Open Source vs Affordable Indie 3D Game Engines? 152
TBBScorpion asks: "Lately I have been investigating 3D game engines. I was mostly paying attention to open source engines like Ogre3d, Irrlicht, Crystal Space 3D, and the like. Then I found out about cheap Indie licenses for commercial game engines like Torque Game Engine ($150), Torque Game Engine Advanced ($295) and the C4 Engine ($200 + free upgrades). I found a list of top commercial and open source game engines at devmaster.net in case anyone is interested (I didn't want to take the time to list all the engines, but there are more good ones that I did not list on this page). Now for my questions. Now, here's my dilemma. Which of the engines are worth investing in? Should I buy an indie license or hold out for open source? Or should I start with an indie engine and switch later if open source catches up?"
"Torque Game Engine 1.5 works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux but lacks modern shader support (except for something about a free modernization kit). I mostly do cross-platform software development so I like this feature.
However, there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support, the Atlas terrain paging feature, and a few other nice features, but since is DirectX9 based it is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial engines. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine, or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but might it potentially be a more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
Here are the features I am hoping for are: a cross-platform engine, if possible; modern shader support; a built-in terrain paging system; and model, material and animation import from Blender 3d.
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing that seems to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002, so I'm ready to dive into the engine code."
However, there is Torque Game Engine Advanced (TGEA) which adds shader support, the Atlas terrain paging feature, and a few other nice features, but since is DirectX9 based it is no longer cross-platform. I have also heard rumors about support for the engine to be a little on the lacking side, yet the Torque community seems to be rather large compared to other commercial engines. Are the complaints just from people who don't really know how to program expecting to be able to edit the C++ of the game engine, or are capable people really having trouble? I've heard rumors about stability of TGEA compared to TGE? For those of you who have used TGE or TGEA, would you recommend it over other engines?
The C4 Engine looks nice as well, but seems to be under active development and less mature, but might it potentially be a more modern game engine? Also, it supports Windows XP and Mac OS X, which is better then just Windows.
Here are the features I am hoping for are: a cross-platform engine, if possible; modern shader support; a built-in terrain paging system; and model, material and animation import from Blender 3d.
When it comes to the open source engines like Ogre3D, the main thing that seems to be lacking is the built-in editors, and at least Ogre3D is currently mostly a graphics engine rather then a complete game engine (i.e. physics built-in; does provide wrappers for ODE and other physics engines). My assumption is that is just a matter of time before Ogre3D and other engines catch up with the top Indie commercial engines?
Lastly, I will be using the game engine for not only making games, but for some scientific applications as well. Also, I started using C++ 10 years ago and have been using Python since January 2002, so I'm ready to dive into the engine code."
Re:Doom or Quake... (Score:3, Insightful)
You can have a viable commercial game released on an open source engine. You just have slightly less protection against clones of your game. But the bulk of it is the data, not the engine, even if the engine's harder.
Re:Crystalspace (Score:4, Insightful)
Probably going to get flamed and down-modded, but what the hell. IAAPGD (I AM a professional game developer) and shipped titles on PSX, PC, PS2, and soon Wii.
CS has been around, what 10 years? It was crap for the first few years. It overly complicated something simple, with terrible class design and coding style that was clearly written by an amateur. Unless you've shipped a game or two, most developers just aren't aware of all the issues -- not just tech, but features, that a game engine needs. A game engine really needs to run on both PC and consoles so it has the opportunity to have a _clean_ API of the various math, rendering, collision detection, collision response, physics, sound, input, etc.
Since it's not good to criticize without offering a solution, David Eberly's Wild Magic engine and books do a very nice job of clearly explaining the how and why's of engine design. It's not perfect, and you can tell where he had to make compromises, but it's a joy to read. Probably because he wrote NetImmerse before they became Gamebryo.
Cheers
Re:jMonkeyEngine (Score:3, Insightful)
Nice hobby project though.
Re:jMonkeyEngine (Score:4, Insightful)
You also need to do a hell of a lot more in a game engine than just call OpenGL rendering calls, which would be fine if all you need was to render the same static frame again and again. In any game you will also need to do lot of CPU intensive tasks like intersection testing, physics simulations, skinning and other types of animations, AI and similar with real time performance and in addition to you game logic. OpenGL will not do this for you (yes, I know there is work being done, moving much of this to hardware, but that is not an option until everyone runs DX10 or later compatible GPU's many years down the line).
All this is of course possible with Java but it is not optimal and sub-optimal simply wont cut it in the game industry.
jmonkeyengine is a nice piece of work for small games and hobby projects. But it is a long way from being competitive in the serious gaming industry. But by all means, if this is just a hobby for you I'm sure it is more than good enough.
To put it in other words, "Bang Howdy" is a cute game but it is not exactly Halflife2.
Inside scope (Score:5, Insightful)
Having worked on a 3d engine for the last 7 years the most important advice I can give you is "only invest in a game engine that can do what you need right now".
Every game engine I've seen, ours included, have a list of great upcoming features. But there is no guaranty that any of those features will be implemented by the time you need them (if they are added at all).