Reality Factory

Guys, hey, I'm a gamer who has dabbled a bit in indie game development. I've worked with 2D in the past, but have wanted to move to 3D development for some time now. I'm the type of person that once I dedicate myself to something I go all the way through and don't look back. So, naturally in my search for a 3D game engine I've taken my time and I have literally looked at dozens of choices (i.e. Torque, Darkbasic, 3dGamestudio, etc.).

Anyways, I've stumbled across Reality Factory and it sounds pretty awesome. Mainly because it is so easy to use! I'm in grad school and I'm just looking to make some fun quick games in my spare time, and also because it's free!! From GIMP to NVU, I'm a free software fanatic, heck, I usually end up donating the money I would've spent on other software that cost money just cuz I think it's cool that there are people out there who are willing to forgo a chance at some money in order to give everybody a chance to use their wares. I also like that it's fairly self-contained, no need to get a crapload of programs working together.

Anyways, my main worry is, the kind of support around Reality Factory? Because quite honestly, RF is not as popular among indie developers as some of the other engines and also because this board isn't as active as some of the boards on its competitors.

So, basically what I want to know is . . .
1) How active are these boards in reality? If I have some difficulty would another user be able to help me in a reasonable amount of time?
2) Is there still active work going on with Reality Factory as far as improvements, patchs, bugs, etc. I don't want to find out that a couple months from now, my games won't work on vista, or that Reality Factory won't work on Vista and that nobody is working on some kind of patch or replacement?

first off wealcome to RF

Now to answer your first question, you'd be supprised how active this forum is and from what ive seen and from about two years of personal experience if you post in the morning youll get multiple replys by the time you get back from school and pretty much every one here is willing to help you when your just getting started out. Yes RF is free and as an indie game dev suite I think its got exactly what i need and I have so far not looked else where since i started using it. There are also several projects that i know of works in progressa and several great demos and one complete game (witch was made by me a 14 year old from South Africa! LOL) Also there is a new release of RF every few monthes, although the original team is long gone RF kind of belongs to the community now. Also there is a 'sequal' to RF in the works that will fix most of its short cummings also giving us a monster GFX engien to play with And that is being developed (FOR FREE GOD BLESS AndyCR)

Now for your second question well i started answering that in the last answer well ill just cover the issue of VISTA, well thats quite a heated topic at the moment (round here) and its all a bit confusing for me but as far as i gather RF will work on vista eventually...

Anyway I have taken the time to make this mega long post (im going to be late for bloody class) is because I see you in the same place i was about 2 years ago, i had messed with 2D and sed to my good friend allen (hes around here everynow and then) dude lets make a game! and so we looked around and found RF, andyway 2 years later and loads of pizza and about a million rounds of quake 3 later and we had out first full game 'School Of The Dead'

I hope that answers your questions...

Welcome to the forums!

1) Yes these forms are very much alive. If it wasn't QuestofDreams wouldn't have spent so much time switching it over to a knew host.
2) Yes if you look in the programming section you'll see that we are in the middle of trying to implant multiplayer. Once we get past one of the blocks keeping us from getting multiplayer done I believe we will see a lot of improvements, updates, and such.

Welcome to RF and yes, it is quite active. QOD has done wodnerful things with RF in just the last few months. Stick around and help the guys work out the kinks in multi-player as well.

Welcome to RF!

Two interconnected reasons that RF isn't so popular. 1) The engine is free, which gives a lot of people a pretty low expectation for it, and 2) Because it's free there isn't a team of developers working around the clock to track down every little bug.

But, set that aside and you have an amazing engine. You have to realize that Torque, Irrlicht and OGRE require programming, whereas with RF you can make an entire game without ever touching the code. You can have really good graphics if you learn how to use the entities well. And this is where the community comes in, because someone is always coming up with a new effect.

I think our strongest asset is our community. Unlike other forums that look down on noobs, we are always here to help you. In fact, a great deal of the manual is taken right from posts on this forum. We have dozens of tutorials on everything from setting up a basic room, to creating realistic water effects. And, if you get stuck or confused, there is almost always someone willing to help you out. In fact, I can say without a doubt that we have the best support of any indie engine out there.

Thanks, for the replies guy. Reality Factory really is exactly what I was looking for, and though I wish there was more traffic on these forums, there indeed seems to be some really dedicated users here. So I've decided to stick with Reality Factory. I've deleted the half dozen or so other engines that I had on my PC and was fooling around with!!

Hopefully, Reality Factory treats me right! I'll be going though that "Making 3D games with Reality Factory" book this weekend. Thanks a lot for the replies!

Congratulations! I'm sure this is a decision that you will not regret!

Welcome to the forums!