@Zaid: I would recommend you to take a few hours and read through Herb Sutter's "Exceptional C++" and "More Exceptional C++". They're fun and fast reads and filled with easy-to-digest hands-on tips on how to understand and use the STL efficiently.

A wiki would be perfect but Tig has none afaik. I could make a site for it but wouldn't a "Tig knowledge database" here or something be better? I also asked Derek a while ago for some table extensions to the forum but no reply, so I guess the admins aren't too keen on adding features

Would love to have a sister table in the engines thread, but every post is limited to 20Kb and I've been at that limit for some time now. And I didn't reserve a few posts after the first one since at that time I thought I just made a regular thread, not a resource. @self  Every time I add something to the table I have to shave something else off.

Is really Monocle a complete game engine? I looked at it a month ago or so and it seemed to only be a multi-platform renderer.

I thought we could have a thread about renderer frameworks, that is, frameworks that abstracts bare-metal APIs (principally OGL and DX). I know mainly the 3D renderers, but I see no problem with including and discussing 2D ones, too. So what alternatives are out there, and what are their foci, advantages, strengths and drawbacks?

I will try so summarise briefly my impressions:

3D renderers:

• Irrlicht. Scene-graphed renderer. Originally intended for FPS scenarios. Quite fast, easy to use, bad at low-level operations.
• Horde3D. Scene-graphed renderer. Focused on optimising throughput of large batches.
• OGRE 3D. Scene-graphed renderer. Very fast. Very flexible. Can be coaxed into doing virtually any high- or low-level operation, though it is rather complex to use.
• Open Scene Graph (OSG). Scene-graphed renderer. Fast. Seems to originally be intended for serious applications. Seems equivalent to OGRE in capabilities but easier to use.
• Panda3D. Scene-graphed renderer. Easier to use than OGRE but slightly less fast.
• Raydium. GPL licence. 3D renderer for iOS, Linux, Win, Mac.

Do these belong here?:

• SDL
• SFML
• Monocle Engine
• PolyCode

What is the benefits and drawbacks of these as you see it?

If it is Windows, why don't you simply bite the bullet and make a minimal GDI window with one big fat QUIT button?

It is basically only one registerWindow, two createWindow calls and a minimal event function.

I would recommend you to take a good look at OpenSceneGraph too. It it as powerful as OGRE, supports more platforms, and is better designed (in the sense that it is more accessible). Caveat: I haven't developed any real application in OSG.

Yeah, I was looking at it too but somehow it seems also quite complex. Though, I have only skimmed through the web only. I didn't build it and didn't try examples or anything. I'll probably take a better look at it.
Any idea about its speed?

It is probably one of the most efficient general-purpose and landscape renderers out there, at the same level as OGRE. It it used in plenty of non-game flight simulators and applications.

What I need from the engine is this:
- basic 3D rendering
- particles
- fast terrain rendering
- higher-level API above OGL, DX etc.
- window creating and input handling

For your requirement, and given the very sensible principle to keep your dependencies simple enough to be easily maintainable, Irrlicht is probably the way. It handles terrain and particles nicely and is fast and easy to work with as long as you keep to the API. I needed manual access to textures and create meshes programatically, and it was impossible in Irrlicht so I moved to OGRE.

Hoarde3D is probably an excellent option. The API seems sleek and very accessible. I usually consider University backing a bonus because that means there will be a focus on conceptual integrity and stability. I remember it as being very fast for ahndling massive amounts of actors in a world, and that would probably be the foremost reason for selecting it.

Raydium seems very interesting. The only issues with it I see are:
(1) unclear licence: the about page says GPL, which makes it unusual for commercial development, but in the forum they say "pick between LGPL/BSD". Also,
Q: "Can I make a commercial game using raydium?"
A: "First lets look at what dependences Raydium would normally compile your game with on linux. [snip] So at this state if you compiled your game and all of these library's into a "Standalone binary" and distributed it with out the source you would be in trouble. ... The safest way would be to keep the code base open source and then just copyright all media 'Models, Textures, Music, Sound, Scripts, etc'. Then you charge for the game "CD/DVD & Book" & you could make it an online pay to play and everyone is happy."

(2) Seems to be developed by young and overly idealistic people with very headstrong ideas about what is "right", f.i. the only supported texture format is TGA because no other format, including png, has "any positive points".

Kinda fun, too long. Managed 45 seconds. Still made me smile, though, so thanks!  <-- It's Eres-blend tea in the cup

Checked it out, thx for the youtube link! Looks very interesting! Just gotta ask, if playing for free one is restricted to "marks 1", will this have a deep effect? Will I be mauled by everyone else and not able to contribute to my side?

