jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
Hey there, I've been working on designs for a commercial game i plan on working on and since i'm kind of the one-man army right now until i buy some help, i'm going to need to get my hands on some premade tools for development. I need some advice for choosing which engine to use for these projects though  . If there's some decent external sources that someone has on this topic then feel free to post it and i'll be quiet  .Right now i'm thinking of comparing TGEA to XNA (i'm not assuming that it's a 1:1 ratio here) I'm looking for an engine that will allow me to get prototypes and demos up and running in the fastest speed and still look good. I'm considering TGEA over plain-jane TGE because i want to be able to use shader programs to make it look semi-nice (to make up for lack of 3d graphics skills). I'm giving XNA a chance, since it's free and it's looking like it'll be half decent at some point (if it's not already). Keep in mind though that i'm only targeting the PC market so it's portability to 360 means nothing to me. How easy is it to generate and import terrain and models?
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SSquared Member Posts: 654 From: Pacific Northwest Registered: 03-22-2005 |
If you don't mind requiring your consumers to have .NET 2.0 installed, XNA is a really great way to go. I would not recommend just using XNA, though. Use some of the available XNA engines available. You should take a look at Blade3D and Visual3D.Net. They both, well, look really impressive! I can't even begin to do justice describing the capabilities. Check out the links. I think Blade3D is free. Visual3D.Net is free for non-commercial use. I do not know the price if you want to make a commercial game. The XNA community has been absolutely terrific! Microsoft's online XNA forums tend to be very helpful. There are great examples and tutorials on-line. Look over this page of links: http://www.xnaresources.com/links.asp. Unfortunately, this site has not been updated in over a year, but these links lead to some good tutorials and other off-site goodies. Don't forget, there is also TorqueX, but it is not at the same place as those others mentioned above. Unfortunatley, I don't know the specifics to any of your questions. |
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jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
Thanks for your help S^2, I think that for the PC market, with a game that you would pay money for (as in not a test project or demo) that's not THAT unfair of requirement to install the framework. However it's not the strong-point of XNA. It's a little sad though the state of those engines; They seem still on the immature side, but i'll take a better look. I've been thinking of playing with TorqueX because i really like the use of normal maps and shaders on sprites. However, for this project I want my target environment to be 3d since i can make some fairly nicely rendered scenes. ------------------ |
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SSquared Member Posts: 654 From: Pacific Northwest Registered: 03-22-2005 |
You are right. It's not unfair to require the framework. My problem with it is I do not know many people (other than developers) who have .NET 2.0 installed. How many gamers even have it installed? Certainly the regular ol' church goer who I plan to target will not have it installed. Plus, I am finding a general trend moving towards the Mac. You will need to figure out your audience, and figure out if they will likely upgrade to .NET 2.0. Of course, you can also package it into your game as part of the installation, but I personally do not think that is a good thing. The next version of TorqueX will have 3D support. But TorqueX does not have any type of terrain editing like TGE/A does. And it sounds like you want that. For sounds/music, I don't think Torque or XNA really has that great of a system. The beta of XNA was awful for working with sounds. I can't recall, but it was something like WAV files only. The final version fixed a lot of it. Personally, I have not had issues with the sound in Torque Game Builder. I can trigger sounds easily. Play songs easily. I can do the basics which is fine. I believe Clint has a MUCH better understanding of the direction he would like to see Torque move with music. |
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jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
If a game i come up with would require something like the framework then i'd really have no choice but to include it in the package (assuming that i'd be allowed to do that). I've noticed that it's not uncommon for games to be packaged with pointless things that you don't actually need (aka GameSpy, etc) and if it's a click and install procedure then i don't see an issue with gamers or average users getting it going. As for the mac, sorry but i don't intend on supporting that with any of my games (also add linux to that black-list). It's pretty much just because to my knowledge, it's still a minority in the serious gamers community excluding hackers (who can very well figure out how to run it by themselves). Do you think that TorqueX would be able to import external formats for terrain/levels/etc? I've been looking at a terrain editor called