next »

[zweifel]

Team name:
Wizards of the Blizzard

Brief description:

VIDEO

We are a team developing a 3D Game Engine since 2007. Our focus is on gameplay rather than graphics. Our Engine have the following features already implemented:
    * Animated Characters and static Objects
    * Sound Engine (Format support: Ogg, Wav)
    * 3D Engine (supports for selection, 3D movement, Action System using animations of skinned characters and list of actions to create combo and to store multiple commands, Support for 3D Model Formats: Md5mesh and .OBJ, among other things...)
    * User Modifiable Interface
    * Lua Script Support to load and unload Characters, Objects and to define the Scenario. (So artists could easily test different Characters, Objects and Scenarios Sets without the need of compiling the source code)
    * VBOs, World specific drawing optimizations, Memory Sharing support for Wav, Ogg, Md5mesh and Obj, among other optimizations.
    * Compilable under Linux and Windows. And could be ported to all other platforms supported by SDL.
    * Effect's System featuring a extensible set of effects that are configured via Lua scripts, but that are implemented and extensible in C/C++. In a way that artists have more possibilities and a faster way of testing. And that programmers could set things up for performance.
    * Well Documented code in our wiki for the developers and a documentation of how to use and modify the Lua scripts and other settings for the artists who are going to work with scenario design and modeling.
    * Bounded Box Collision detection.
    * Basic Artificial Intelligence   


The Game

Have you ever wanted to show that annoying strategy addicted friend of yours that if this was an action/fighting game you could beat the crap out of all his armies with one guy?

Or are you the strategy addicted friend that cannot keep up with all the button smashing and quick pace of a fighting game but wants to show that brains overcome brute force?

Well in our game the idea is to bring both worlds close together and let you fight it off to decide who is better.

In this game we try to create a new genre of 3D Fighting Strategy Games, where you can choose a character and, based on its abilities, fight against an opponent in an open scenario either in a close combat, action/fighting game style, or by commanding several minions and coming up with strategies to stop that damn enemy from smashing the skulls of your dear summons.

Target aim:

Our aim is to produce a complete 3D Game Engine released as shareware/freeware. Some parts could also be released as LGPL or GPL.
And to release our Game as a Proprietary Game.

Compensation:
    - Every work accepted by artists will have an instant reward by being recorded in our <a href="http://fog.neopages.org/wotb/wotb_art.php">Art's Page</a>.
    - Every work accepted by developers will have an instant reward by being recorded in our <a href="http://fog.neopages.org/wotb/wotb_credits.php">Credit's Page</a>.
    - If the game sells well, job opportunities will arise for everyone on the team, who was working actively.
    - The fun and challenge of producing a very different and interesting game.



Technology:

Our Engine supports Linux and Windows right now.
Languages used: C/C++, GLSL and Lua.
Libraries used: SDL, OpenGL, OpenAL, SDL, SDL_Images, tolua++, libnoise, GLU and GLEW.
Our Engine supports Md5mesh and .Obj 3d model formats, so any tools that could create it are welcome (I normally use Blender), the test of Characters and Objects done by artists could be done easily without compiling the code, by just changing some filenames in a lua script. The Scenario also could be entirely changed by script, so artists designing those features will have a fast test process available. 
Our Sound Engine supports WAV and Ogg. (mostly because MP3 is copyrighted) 

Talent needed:

The genre is fantasy and the art style would be if we have a line from realistic art and cartoon, it would be something pending more to the realistic side. But not too realistic.

ARTISTS:


3D Environment Artist
Task: Create the architecture and objects of the Scenario

Concept Artist
Task: Design and create Characters and/or Scenery.

Effects Artist
Task: Design and create effects like a 2d explosion animation.

Interface Artist
Task: Design and create the layout of the interface.

A mix of the above tasks is not only possible but desirable.

PROGRAMMERS:

Effect's Specialist
Task: Extend our shader framework in C/C++ and implement new shaders and features. Use our Effect's framework to include or use new features like a particle engine.
Knowledge: C++ and shaders (GLSL and others)

"Unnamed"
Task: You does not fit in any pattern so there is no name that could describe what you do. But you program so well that you do not like when people give you a main task, you like to program and wants to do as always lot of tasks. Just because you can!
Knowledge: Strong skills. If you do not know if you have enough, this is not your place.
 
Team structure:

Danilo (myself) - Team Leader, Multi-specialist Programmer with emphasis on Logic.
Mario - Multi-specialist Programmer with emphasis on Physics.
Gustavo - Multi-specialist Programmer.
Jonathan - 3D Character Modeler
Cean - Animator

Freedom boils in Passion, Passion feeds Motivation and Motivation is the energy necessary to create Super Humans.

