Searching for the right engine.

[EagleEye]

I know I'm asking a biased crowd here... but I really need to know if this engine is right for me.

 

I have been working on a game design for over 10 years, and have been struggling for the last 4 or 5 years with many different engines.

 

I started with one called Auran "Jet", but that company went out of business. It was also 100% Java, and buggy.

I worked a bit with Ogre3D, but hated the community. I was involved in the Ogre3d port to support .net languages, but that was a ton of work and hassle.

I've been working with Truevision3D for the last 3 years, and what I've finally concluded is that it's really not what I need.

 

Why?

 

Every single one of these engines is nothing but... well... a rendering engine. They are not game development tools, and they have no real support for the type of game I want to make.

 

When it comes to the game I'm making, I guess you could say I'm really "needy".

 

1) I need huge landscape support. I can't be using BSPs with portals, for example. I want a huge seamless world.

2) That said, I need some sort of way to produce that world. I was using L3DT and Terragen, but seriously L3DT took over 2 weeks to process a landscape the size of a small island (18km^2). This is simply not an efficient use of my time, especially since results aren't apparent until the whole process completes, and any changes to the foundation of it requires another 2 week processing cycle.

3) I need physics support, and would prefer it to be native to the engine, rather than some sort of Newton plugin.

4) A built-in GUI system, with editor, would be wonderful... I had to write my own GUI engine for Truevision (which is one of the favorites now of the truevision community)...

 

I guess my point is... I want to work on making my game, rather than work for YEARS on making all of the middleware that is involved in the production of assets for the game. I need an engine that has that middleware already in place.

 

I mean, seriously, my next project was to make an asset management app! Most of these other engines don't even have the capability to use encrypted or password protected .zip files!

 

I'm just saying... I'm tired of programming all of the basic stuff that I should be able to find elsewhere in professionally done pre-written libraries. (I wrote my own network code as well!)

 

My biggest problem is the fact that I simply can't stand writing in C++ syntax, and really prefer VB.NET. (please no negative comments about my choice of language, thank you.) I already know that there is a .NET wrapper (written in C#, but exposing VB as well), so that's all good.

 

I'm very impressed with what I saw with the scene and landscape editors. I guess there's networking involved as well.

 

As I said, I want to be able to make my game... not spend all my time working on my own middleware... I want to be able to quickly prototype stuff, not have to convert models and manually move files and textures around...

 

I am so frustrated by it all, and I want to know if this engine is the sanctuary I've been looking for.

 

I'm sorry if this message seems a little... well... crude... I'm just at my wit's end and am pulling my hair out trying to find the right solution.

 

The price of this engine is comfortable for me... I need to know if it'll be money well-spent, and give me all the tools I need to just make my game.

 

Thank you,

 

Jared Mark

[EagleEye]

Another quick thing I should mention...

 

I really want to find a community that is helpful and friendly.

 

One of the reasons I stuck around with Truevision3D for so long was because of the community. I was willing to deal with what the engine lacked, and work on producing my own middleware, simply because the community was one of the nicest and most helpful I had ever seen.

 

One of my biggest problems is what I would call "language elitists" that absolutely HATE vb.net programmers. I encountered it in my experimentation with XNA, which caused me to stop even TRYING to work with that engine after only 1 week.

 

I have found that VB.NET developers are often looked-down upon as "noobs" that don't know what a "real programming language is"... even from C# programmers (whose code is compiled in to almost exactly the same IL code).

 

I have taught computer programming at the college level, and taught myself upwards of 7 or 8 languages over the course of the last 17 years of professional experience. The last thing I want to do is join a community that will disparage me for my personal preference of language...

 

In the Truevision community, I found that the biggest disincentive to bash on other people's language choices was the fact that it was a company trying to make a profit. The owners would not allow "language wars" to go on, because it deterred business from coming their way. In the Open Source communities, where profit wasn't really a concern, such acceptance of others was generally not the case, and elitism ran rampant.

 

Anyway, enough rambling from me.

