Racing Games

[CalorFreitas]

Hi there.

 

I was looking into posts and screenshots, and also the engine features, and like a lot what I saw.

 

My main interest are racing games. Differently of other engines I saw around, what got my eyes attention was the beauty of some screenshots, obviusly results of nice art work, but also, because of the great quality of this engine, and its attractive pricing. I like realistic racing games, simulators.

 

I would like to ask, and forgive me if this is somewhere else in the forums, how would experienced users classify Leadwerks engine when thinking about using it in racing games ?

 

I´m interested in work in racing games, using Newton Physics AND multiplayer. Control the games using wheels, apart from keyboard and mouse will be a must.

 

Is there, inside the engine download a Newton controlled car to experiment with ? Would the Engine + Newton be suitable to high speed cars that dont roll in excess at the turns ? Is it possible to deform the models in real time ?

 

Well, to many questions in my mind...

 

Anyway, any replys would be highly appreciated.

 

BTW, I see that we have a very responsive forum. This is very nice.

 

Cya,

 

Carlos

[Laurens]

Hello and welcome!

 

Leadwerks is up to it, I believe Metatron has actually done a quick proof-of-concept of a racing game a while back although I cannot seem to dig it up right now. Do keep in mind that you will have to do nearly all of the programming yourself, even though Leadwerks has built-in support for vehicles. There used to be a driving game included with the evaluation kit but it was updated recently and I'm not sure if its still included but you can always download and find out yourself.

 

Cheers!

[Josh]

If you want super-realistic driving mechanics, you will probably want to implement vehicles with Newton yourself. If you want to make a driving game that isn't a realism simulator, the built-in vehicles will work fine.

[paramecij]

I'm afraid the newton vehicle controller won't be up to the task if you're aiming for a real realistic driving simulator. You can however implement your own vehicle controller using newton or your own or 3rd party physics. You'd have to do this in any other engine anyway (except if there's an engine out there aimed at driving simulators). But you can get decent driving using the provided controller if you fine tune some parameters around and don't care for full realism. Regarding deforming, not out of the box, but you could easily cheat this a little in different ways... I think you wont go wrong if you decide for LE, even if you had cryengine you'd probably want to write your own driving model as theirs is pretty arcade like. It's easy to make a racing game in LE but to make a realistic simulator in LE is as hard as in every other engine - only LE has unmatched ease of use (for me at least) ... I've made a small app play around with different vehicle controllers and fine tune them, if you decide for this engine I can give you the source to help you get started.. (it's in C though)

[CalorFreitas]

HI there again.

 

Thankyou all for your fast and well explained replies.

 

I will download the evaluation kit and see how I feel with the engine.

 

I´m actually a user of 3DGS Commercial Edition, and, altought its easy to work with, the engine is slow when thinking about racing games, and I have several problems with illumination and huge levels.

 

I also already worked with XNA, Irrlicht and Ogre, with more or less success, but I dont feel like I found what i´m looking for.

 

A last question, is :

 

Compared, for examplo, with Ogre, what are the basic differences when compared with Leadwerks ? What are the advantages of work with Leadwerks ?

 

Thankyou all again,

 

Cheers,

 

Carlos.

[Canardia]

Ogre is only a 3D renderer, while Leadwerks is a 3D game engine.

However, there are some unofficial add-ons and libraries for Ogre, which make it more like a game engine, like 3D sound, 3D network, 3D physics, 3D editor, but it's all not very standard and usually some part is out-of-date and doesn't work with the other.

That's why you need a game engine where the whole system is working and officially supported.

[Flexman]

Check out some videos of what can be done with the engine.

 

I think, regardless of the engine you will run into performance problems but Leadwerks is pretty good at culling, especially when it comes to vegetation.

 

The other issue you might have when coming to Leadwerks is the art asset pipeline. I highly recommend you create documents covering what works for you. I have no doubt that you can put together a high performance racing game together with Leadwerks. But because of the deferred rendering nature the things that one might consider easy can be quite problematic, such as Transparency.

 

Heaven help you if you want to make a submarine game though

 

Physics, audio, a high performance veg system and a range of language choices. As the above poster said, Ogre is just a renderer, you'll need to do a lot of work before you even get to start on a game.

[Road Kill Kenny]

The built in vehicle controller is not very robust. However, there are workarounds to fake the realism. I'm currently in the process of creating a destruction derby game and the vehicle physics is going well. However, I'm not aiming for 100% realism so you may have some difficulty in getting pin point realism.