Our philosophy is that if you give true freedom to a small team of motivated multi specialists, they could do more than a group of 40 non motivated specialists with little freedom.

Website:
<a href="http://wotb.neopages.org">wotb.neopages.org</a>

Contacts:
You can contact us with our <a href="http://fog.neopages.org/wotb/wotb_contact.php">Contact Page</a>.

Previous Work by Team:
I am an experienced programmer in the last semester of Computer Engineering, who have already produced a complete 2D Game and released it in GPL. I made a demo of a 3D flight action game, which I have used its basis for the composition of this Engine. I have also developed a 2D physics engine, an applet simple game and more...the details and the projects I did could be seen in my site: http://www.fog.neopages.org/projects.php
Mario is also an experienced programmer who is already a Computer Engineer, was a member of a previous Game Group and a Robotic group at his university. He had also developed alone a bunch of softwares and speaks fluently japanese. He is famous for learning incredibly fast.
Gustavo programmed an entire simulator of soccer in OpenGL, used as a tool for a Robotic Group. He learns fast, programs fast and is very dedicated.
I, Mario and Gustavo worked together in a Robotic group for some years. In this way, we are used to work together and to divide tasks fastly and in a cooperative way.


Additional Info:




Feedback:
ANY Feedback is welcome. We are not gonna get hurt or anything, just give your opinion, suggestion, question or anything.

[jmzero]

    - Fantasy style
    - Platform: PC
    - Entirely destructible environment. (destructible trees, buildings, people and so on)
    - Modifiable terrain
    - Entirely modifiable game history (every game player will be different, because of how the game is designed)
    - Lively AI

I enjoy writing "engine" type code, and in work I quite often reinvent wheels because I enjoy doing it, and because I prefer time spent writing code to time spent reading documentation.

But I still don't understand the apparently universal compulsion to write a 3d game engine.  I see 297 engines here: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php?order=date_added&ordertype=DESC (though some don't appear to be engines really) with every possible permutation and combination of features. 

I'm sure you'll learn a lot in the process - but the ideas you seem to be interested are all in "game land", so why don't you spend your time there?  Maybe you've decided you can't implement your game in a current engine.  I don't see anything in your description to suggest this is true. 

Contemplate: likely a good percentage of those 297 engines were created by a developer much like you, who imagined they'd be the one to finally get an open 3d engine right with just the right feature set, and the engine would be re-used by lots of developers and would be the start of a ton of great new interesting games.  While we can imagine a few scenarios that might make several of them right, we're still left with the reality that most of them were wrong and would have probably produced something much more interesting if they'd started with someone else's engine.

If you trade the time spent developing another engine for more time writing an interesting game, I think you'll come out on top.  People like playing games with interesting new ideas, but those interesting ideas are hard enough to implement without re-inventing everything. 

[Eclipse]

   
But I still don't understand the apparently universal compulsion to write a 3d game engine.  I see 297 engines here: http://www.devmaster.net/engines/list.php?order=date_added&ordertype=DESC (though some don't appear to be engines really) with every possible permutation and combination of features. 

That's not true at all, there are very few engines that are really usable, maybe Ogre and something else, and even in that case i'd rather write my "engine" from zero than using Ogre bloated APIs, possibly surely even gaining a lot of development time in the end.

Also all those engines lacks of tools. Good editors and plugins are almost important as the main rendering core, so in both cases you still need to build your workflow pipeline, maybe even wrapping a big part of the third party engine.

Professional game developers DO their own engines for the needs of the team and the game, it's way better to use and engine built around your needs than trying to work with a black box (and yes, even opensource stuff like Irrlich or Ogre are almost blackboxes, as going to modify too much their original code is senseless).

To build an interesting game you still need good tools

[zweifel]

First of all, I would like to thank all you guys for your replies here. I am very happy to know that you are taking time to read our project.

Why does we need a new engine?
Our game needs a very fast approach to some visual aspects, so that we can focus on gameplay. But we try to use as much as possible other libraries available. (Although this fact makes sometimes our work more troublesome, when cross-compiling and other issues)

but the ideas you seem to be interested are all in "game land"

You are right, maybe I only showed you guys the gameplay about the land part. So let me show another example =).

If some player decides to kill some people and is seen doing so, in a common game nothing will happen. Well, some games will implement a system which soldiers will seek the guy for what he has done and maybe do not let he enter the city anymore.

But what if instead of putting some scripts, we just develop a system of passing messages between npcs. This will naturally behavior as a natural system of communication and the player could receive a persecution, or he could just kill whoever knows about what he had done to stop people from knowing what he had done. The information and reputation of the player would also naturally evolves as information is exchanged between cities.

We will have to limit ourselves at some point, but this point could be already interesting to play when compared to other games.

[jmzero]

That's not true at all, there are very few engines that are really usable, maybe Ogre and something else...