FreeWorld3D which seems like a nice tool for that sort of thing. As i don't have a modeler/3d graphics guy on my team yet i require any engine i use to either have a built in world editor or links to a decent one (Maya doesn't go on the list of "world editors" for me :P) Thank you again for your help. I'm edging more and more towards the Torque solution now. Maybe i'll see if i can get a demo or something for it so i can get a better feel of the length of development time until bare-bones demo. I have to get some Gantt charts rocking for a better estimate Edit: Alright...I looked at the TGEA demo and i'm pretty impressed if all those features can be implemented with accelerated development time. It's a very nice looking engine so far but has anyone here done anything really impressive with it? (i'm meaning to ask questions about how "workable" it is when you're doing fancy stuff with it) [This message has been edited by jestermax (edited October 29, 2007).] |
dartsman Member Posts: 484 From: Queensland, Australia Registered: 03-16-2006 |
check out: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/ Just some of my own thoughts, definitely steer clear of frameworks/libraries and pick a Creator/Maker/Editor. You won't really want to waste any time of developing anything to do with the engine (though certain gameplay mechanics might be easier accomplished low-level and having access at engine level can really help get the prototype developed quickly). Also to help you decide: Most Reviewed Commercial Engines ------------------ |
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jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
Thanks darts, Indeed you are correct again; I don't really want to have to fiddle around with low level areas of the engine (unless i actually do...). I forgot about 3DGame Studio...Isn't that what David Lancaster used for Axys? Have you used/seen any of those other creators/makers/editors? ------------------ |
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dartsman Member Posts: 484 From: Queensland, Australia Registered: 03-16-2006 |
quote: Yes, David L used it for Axys, and he is very very quick at developing on it (but he has been using it for quite a few years). As for what I've used/seen/never heard of before... Seen - 1. Torque Game Engine I typically write my own engine, building off from whatever really. My final game project for college was made using a framework created by the college lecturers (pretty much a wrapper around Ogre, Novodex (now PhysX), ODE (yeah 2 physics libraries), FMOD, etc.). My current 2D PC projects (2d ragdoll, etc.) are done in C# using GDI+ for graphics. I like the idea of making vector games or at least limited graphics games, mostly due to my lack of art skills. But even new projects typically just leech classes and code from my previous ones (to save dev time). For Mobile Device projects I will just use J2ME and whatever it has for graphics. For 3D projects I used to use DirectX 9.0c. But again I could leech code from my old projects to speed up the development. I also used Ogre a few times as it was pretty good whenever I had it setup and ready to go. I've been learning over the past year that time is short and it doesn't hurt to actually find tools that will help you develop something quickly. Though this is within reason, sometimes deadlines predict what you can and cannot do. Learning a new tool/library/engine will take it's time. What I would recommend that you do, pick a Creator/Maker that you are most comfortable working with. But with that said, try not to pick something that is obsolete or unheard of. The community is sometimes what makes an average Creator/Maker king above all others. ------------------ |
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jestermax Member Posts: 1064 From: Ontario, Canada Registered: 06-21-2006 |
thanks for the further insight. You're tipping the scale further in the direction of Torque now then it was before. I've been working with TGB for 2d stuff recently and i think i've used it enough to become useful so since TGEA uses torqueScript as well then i should have a one less step in the staircase with that. (hopefully). and i AM looking forward to playing with shaders again and having a good network library ------------------ |
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dartsman Member Posts: 484 From: Queensland, Australia Registered: 03-16-2006 |
coolio I wish you the best of luck. ------------------ |
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SSquared Member Posts: 654 From: Pacific Northwest Registered: 03-22-2005 |
Right. Since you are already familiar with TGB TorqueScript, then you are quite far ahead in learning TGEA. The 3D TorqueX should be available sometime soon. It's done with development and has been handed off to QA. One thing people mention on the forums is to purchase TGE and then upgrade to TGEA. The price is apparently the same (you should check just to be sure). The advantage in doing this is you get access to the TGE resources and forums which can be quite helpful and adaptable to TGEA. Someone has written what is called the "Modernization Toolkit" for TGE. This adds shaders to TGE. Unfortunatley, I can't give the links out since you need to be a TGE owner to get access to the information. |