The game's engine

[MacBryce]

Guys, don't bet any bodyparts on a big-time publisher buying up a tech demo. Seriously... You'll miss them when they're gone and then you'll think "I should've listened to MacBryce".

[ElShotte]

Nah dude, I have no clue what you guys are thinking but the way I take it is this is going to be an AAA title we're gonna do here, and publishers are going to contact us themeselves.

[goodkebab]

I just spoke with a producer from JoWood...a big games publisher in europe.  He had some experiences on a project using Ogre and said it was not very flexible....and from his comments I would avoid it. 

Did you get some examples of the inflexibity of the engine? What did they try to do?

Basically,  fromt the producers experience with the programmers (which were not that good from what i understand) was that they were not able to make changes that the publisher wanted because it would be to complicated to do.  Imagine a fine tuned car engine...tweak one thing, and any number of others things might go wrong.  The programmers also told him they were not able to integrate certain kinds of animations and what not.


When I have some more time...I will need to make a list of things the engine will need to do from an animation standpoint because CT animations are very complicated (DA even more so) compared to a run and jump game or a sports game.  This was why i was recommending irrlicht (i posted link earlier), because its open source, supports all levels of pixel shaders, we can communicate directly with the creator himself, and it has strong recommendations that it is better then ogre.

Of course, i am only quoting form what i have been told.  If we can use the Unreal Engine legally,.....then I would be amazed.

[Aj]

I didn't follow it closely, so I don't know, but does anyone know if there will be another "build something Unreal" contest for UT 2k7?  If so, then it might be worth it to use Unreal as a basis for a mod since winning the contest(which we COULD do if done right) would give us a full license for the Unreal 3 Engine.

[goodkebab]

why dont u look into that Aj?

[MR.Mic]

I read up a bit on irrlict, and it looks sexy.

[ElShotte]

Yeah there will, there's always a "Make Something Unreal" contest.... if anyone is familiar with theresults of the last one, Red Orchestra was first, we were 2nd...

[scope2005]

Alien Swarm came close too I think made by black-cat games, makers of the stealth mod 'Thievery UT'.

There probably will be another make something Unreal contest for the Unreal 3 engine, but when that will be is anyones guess.

If you want use of the Unreal 3 engine legally without forking out hundreds of thousands of dollars, a total conversion mod is the way to go. A lot of people (Myself included), bought Unreal 2004 for the total conversion mods alone as some are sheer quality and extremely innovative. I dont think you will be limiting your audience, as UT2k7 is going to one hell of a popular game, and a must buy for the coming year. look at Red Orchestra, so successfull its a full product now available by steam.

Also look at Counter-Strike, most successfull TC mod to full game success story ever. And still has thousands upon thousands of players :)

[Overstatement]

I read up a bit on irrlict, and it looks sexy.

Did you read up equally on the OGRE engine for an unbiased opinion?

[MR.Mic]

I read up a bit on irrlict, and it looks sexy.

Did you read up equally on the OGRE engine for an unbiased opinion?

I'm not comparing. OGRE looks very damn featureful, as well.

Plus, I dont need to care about the engine from a programmer's perspective, that's for the programmers to fool with. I only need to look at it from an artist's perspective, and they seem to be almost identical in that arena.

[goodkebab]

I spoke with our lead programmer at work about Irrlicht...he is of the opinion that is certainly not AAA quality when he looked at it 2years ago....but i didnt hear a lot of bad things either.

[MR.Mic]

Have any of you considered the idea of a modified quake 3 engine?

It's now open-source, so we can add pretty much anything we need (real-time lighting).
On top of that, the game has rock-solid netcode, as well as collision detection.

[Overstatement]

Reading C code gives me a headache. Its like reading old english, you can try to read it but it hurts and its confusing and odd (and there is less support?). Another reason is that any engine made for a specific game has the tendincy to be limited to that game. Because the line between the engine and the game is a blurry one, sometimes game specific code (like how the camera sways while walking) gets put into the engine code (sometimes deliberately, for convenience). Does Quake3 engine support input for actual shaders? Not the scripted shaders, actual HLSL, GLSL or asm shaders.

Edit: Oops, forgot you arent a programmer (sometimes, I wonder if you really aren't...). But the fact that I looked at Quake and still dont know how it works is credit to how completely confusing C is.

[frvge]

Of course C code isnt meant to be read. The specification is... only if you need to change stuff, dig into the code.

[Overstatement]

only if you need to change stuff, dig into the code.

Like updating an engine 6 years into the future?