I've been trying out some 3d-CGS's (Game Creation Systems)
and haven''t still found any good ones. What I need, is an engine that supports .3ds models, large outdoor environment areas and easy scripting. Progs that failed:
* 3D GameStudio A5 (5.2x full) -- terrible scripting and impossibility to make fine-looking skins for models. Also, has very bad sky-texturing system and works with small levels only. Despite nice level editor and good dynamic lights, It's still crap.
* 3D RadÃ, (3.0 full) -- Good sky box and camera system, fast and large levels. But painful skinning and bad lights & interface. Script system is pretty awful too. Plus, relies on premade objects, unless you won't spend 5 years to figure out how scripts work.
* Genesis 3D - for FPS's only. Crap.
* Pie in the sky 3D - Terribly outdated
Can anyone name something GOOD? Or I just have to learn C++ and start from zero, thus making my own engine? With GCS's like that, It'll be faster.Ã, :(
Try dark basic pro: http://www.thegamecreators.com/ or http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html
good luck.
What kind of game are you intending to make? For adventure games I couldn't find much worth using, so I tried learning enough c++ (from knowing nothing) to make a basic 3d adventure game engine using OGRE for graphics.. I didn't manage it, but I got characters walking about and animating etc, I'm sure it's possible to make a proper game engine if you put in a few months of hard effort.
Unfortunately there aren't many simple and powerful 3d game making programs, like there are 2d ones. Especially if like me you want to use some quite modern graphics effects.
Dark Basic is probably a good choice actually for most people, didn't have the features I wanted, but it doesn't seem too difficult to use.
What I do want to make, is pretty bizarre game. It's first-person view travelling game. Has anyone played "wilderness:The Survival Adventure"? (It's available at underdogs).
Something between this and oldschool game Deus, but fully in 3D. You have Inventory with food and liquid rations, useful items to survive like compass, knife, map, money and so on and in game, you have to travel around, even maybe hitchhike.
You have to keep an eye on health, body temperature etc. levels and this is mostly what I want to do. Big project, yeah, but It would be pretty cool, If i'd ever managed to make this.
While writing this, I just realized that such thing could be done with AGS too, but without real-time moving around. :-\
I think that 3D game studio handles outdoor scenes pretty well, here's an example:
(http://www.conitec.net/gallery/glider_shot138.jpg)
About the low texture and skin quality, it depends about the texture resolution you're using. If the texture is smaller, it will loose it's quality once it has been streched on the surface.
But I disike the 3DGS because of it's ultra high price and ridiculous limitations if you're using some cheaper versions.
Well, first of all I don't know why you expect the engine to directly import 3ds models. Most of them have scripts that will convert to the games format or use more general formats like .obj or .dxf. Dark Basic looks like your engine though, because it actually does and uses basic for scripting. Only costs $50.
I don't know if you've read my Blender plugs before, but it's nice because it has a very simple logic brick programming structure where you have a column for controllers (keyboard commands, Python scripts), sensors (to determine when to activate the controller), and actuators (the things that actually activate the controller). Once you get the hang of it it's simple, I've seen a game called "The Legend of Taro" that was made by a 12-13 year old kid. It's one of those general game engines, that could be used for anything from rpg to fps.
Here are things I (and some others) don't like about Blender though, from lack of bumpmapping to real-time shadows: http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26057&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0
Forgot to add, there is a .3DS importer script, not sure how well it works. Blender natively supports DXF and VRML as well as its own .blend format.
Torque Engine (Tribes) $100 garagegames.com i think
I prefer Blitz Basic (http://www.blitzbasic.com).
If I am not mistaken Blender3d can make games.
Quote from: Czar on Fri 11/06/2004 19:20:57
If I am not mistaken Blender3d can make games.
Wow, where did you find out about that? :o
Quote2.33a
This release brings back the game engine, and creation of interactive 3D environments. Also don't miss the further improvements in rendering engine. The 2.33a version is a bug fixed upgrade of 2.33.
:PPPP
I hope you were not sarcastoc 8)
Quote from: Czar on Fri 11/06/2004 19:27:36
I hope you were not sarcastocÃ, 8)
Sorry to say I was, if you read up a few posts... :)
I cant believe i missed your post. :-[
Sorry about it, but nevermind.
Quote...I don't know if you've read my Blender plugs before, but it's nice...
No, never. Have you ever tried this?
(http://www.hot.ee/increatorgamez/khm.gif)
Quote from: InCreator on Fri 11/06/2004 19:58:34
Quote...I don't know if you've read my Blender plugs before, but it's nice...
No, never. Have you ever tried this?
(http://www.hot.ee/increatorgamez/khm.gif)
Holy shit that's ridiculous. At least they're mostly threads talking about 3d (http://www.agsforums.com/yabb/index.php?action=search2) anyway.