That seems fairly dismissive of a lot of code and a lot of people's work.  If we include commercial engines (like Unreal, or more hybrid type things like Torque), then it seems even more of a reaching claim - and overlooks the fact that there are many commercial or otherwise successful games made with other people's engines. 

Really - why would I believe that my engine code is going to be any less bloated or unusable than the work someone else has done (and taken the bother of posting and/or specifically refining to be useful to others)?  Again, maybe I'm the one to finally get it right - but everyone can't be right here.

Now I don't expect you to try out hundreds of engines... but I guess that's part of the problem.  I don't expect anyone to try out all these engines or collaborate and share code on this front much at all.  I expect that a large percentage of independent 3d game developers will go ahead and spend most of their time fiddling with engine and tool code, and, in the end, produce either nothing or a game that ends up being a boring, low-content tech demo for their engine.  And I expect the primary reason for this is, as before, a typical programmer's (including me) built-in preference for coding over reading documentation. 

Imagine an alternative: people actually get together to improve an engine and build a selection of common tools around it.  Every developer that uses that start ends up giving back something.  In the end, you can produce an interesting game using conventional 3d graphics very easily and still have the flexibility to implement odd features as required.  That won't happen if everyone starts from zero.

Professional game developers DO their own engines for the needs of the team and the game

Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.  Sometimes they do make their own engine, but probably shouldn't have.  I've played plenty of games that could have been implemented in established engines, but instead were crappy bugfests in a house-built engine. 

Commercial games also have huge budgets, huge teams, and often are pushing technical frontiers in terms of graphics.  Most independent 3d projects are exactly the opposite - they have no budget, tiny teams, and are generally not technically demanding (to be technically demanding in a 3d game usually means lots of art resources, which aren't there because there's no budget). 

That's not to say there aren't plenty of exceptions. If you're really doing something outside the ordinary that will require something a "normal" engine won't do easily, then fine.  But if you're developing a fantasy game involving characters with canned animations running around a simple outdoor landscape with buildings and trees, then you're firmly in the realm of things a pre-built engine is going to help you realize.  And by using that pre-built engine, there's a good chance that "next feature" you want is going to be a lot easier to get than it would have been otherwise.

Going to an extreme, consider Defense of the Ancients.  It's a hugely successful game, and it's that way largely because the developers involved had nothing else to focus on but gameplay.  Everything else: engine, models, animation, network code, sounds, is re-used stuff. 

Sure in some sense they could have produced something better by starting from zero.  But could they really have?  How many independent games have started at zero and been as successful or high quality as DOTA?  Not many, because for most games the time that could have gone into making a good game instead went into producing the things the DOTA devs got for free. 

I'm certainly not saying everyone should make mods.  What I'm saying is that it can be worthwhile to concentrate on the game you want to make and take the shortest path. 

Responding to zweifel: But what if instead of putting some scripts, we just develop a system of passing messages between npcs.

My comments were regarding building your own 3d engine; building the AI for your game from scratch is a much more reasonable prospect, and I think having an interesting AI is a great place to really set your game apart.

[mewse]

If someone wants to write their own engine code, then that's a perfectly reasonable choice and they're entirely within their rights to do so; they really don't need to justify themselves to back-seat programmers on the Internet.

[Eclipse]

That's not true at all, there are very few engines that are really usable, maybe Ogre and something else...

That seems fairly dismissive of a lot of code and a lot of people's work.  If we include commercial engines (like Unreal, or more hybrid type things like Torque), then it seems even more of a reaching claim - and overlooks the fact that there are many commercial or otherwise successful games made with other people's engines. 

who was talking about commercial engines?
So the answer to the "why not using an existing engine" will turn to "why not using unreal3?" and you can answer to that yourself

Really - why would I believe that my engine code is going to be any less bloated or unusable than the work someone else has done (and taken the bother of posting and/or specifically refining to be useful to others)?  Again, maybe I'm the one to finally get it right - but everyone can't be right here.

It's all about getting it right for your needs and your game, not getting it right for everyone. If i plan to do an RTS i'm not interested in having a general purpose engine like Ogre when i still need to implement a lot of stuff, as i'm never going to use it's quake 3 bsp support or the fixed pipeline.

Imagine an alternative: people actually get together to improve an engine and build a selection of common tools around it. 

that would suck a lot, even on big teams the engine is done by very few people, it will only lead to a damn mess. That's why projects like irrlitch or ogre are basically leaded by a single person.
Also you can write your own "indie" engine in one of two months if you already know your needs, it's not like that you always need a feature complete engine for every kind of game.
I really don't see the problem about making your own stuff, most of the times it's not reinventing the wheel, because there are not complete tools of development out there if you're not speaking about the Source engine or U3.