 

Thank you for your time in reading this.

[cassius]

I can't answer all your questions but I can say this is a very friendly and helpfull community. Wether this engine is for you is for you to decide after checking it out. Most people here are using c++ or csharp or Blitzmax. You will always find a bit of language snobbery but here it is no big deal. Le was mostly written with Blitzmax.

[Canardia]

I'm not biased since I have 9 different engines

 

I'm using LE because it's the easiest engine to program with, and it has all features a game engine needs: 3d graphics, 3d physics, 3d sound, 3d editor, networking, thousands of lights and shadows, post-effects, C++ support, Lua support, OpenGL, everything realtime, royalty free.

[Naughty Alien]

..hello EagleEye, and welcome to LE community

 

..ill try to reply much as i can and know about LE, so if i have missed something or lead you in wrong direction, ill be glad to be corrected by some other folks, and its all fine

 

..first of all, I think community here is very friendly and quite nice folks hanging around here, far as i can tell..so it will all work just fine, if you have some problems or issues with use of LE..as for those "language elitists", dont think too much..what does matter is end result, and feel free to make a note that Prince of Persia (old one on DOS) motion capture were done with text editor (EDIT) and photo camera, and output, animation wise, is better than 80% of games today in same genre (side platformer) anyway, whatever you like to use, use it and feel free to show to other folks what have you done, thats great ..now, back to your questions:

 

1) LE is capable for building nice landscapes and they are not BSP's, so i think LE will suit your needs just fine

 

2) I cant say much because im not using LE landscape features, but i guess it should be quite easy to do in provided editor, however, folks whos using it, should give you more tips

 

3) Newton is naturally integrated in to LE so its working all just fine, you will love it

 

4) Far as I can tell, there is no built in GUI system, or if i can recall, it was attempt to build one in LUA or something, im not sure, so if im wrong, guys please correct me..

 

Bottom line is, LE far as i can tell, doesnt fall in to category of a 'Game Engine'..but it does fall in to very very well organized rendering engine with all necessary attributes necessary for game development without plugging 3rd party stuff, and thats something what makes it VERY different from all other solutions you did mentioned..that also mean, you will have to write by yourself parts of game structure you need in your game, HUD system, GUI, AI, etc..but again, work is a lot easier because, as i said, all necessary parts for such structure development, already does exist within LE environment, so you dont have to 'plug this or plug that' to make it work..all in all, it is in my case, best spent money regarding this kind of software so far, so i super highly recommend this system...I hope this small description did make some sense and helps you ..cheers

[puki]

I have found that VB.NET developers are often looked-down upon as "noobs" that don't know what a "real programming language is"... even from C# programmers (whose code is compiled in to almost exactly the same IL code).

 

Yeh, I get that because I am a Blitz3D user. The thing is there are millions of C/C++, etc programmers who are clueless about game design/logic - ie they are tuned into making apps/serious software. You've been working on game design for 10 years and will know so much more than many of them who have never been interested in making a game.

 

In the world of coding, it is not what language you use, it is what you produce that matters. There are a couple of Blitz3D games being sold on Steam.

 

I'll say nothing about Leadwerks Engine as, in truth, I don't really use it - I bought it out of respect. However, there are certainly a lot of BlitzBasic users on this forum - so you should find a lot of people that have no issues with a VB programmer.

[Raul]

Hello EagleEye, I am Raul from the TV3D forums. Glad to see you here.

 

As you probably know I am a VB.NET programmer too, but I try to learn C++ and Leadwerks same time. Here is a helpful and friendly community and I am sure you will not have any problems.

 

Also some guys here are working with C# (they made a wrapper) and for what I understand VB can be also used.

 

Anyway, welcome

[Pixel Perfect]

I think from what you have indicated you will get on very well with Leadwerks. You might just want to get clarification of exactly what support is in place for VB.Net Most of the language wrappers here are user supported as opposed to officially supported by Leadwerks and I don't personally know of anyone currently using VB.Net ... someone will put you straight on this I'm sure. Otherwise I think you'll find the engine very rewarding and the community great and very helpful. There are always a few idiots who like to knock people for using specific languages but you get those on every forum and they are best ignored.

