The game's engine

[MR.Mic]

Does Quake3 engine support input for actual shaders? Not the scripted shaders, actual HLSL, GLSL or asm shaders.

Not out of the box, but it can be modified to support them.

[goodkebab]

conversation with a coworker on using openSource engines for game dev.  He has experience with Irrlicht and coded the Rabcat game which you can find on the irrlicht website.

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Mason (11:09 AM) :
got a friend that want to make a mod and we are still choosing the engine.  It needs to be an FPS and 3rd person combined....you think Irrlicht can handle something like that?

Tiv -Stefan- (11:12 AM) :
hmmm, I used Irrlicht for the FPS we wanted to make at Rabcat (of course it was an improved version of Irrlicht)
Tiv -Stefan- (11:12 AM) :
should be possible
Tiv -Stefan- (11:12 AM) :
I'd decide between OGRE and Irrlicht
Mason (11:12 AM) :
my main concern are what problems to expect
Tiv -Stefan- (11:12 AM) :
has your friend ever used an engine before?
Mason (11:13 AM) :
no actually...which is why he wants to do it....
Tiv -Stefan- (11:14 AM) :
then I'd choose Irrlicht, and not OGRE
Tiv -Stefan- (11:14 AM) :
quite easy to learn
Mason (11:15 AM) :
any problems to expect?  We are going in  Splinter Cell style and direction....so animations are going to be very important, needs to be online and multiplayer
Tiv -Stefan- (11:16 AM) :
wait wait wait... are you going to make a MOD or a completely new game?
Tiv -Stefan- (11:16 AM) :
normally when you create a MOD for an existing game, you don't need an engine
Mason (11:16 AM) :
need an engine
Tiv -Stefan- (11:16 AM) :
you use the stuff that's already there (provided by the game)
Mason (11:16 AM) :
so yeah...we create our own content
Tiv -Stefan- (11:17 AM) :
yes, your own content. but you don't need an engine for a MOD
Mason (11:18 AM) :
my bad...
Mason (11:18 AM) :
we call it a mod only because we intend to clone an existing game
Tiv -Stefan- (11:18 AM) :
ok, so you basically want to create a new game...
Tiv -Stefan- (11:18 AM) :
then you need somebody with experience and something bigger than Irrlicht
Mason (11:19 AM) :
open source?
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
will be a problem I guess
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
you want something to be online and multiplayer

Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
these things are not THAT easy
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
and Irrlicht doesn't understand anything of that
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
neither does OGRE
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
those are only rendering-engines
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
not game-engines
Tiv -Stefan- (11:19 AM) :
you'd have to build the rest yourself
Mason (11:20 AM) :
thats why i ask  ;-)
Mason (11:20 AM) :
do you suggest something?
Tiv -Stefan- (11:20 AM) :
I don't know of an open-source game engine
Tiv -Stefan- (11:21 AM) :
a game engine is something like Gamebryo
Tiv -Stefan- (11:21 AM) :
complete package for rendering, animation system, physics (if needed), network, etc...
Mason (11:22 AM) :
but you were able to work on an FPS for rabcat using irrlicht?
Tiv -Stefan- (11:23 AM) :
yes, we were.
Niko (the lead programmer which already had 4 years experience of working at JoWood) started on the game and the game logic, etc. which took him about year. then they hired another programmer (which was me), and I started working on extending the engine with shader-stuff, working on the game-logic, and started building our own physics engine (which took me another 3 months)...


Tiv -Stefan- (11:23 AM) :
so you need somebody experienced, or else everything will certainly explode
Mason (11:24 AM) :
gotcha
Tiv -Stefan- (11:25 AM) :
it's certainly easier to create a real MOD for an existing game if people are not that experienced or have never worked on a game before
Mason (11:26 AM) :
yeah...which is why we are trying to decide what the programmers can really do before we even start this thing

[goodkebab]

draw your own conclusions on that....

So apparently there is a dramatic differance between a Game Engine and a Rendering Engine.  Our programmers need to seriously start hunting down something that they can use.  At this point, using Unreal Engine or a Quake Engine is sounding realistic.

We are NOT a professional development team that can afford full time work to create and use our own game engine.

[Sydonia]

I suggest kjAPI. It is being developed by a commercial company based in Singapore and it has a "free for non-commercial use" type of license.

UDP networking is not yet implemented though and it looks like they are prioritizing other stuff at the moment but maybe if we ask politely they will implement it sooner. :)

It doesn't have a lot of documentation yet but the creators are very helpful and a question asked on their forum is normally answered within a day.

Anyway, check out the features list.

[goodkebab]

and check out the games using it.  No big titles but good looking ones none the less.

UDP seems to be inprogress....and because it is being used for what look like real games...it sounds good for what we need.

[Overstatement]

any problems to expect?  We are going in  Splinter Cell style and direction....so animations are going to be very important, needs to be online and multiplayer

The most interesting question in the whole conversation and he dodged it. Thats very disappointing.

those are only rendering-engines

They have collision detection and input components too (animation is part of rendering btw). Its hard to make tech demos without these. For the stuff it doesnt have, we can combine other libraries with OGRE or Irrlicht. Ask him the question again, don't let him throw you off. Get really technical.

[goodkebab]

what is your experience in Game Dev?

I mentioned this project to a couple of the guys here.  Basically what we are doing is NOT a mod but an actual new game.  From a programming perspective...something like this would take an incredible amount of time (months if not years) and it is starting to dawn on me that this project may not be technically possible because of time constraints.

[Overstatement]

I dont have any experince aside from trying to make my own engine. So far, we haven't had any programmers who apply with more understanding of engines but if one does come, you should ask him all this stuff. Personally, I think that being a free project will bring on much more programmers than a company. They may not have experince or knowledge but game coding is really about creativity and guidance. And you (assuming you are not a programmer, the pre-dev team really need to make introduction threads) are as much qualified on judging the programmers workload as I am qualified to say 30 models a month is too much for the modellers (a complete guess, I'm not qualified).

[goodkebab]

i am certainly not a judge on programmers...but i am working with them and so far from what i have asked of them...doing a Mod is possible, but creating a new product is just not realistic for what we are trying to do.

[Overstatement]

I guess it depends on what our goal is. Most of this thread was about choosing an engine on it's flexibility, a lot more flexibility than would be allowed on a mod. And it's not like we have a time limit to complete this.

[ElShotte]

Well, that depends what you start with, check out CipherEngine, it has all of the above mentioned built in, it would be a big leap over Ogre. And is ready for game specific coding, so that you don't have to bother with alot of shaders and such.

[goodkebab]

http://unrealtournament.com/ut2003/contest.html

hmmm....you guys thinking what i am thinking?

[goodkebab]

I am starting to think it is far more realistic to take a highend engine like Unreal or Half Life and make something kick ass instead of trying to fight with using an unknown engine.  We have several people on here that have knowledge and can work with these engines even though they are not programmers.

[Tinweasele]

We invite you to download and play the Phase 1, Phase 2 and Phase 3 winners. Next up is Grand Finals and it closes on November 15th, 2004!    <---- We would be a little bit late

[goodkebab]

Yeah I know the competition was old...it just seems smarter to use a proven engine  when we dont have programmers  with real game dev experience.