I thought the game engine could have escaped your notice, sorry.
I've just found out about this one..
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/features.html
Open source, multi-platform, and packed with features. It imports 3DS files too.
I don't see Normal Mapping in there, which is something I'd much prefer, but otherwise it looks great.
Nevermind..
http://www.elysiun.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=26162
QuoteI use Irrlicht for the game I am doing right now and do the modelling with Blender. Take a look at the export scripts. The rest you'll have to do by your own. Irrlicht is a 3d game engine framework, which means it is a library that allows you to program your game. Irrlicht doesn't have game entities, it doesn't have a main loop, it doesn't have sound, it doesn't have physics and it doesn't have any builtin scripting or networking support - so writing a code generator (I supposed your question was pointing in this direction) would need to write a main loop (which would be very game dependant - think of a GUI for changing game settings and stuff like that) using Irrlicht and other libraries for sound, physics, networking and scripting (for example Angelscript or any other plugable scripting language) on the other hand and your own game entities (object properties and stuff). That'll be a lot of work because it means that you write your own game engine.
So that bloomin game engine that schbaz has been going on about for ages has finally been released with the latest version. *goes to check it out*
So what's the verdict Increator? Have you found anything better that escaped our notice yet?
A sidenote, you mentioned that one engine was for fps games.. most engines are actually fairly general, and you may be able to simple edit out the monsters and guns to come up with a fairly good RPG engine. With any engine I'm fairly sure you're going to have to do quite a bit of scripting to get things like hunger, Body Temp. and etc. though.
InCreator; I'd be very interested to hear how this went as I'm looking for one too.
In future, Shbaz can be summoned by the use of the word '3D' or 'Blender'. Like the Sgbazsignal.
This post is lame.
Actually, I still have no clue. I liked 3D-rad alot because It's full freedom and 3d gamestudio because super easy level/bsp editor but to be honest, I have absolutely no available cash to buy an engine. They're damn expensive too. Especially due currency difference between Estonian crones and dollars- $50 is about 750 crones, which is enough here to buy an used video cam or 100 litres of Coca-cola.
I'm sure that I could make moving-around and level design (roads, cars, forest, player models, wildlife, etc) with either of 3drad or 3d gamestudio. But when it comes to scripting health/temp/inventory, I have no clue how to implement this in any of these.
3d gamestudio has a powerful tool in it's model editor, called height mapping. Something like, I draw a map of a landscape in a paint program, viewed from top and program converts it into a real landscape, making brighter points on drawing higher (hills) and darker ones as an holes. It would be useful. especially when exported into 3ds format and used in some other prog.
So, I think I just try to mix all advantages of existing GCS's together, yet, I'm still looking for something that suits my needs best.
One of my biggest problems right now is the way 3ds max 4.2 handles character models. during walking or other animations, mesh bends really badly, because of lousy biped system and low poly count. when making all body parts as independent objects, this won't happen. But then holes appear. Anyone has a clue how to fix it?
I played some lousy game yesterday, 8-wheels hard truck driving or something like this, and It's engine had all I need. Only thing I could find out about engine that it was probably something called Prism 3D. Anyone knows anything about that?
I started my eye/mental health/social life-ruining career with QBasic and mastered it, so Dark or Blitz Basic would be most easy one for me to learn...
Or maybe really, see what shbaz is always talking about and try blender.
Sorry about Blender/shbaz joke though.
So, still on the hunt!
I know a lot about character animation, and it's probably not a fault with 3DS you're seeing, but a problem with low-poly stuff in general. If the models aren't carefully made, they can be a huge pain to rig. If you've never rigged a character before, even a great model might be difficult to rig. Right now I'm rigging a model I made for a huge project at Crystal Space and it's all GPL so I can show you that when I finish sometime today.
I'll try to explain it as best as I can here though.
First of all, here is the best forum in the world for game art critique (http://www.cgtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=39). Here is the second best one (http://www.cgchat.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?s=87a5e7e01b628bdf2bd46fee618ca4fc&forumid=58).
Go in these forums and look for the really pro gameart (it's easy to see one from the latter) and look at it, specifically how they did the joints. You'll notice that usually elbows and knees have three edge-loops fairly close together. This is to allow a lot of freedom with bending and prevent too much distortion in the texture map. You're supposed to parent the main bone (thigh or upper arm) to the top edge-loop and begin another bone that will only control the middle loop. The shin or wrist bone will then be parented to both the middle and the bottom loops. So now you have the middle loop controlled by both the small joint bone and the wrist or shin. The reason for this is that the knee won't buckle as fast when it has another bone it is parented to that is not moving - it moves at about half the speed that the rest of the bone's vertices would, and gives a realistic effect of the knee bending.