[Rick]

I have found that VB.NET developers are often looked-down upon as "noobs" that don't know what a "real programming language is"... even from C# programmers (whose code is compiled in to almost exactly the same IL code).

 

**** flows downhill as they say. Assembly->C/C++->C#->VB.NET->BMax->Lua

 

There will always be language snobs (I am probably viewed as one since I boast C++ here whenever the topic comes up), but it seems to me some arguments are valid and some aren't. The C# is better than VB.NET argument is certainly not valid. All .NET languages are created equal in the end. The front side is just syntax and means very little so how anyone thinks that's a valid argument is beyond me.

 

My argument with C/C++ is that in the game world it's the standard. It's generally provides you with the ability to do things in the fastest and most efficient way possible. So to me it only makes sense to use it

 

As a side note I've been using VB.NET professionally for 8 years now. I love .NET!

[Flexman]

To answer your specific queries about what you want to do.

 

- Yes, this engine will handle a terrain of 18km2

- You level typically is loaded upfront. No native streaming support, roll your own. Complex maps will take a while to load.

- Physics and audio are well integrated. See controllers on the Wiki

- Input is rudimentary but enough to get on with.

- Networking is a bit mysterious, there's a library but not much in the way of examples. But if you've written your own networking code before then you might get on with it.

- The engine is GPU intensive, high initial resource cost that doesn't rise as much with complexity (as compared to other engines).

 

LUA code at the model level allows for some pretty interesting stuff, really speeds up prototyping things once you're used to how it works. There's some interesing things being done with LUA, Thingoids and such, pretty cool.

[Canardia]

I love .NET!

You should use Mono, even on Windows! It has much less bugs than .NET.

[Rick]

You should use Mono, even on Windows! It has much less bugs than .NET.

 

Yeah, I'll tell that to my company and see how it goes over

[EagleEye]

Wow, thank you for all the kind responses!

 

I love the reactions to the "language elitist" stuff. It made me smile!

 

So yeah, I have my own networking solution (home grown) and it works just fine.

Also, I was looking at the wiki, specifically in the 2D drawing stuff... I think I can take my EEGUI product that I did for TrueVision, and port it over.

 

Really, a GUI system is about 90% "managing of the structure of the GUI", and only about 10% is actually "drawing it all to the screen". Really, when it's all said and done, I think I use engine-specific features maybe in 50 total lines of code out of 4500.

 

So as far as GUI and networking go, I got that covered with my own home-grown stuff.

 

Really my big concern is world building and world management, as well as quick prototyping, and ease of 3D integration.

 

I want my game world's PRODUCTION flow to be simple.

 

"Oooh, new model from my art team!"

*moves file to folder*

*launches some editor of some sort*

*imports the file in to the game*

*immediately sees the finished model in the game world*

 

Something like that... no converting to a new format or anything like that. Quick, simple, easy...

 

Thank you all for your replies! When I'm ready to start working on my game again, I'll be getting the demo version and working with it to see how I like it. (That may be a month or 2 from now... but I'll keep in touch!)

[Rick]

Really, a GUI system is about 90% "managing of the structure of the GUI", and only about 10% is actually "drawing it all to the screen". Really, when it's all said and done, I think I use engine-specific features maybe in 50 total lines of code out of 4500.

 

I'm also working on getting CEGUI working with LE. I have it working, but trying to make it easier because at its current state I'm sure no one here would use it.

[Canardia]

Since LE can load assets from any URL (not only file://, but also http:// (including zipped files) ), your pipeline could look like:

"Oooh, new model from my art team in the game! Wait a sec... It's alive, it's following me and shooting at me!"

(The game loaded the model from a web site where there artist published his stuff (it would be also "cached", so when you start the game again, it will load from disk), and the game loaded also some info file where the model is to be placed in the game world. The model's lua file added some AI to the model.).

