a game. Because while teams are nice it's one out of 1000 that work out and finish something. It's 1 out of 10,000 to find a team of people with a similar game idea to work on a game together.

Because frankly I could model, animate, and level design for just about any engine out there. However I am at the will of their game idea, and what they want.

I've probably had 50 offers to model, animate, and level design for games. From basketball games to MMORPG's, RPG's, etc. Only 1 team project have I found that is similar to my own game ideas and ambitions.

Otherwise I want an artist friendly engine that allows me to script everything with no hard code or compiling. RF does that.

Now I just want RF with graphic capabilities comparable to Half-Life 2.

What!?!

is this thread still going.........

It seems to be the energizer thread. Now, if all this energy were directed in a positive fashion. . .

Mike has hit it on the head. RF doesn't exist to compete with the Serious Engines and Unreal Engines of the world. . .it exists to let joes like me take a stab at something I only thought was a dream. Make my own 3D game. For that, I will always be eternally grateful.

I have spent about an hour and a half reading through this thing. I have to get back to work. Now, let's all return to our corners and then home from there.

i once tested jet3d and rf's " prettiness" factors........using similar level design( a basic cube) with 6 different textures, no advanced anything.To me, the Rf one looked better..........

what i would love to see is this:

someone point me or someone else to the genesis3d-specific and the directx- and mfc specific code in Rf.what could then be done is excising that code out. sure, it'll break and error and all that, but when it gets all replaced......it may take months or years to do, but then we'd be free of g3d.
I'm willing to have a go ( even if i ain't super coder #1)...........if i knew where to start, like which file to start with........whether it be a .cpp or .h file....just point me in the right direction........

CGenesisEngine.cpp, line 111, I believe is mfc code. I have never used mfc, so i do not know for sure.

However, it would likely be alot easier to re-write rf atop a different engine than it would to rip out what is weighing it down. it would be a bit like trying to take the peppercorns out of a peppercorn steak.