Probably what you have the most problem with though is shoulders (everyone does). The arm has the greatest range of motion of any large appendage on your body, able to point directly up, down, and everywhere in between. A shoulder is similar to the knee or elbow, but has a somewhat unusual second edge-loop that doesn't make a complete circle, but rather connects back to the first edge-loop. You'll just have to look at some models for this one - describing it is kind of hard for me ATM. You need one bone that comes out from the shoulder and ends just a little before the arm starts, one very small bone coming from there, and then the big bone that will extend to the elbow joint. The first bone will allow you to move the shoulders up and down as the model moves its arms around a lot. The second is a control (like the small bones in the knee and elbow) to allow you to keep that shoulder from distorting too much when the arm moves a long way. The third bone has an obvious purpose, I think.
More important than the skeletal structure isÃ, the way that you parent your vertices to the skeleton. This is also very hard to sum up in a small place, so if you want I could just examine your model with one of the .3DS to .Blend scripts and see what could be causing you problems.. though I don't know how trustworthy those things are. In Blender when I parent the skeleton to the mesh it asks if I want it to automatically assign vertice groups to the bones and I let it do that. It will then find all of the closest vertices to the bone and parent those to each bone. After that, I look at each group and try to find mistakes, I edit out the vertices that don't need to be selected, and then start testing out the rig and adjusting slight problems, before making my animation loops.
$50 in the USA will also buy 100 liters of Coke, or 200 liters of an off-brand soda, or a used video camera. It is a lot of money, but most good games here also come out costing $50. If it's something you really want you can save the money (here, anyway). In Estonia though, I'm not sure how life is, so sorry for making the quick judgement.
Make fun of me for liking Blender all you want, I think it's funny too, I never had tried the search. Even I can admit that Blender still has it's faults too.. the game engine is missing a lot of standard things (rendering functions) like bumpmapping and shadows. I don't know how well 3DS models would transport to it. There are a few problems that could arise, but if you want, we can try it.
Shabazjinkens, you're a hero. Can you really use blender? Damn, it even doesn't have recognizable "File" menu! And one view only? Huh. After three hours of figuring out how to see top, side and perspective views (spacebar-menu didn't do anything), blender is outta list, because I have only time until october, then army and no game design for a long time. I'm not going to spend all this time trying to figure out how blender works.
Damn. And it was free.
Quote from: InCreator on Sat 12/06/2004 16:18:28
Shabazjinkens, you're a hero. Can you really use blender? Damn, it even doesn't have recognizable "File" menu! And one view only? Huh. After three hours of figuring out how to see top, side and perspective views (spacebar-menu didn't do anything), blender is outta list, becauseÃ, I have only time until october, then army and no game design for a long time. I'm not going to spend all this time trying to figure out how blender works.
Damn. And it was free.
Are you joking?
(http://img32.photobucket.com/albums/v96/shbazjinkens/bscreen.png)
You're not going to figure it out if you expect it to be just like 3DS Max, it's far different from what I've heard.
The documentation might help. (http://www.blender.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=documentation&file=index)
PDF, if you have broadband (http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderManualIen.23.pdf.zip)
PDF Volume II (http://download.blender.org/documentation/BlenderManualIIen.23.pdf.zip) (Hotkey reference)
I wouldn't switch totally if I were you, you can import models from 3DS (though I don't know how well the scripts work) and just place them and use only the game engine.
Try to learn the very basic things (Middle mouse button is free rotate, MMM+shift is grab, MMM+ctrl is zoom) and then see if you can use this tutorial (http://205.152.62.12/gruff/camera/index.html) to set up a 3rd person camera to follow a character.
Really though, you're probably better off with DarkBasic or something that will directly import 3DS models, to be honest. You can get a free demo from the site to see how it works out. I wouldn't want to totally switch apps either, not because of functionality, but just because of having to learn a new program.
Sorry to dig this topic up again, honest, but one of the features of Crystal Space escaped my notice:
Quote3D triangle mesh sprites with frame animation. Convertors for Milkshape, Maya, Cal3d, 3DS, Quake MDL and Quake II MD2 formats to Crystal Space are included. Importers for 3DS, MDL, MD2, OBJ, POV, and ASE are also included. The meshes are actually progressive meshes allowing for dynamic LOD (level of detail) changes. There is also support for skeletal sprites.
So it will import your 3DS files. You'll probably need to find some help with scripting since you said you weren't apt with that, but this engine seems to suit your needs. I don't think I included a link last time, so here:
Features of Crystal Space (http://crystal.sourceforge.net/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php?page=Features)
Screenshots (http://crystal.sourceforge.net/tikiwiki/tiki-galleries.php?find=screenshots) (for this kind of look it is necessary to use bump maps)
I hope you haven't given up.. it's hard, but possible.