[puki]

Oh boy - so you just knock up a spider in BMax and let the sucker go on the net. You gotta love it.

[gordonramp]

Yes, language snobs are a problem and there are a few even here.. Infinite terrains are not here yet but 2048x2048 is a big terrain and if handled properly looks to be plenty big enough for me anyway.

[EagleEye]

Yes, language snobs are a problem and there are a few even here.. Infinite terrains are not here yet but 2048x2048 is a big terrain and if handled properly looks to be plenty big enough for me anyway.

 

Well, there are ways around it all...

 

You can make multiple terrains and use each one as its own continent.

 

I'm wondering about landscape paging... is that in the engine already, or would I have to do that myself?

 

Or is this 2048x2048 thing ONE landscape, that I could potentially use as a single tile in a grid system, and do landscape paging myself?

[Canardia]

You're not dependand on the game map format which the engine provides. You could make your own SQLite3 based game map, where models are loaded when they're near enough. So yes, you can have streaming content of infinite worlds with almost no additional coding. You could still use Editor as the tool for creating finite worlds, and then have those maps injected into your SQLite3 database. That way, you have the best of both worlds.

[gordonramp]

I'm wondering about landscape paging... is that in the engine already, or would I have to do that myself?

Or is this 2048x2048 thing ONE landscape, that I could potentially use as a single tile in a grid system, and do landscape paging myself?

 

The latter.

[Rick]

You can only have 1 landscape loaded at a time with LE. It it huge, but the fact that you can only have 5 textures over the entire thing is a problem, but it's not one anyone has really ran into yet because most people here can't populate that much landscape with relevant stuff anyway.

 

 

where models are loaded when they're near enough

 

This is almost true. You would have to pre load whatever could be loaded so as to not cause the game to pause while it's loading something new. I wouldn't say infinite though. As state you would have to pre load every single asset in your game to achieve that, and even then the terrain is an issue currently because you can only have 1 loaded at a time and any loading would cause a pause in the game.

[Canardia]

Just don't use terrains then Models can do the same and much more!

 

It's still infinite since you load and discard models based on their distance.

There's really no need for additional pre-load logic, as the same model will be cached and instanced anyway, so the engine only loads a new model once, which takes basically no time (we are talking about milliseconds).

 

It's also a question of intelligent map design (this used to be most important with older game engines!) not to put thousands of new models in the same place, but let the stream flow smooth and let the engine load new models in a relaxed fashion.

[Rick]

Yeah if one wanted to make their own terrain system from planes they could. That's a good point. Might be a pain to mold the custom terrain plane in the editor though, and you wouldn't want to do this in a modeling program as an infinite plane could take awhile that way.

 

But this is a very valid idea. Could make a terrain thingoid that is basically a plane. I guess one could even make the mouse adjust the plane height and such. Would need some form of system to weld the edges together though also.

 

 

There's really no need to additional pre-load logic, as the same model will be cached and instanced anyway,

 

Only after being loaded the first time. The first load of an object makes a noticeable delay.

 

(we are talking about milliseconds).

That's not true at all. My character models cause a noticeable pause when loading for the first time. It's only ms after it's been loaded once already.

[puki]

1 landscape and only 5 textures? I didn't know about that. I can't say that I am happy about it.

 

Still, you can bypass all of this just by coding a terrain. In Blitz3D I just tile landscape pieces together - ie make a square of terrain in code, multi-texture in code then I can put it where I want. The great thing being you can still dynamically alter the terrain pieces in real-time too if you want - the fact that they are tiled helps with the rendering too - plus you can use more than the standard 6-8 texture limit.

[Rick]

The great thing being you can still dynamically alter the terrain pieces in real-time too if you want

 

You can do that today with LE if you wish also. It's just a plane like any other so you can do altering commands on it. I think the only reason you can have 1 terrain is because Josh wasn't sure how to implement multiple terrains in the editor and the welding and such. I think he figures the one giant terrain is good enough.