Serious futurists also predicted that computers would never become widely adopted because they were much too large.

citation needed (i've heard people predicted this, but never anyone i'd call a futurist)

One google away:
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of DEC

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
- Popular Mechanics, 1949

There was also a quote we read when I studied business at Uni that was approximately "in the future there will be computers the size of skyscrapers cooled by waterfalls. There will be a market for perhaps three of them in the US". I can't find that quote now however. But it was from an industrial bigwig at the time, probably the '50s.

Excellent guide! And an astonishing read! I was thinking "how could they?!" and my eyes kept widening as I read! Yeah, that nebulous complexity has to be done away with or there isn't a chance for PlayN to take off. Coupled with poor documentation and an unclear purpose or actual advantage things seems to talk against it atm.

I would recommend you to take a good look at OpenSceneGraph too. It it as powerful as OGRE, supports more platforms, and is better designed (in the sense that it is more accessible). Caveat: I haven't developed any real application in OSG.

Skip ahead to Monster King?

Why not simply require 100xp points for each level?
It's much simplier for a player to estimate xp reward this way.
You can easily assign xp values for quest and monsters in terms of monsters per level.

The reason no RPG does this, is because it makes your first encounters have the same value as the final boss.

All Shining Force games (some seven iterations) do this: 100xp == 1 level. They base the XP gained per adversary on a formula, though, where your get increasingly less XP with the amount you outlevel them.

Looked at the video and it looks and sounds great and seems to be well executed! Slick, beautiful, nice! However, it didn't draw me in enough to make me test the demo. I've played some games that are very similar to it and I didn't see any reason for me to test this too.

So my feedback is simply: in your adverts, state clearly why this is worth to play. People who have never seen a game like this might not need it, but many have played games of this type and style before.

And Comic Sans would be a better font... 

Burn the witch!

I think Paul is the most person on TIGS.

There, fixed it for you.

Is it meaningful to include IdTech1&2 when IdTech3 (ioquake3) seems to be the most recent? Would anyone developing a FPS game select the first two iterations over the third? Secondly, isn't IdTech4 about to go open-source any time now?

But I will look into Cube2!

The point of his suggested method is that there aren't any global variables, only variables declared in the local translation space (the .cpp file). One can argue semantics and claim that those are "global" in that they are not members of a class, but then again a class is basically like a namespace where you have functions and variables. Classes are generally only needed where you must transport and make data available or where you need actual polymorphism.

I'm straight and dislike anyone and everyone who feels the need to flaunt their sexual preference. including straight people.

I hate the argument homophobes use like "I don't flaunt my sexuality so they should shut up about theirs" (something an old friend used to say and something many say). Then every word out of his mouth was "I'd fuck the shit out of her" or "I love the tits on her". It's basically the same thing and just as annoying. Yes, I get it, you are a male and you like females-especially ones with large breasts. cool story bro.

What annoys the hell out of me is that in the "ooo, I'd do do the hooters on that hot moma" macho male worldview and mindset there is a dichotomy between being straight and being able to acknowledge and appreciate the male aesthetic. I am strait but can recognise and appreciate a beautiful man's face, physiology, grace etc, just as I can be revolted by those guys that try to be über-male stereotypes (or über-female for that matter) for their own sexual comfort's sake. I can look at women and lust and I can look at men and appreciate beauty of many forms: nature's artwork, health, fitness, grace and bearing, etc. The thing I dislike of both sexes is an obsession with artificiality and superficiality (overgrooming, excessive make-up and hair dye, body decorations, fashion slavery): natural, clean and healthy with some little individual spice to it is where it is all at.

not actually a man

*stunned*
I really need to stop assuming that everyone on the internet is male.

There aren't women on the internet. If they say they are they are male. If they say they are children they are FBI agents.

I'm gay.

I'll bite and give you attention: Wow! Shock! 

"Ritchie's influence rivals Jobs's; it's just less visible," James Grimmelman observed on Twitter. "His pointer has been cast to void *; his process has terminated with exit code 0."

Bullcrap. Richie's influence has been far greater, wider and deeper than Jobs ever could be. Without C no UNIX, no BSD, no Linux, no MacOS, no iPhone, no instant cross-architecture transferability of entire OS kernel code basesm no rapid embedded systems development etc etc. Or at least as we know it today.

Thanks Richie, I might not like your coding style (I prefer Allaman over K&R), but you have shaped the world I love! Rip