I strongly believe that Reality Factory (http://www.realityfactory.ca) is for indoor enviroments but please! Somebody prove me wrong!
Quote from: Edwinxie on Mon 14/06/2004 02:01:14
I strongly believe that Reality Factory (http://www.realityfactory.ca) is for indoor enviroments but please! Somebody prove me wrong!
This is a misconception.. there are no indoor or outdoor game engines. Sure, maybe the easier thing to do is indoor or outdoor, but if you can import a half-sphere and put a skymap on it, you can do outdoor scenes.. If you can do outdoor scenes, you can most certainly do indoor ones.
however...
It is my professional opinion that Reality Factor is ungood.
Dr. Frankenstein
Quote from: MrColossal on Mon 14/06/2004 06:03:06
however...
It is my professional opinion that Reality Factor is ungood.
Dr. Frankenstein
I'd have to agree, looking at the features..
but..
It looks easier to use than most 3d engines I've seen, because they automated a lot of processes you'd normally need to script.
Hey, thanks... and I'm still on the hunt!
Crystal Space? But what's this? Open C source code only or what? I didn't figure out what to download!
Argh. Just tried to achieve something with 3d gamestudio and I'm still pissed. 299 entities maximum per level! Damn, I have to make a forest, this means that I have to make trees. Now, being user-friendly, I make leaves as 2-d sprites. three sprites, turned at all axis excactly 90 degrees (as they do in other games) make a leaf group. or bush. For every tree I need about 6-9 of these leaf sprite groups. Just imagine how fast I reach this damn entity limit, considering that 2D sprites and 3D-models with interaction of any kind are both counted as 'entities'! I was able to make only 20 trees... Not much of a forest. Or engine worth anything...
Doing things with any Basic seems stupid, because I have to build level editor first or something like that, I really don't believe I can script whole levels!
What would be really useful is a program that supports 3d models with already applied skin and UVW maps directly from 3ds max. Or has plugin for max which understands max's mapping and converts max files to needed format.
Damn.Ã, :(
These 3D-wannabe-engines are giving me a headache. Back to old lovely X-Y-Only-AGS to finish my first game!
if you're using DarkBasic check this out:
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view=32172&b=8&p=0
or this
http://www.delgine.com/
or this
http://www.dbforums.co.uk/~hamish/contents/multiscape.htm
Wow, I should take a look at some of these. I've always wanted to make a storm chasing game. ;D It'd be a cross between a driving sim and... well, storm chasing.
I recommend Blitz Basic (http://www.blitzbasic.com/).
If you decide to use it, check Blitz Coder (http://www.blitzcoder.com/) for tutorials.
If you program c++ i think irrlicht shows some decent potential:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/
I made some simple tests and had a rendered animated character on screen in no time.
Someone also made a DLL (http://home.tiscalinet.de/xception/files/GMIrrlicht.zip") using Irrlicht for Game Maker (http://www.gamemaker.nl/") which seems to be some kind of non-programming alternative. Have not tested this though...
OMG! Blitz basic looks sooo good! But it's... commercial!
<happiness reduces to -10 immediately>
Every moment like that increases my respect to AGS and CJ, which often seems like lonely happy island at the center of ocean.
Irllicht? Game Maker? Weird, but Game Maker and AGS are two GCS's where I just am able to bring ever the craziest idea into reality - opposite to even simplest scripting in any 3D-related GCS, yet they both use C++...Ã, ??? I'm going to try this out immediately!
Thanks!Ã, :D
edit: irrlicht looks good. Which brings to question number two: What's a good program to make .MD2 files out of .3DS or even - is there any good/free 3ds max plugin to export files into MD2?
Last update: hunt stopped.
Irrlicht seems to be a powerful and free toy, and being equipped with some other none less powerful tools, such as...
- 3ds max 4.2 (for every damned triangle)
- GtkRadiant (Quake level editor, for doing nice .bsp levels)
- Artgem (for all the 2D artwork I do - this time textures)
- Digital camera (which is ordered and should arrive real soon - for photorealistic textures)
- spare time
...I think I'm going to try to make something. This was a basic list of what is needed and something is still missing from the list... oh yes, MD2 texture exporter plugin for 3ds max, I'm still searching for this one. And maybe a copy of Visual Studio 6.0 :D In case I really get some levels, mesh and textures done some day, that is.
Well, whoever was interested about my hunt - here's the things you need to do it my way.
Awesome. I'm glad everything worked out for you.
Good luck.
I'm still trying to figure Crystal Space out.. heh.. I'm making models for a showcase game (Crystal Core) on a team, but can't even figure out the damned engine.