Also i'm currently doing my game using my stuff and i think i would have already dropped it having to work within the horrible structure of Ogre or the very slow code of irrlicht.

Last but not least I could port my code on consoles with ease because is quite streamlined, using a LGPL engine would limit my platforms of choice

[jmzero]

If someone wants to write their own engine code, then that's a perfectly reasonable choice and they're entirely within their rights to do so; they really don't need to justify themselves to back-seat programmers on the Internet.

Sorry, my understanding of the "feedback" forum is that people wanted "feedback" on their game, how it's being developed, and what not.  That's what I gave.  He's obviously under no obligation to listen to anyone's suggestion or justify himself.  If someone asks for advice on how to get somewhere, and I say "I think you should turn left" does that make me a horrible backseat driver?

And yes, if someone wants to write their own engine, then that's a perfectly reasonable choice.  But if what someone actually wants it to make a good game, my contention is that writing your own engine may or may not be a reasonable choice.  And the last part - "within their rights" is just silly and offensive.  Obviously I'm not contending that it's not OK for someone to write whatever code they want.

[jmzero]

I really don't see the problem about making your own stuff, most of the times it's not reinventing the wheel, because there are not complete tools of development out there if you're not speaking about the Source engine or U3.

Sorry, I've lost track of what I'm arguing here. 

Is it the question of whether a general purpose 3d engine is possible or desirable for a lot of projects?  Because I think the existence, use and success of commercial engines provides good evidence that that is the case, and that's why I brought them up.

Or are we arguing about whether there exists, now, an open source engine worthwhile for using in the kind of game it seems like is being built here?  On this, I happily concede that maybe you're right.  Maybe there isn't anything worthwhile to use.  I guess my point would be that there appears to be a tremendous number of people who've made an attempt, and at very least it seems like it would be a good idea to see what they've done before writing your own general purpose 3d engine.

Or are we arguing about how much value a good engine/toolset provides in development, and how long it takes to produce this kind of code for a new project?  In this case, I'd say it depends on the project.  You say 1 or 2 months (and I assume you're meaning 1 person part time or something).  I think that's possible depending on a game, but I think an engine developed in that time frame is going to put heavy limits in terms of how well you can produce and use art and other content, as well as limits on functionality that might be desired down the road.  I think this is especially the case when what you're doing essentially mirrors average commercial games: outdoor setting, animated humanoid characters, etc..

There's obviously a million things that vary, and the right path really depends on what you want to produce and what you enjoy doing.  I'm just giving advice based on my opinions and values. 

However, maybe this puts it in perspective.  From the original post: "We are a team developing an 3D Engine for 2 years and a half". 

After 2 and a half years, there's not a demoable game.  This is how 90% of the independent 3d projects I see go (obviously that statistic is off the top of my head, but I think it's about right).

Also, as a last point, the last time I did a 3d project (long ago!) I wrote my own engine - so my position isn't some bizarre absolute. (See www.jumpmanzero.com).  In defense of my mental stability, I knew exactly what I'd need for the game (which was nothing - no animation, basically fixed camera, no shaders, procedurally generated models so no import) and a large part of my interest in developing the game was learning about DirectX.  I ended up spending a few days on engine (not 2.5 years) and the rest of the dev time (a few months of scattered hours) doing game content (the part where an independent developer has something to bring to the table).  It ended up being a successful game for me (lots of downloads, lots of positive feedback from players).

[Eclipse]

I think that they've spent that two years and half learning programming more than doing something useful for real.
(Ogre is under development for at least 5 or 6 years now anyway, that's why it's quite bloated)

Is it the question of whether a general purpose 3d engine is possible or desirable for a lot of projects?  Because I think the existence, use and success of commercial engines provides good evidence that that is the case, and that's why I brought them up.

that's not true, there are not free engines with a lot of commercial products that aren't quite shitty games, Ogre counts a good number (2 or 3?) of commercial games but made by entire teams, and i truly believe that doing an engine from scratch is faster most of the time in the long run, as even you said with your experience

[zweifel]

Hello Guys!

We made some changes in the concept of our game.

And we have a VIDEO NOW!.

[Perrin]

I'm also wary of the notion of anything not coded here is bloaty and not fit for purpose. HOWEVER not looking to get involved in the argument above.

Will say, right now I personally couldn't give any feedback until your videos start showing some real interesting gameplay.

[zweifel]

I would like to thank people for all their applications. 

Our team has a new 3D Character Modeler and we are going to publish some Work in Progress soon.

We are still needing more artists. Mainly a concept art and an animator.

[zweifel]

Thanks for all the interest, all applications were analyzed with care. We are happy to say that we have a new animator aboard and we are still looking for more talents.

We are now strongly seeking a talented Concept Artist.

Some work in progress:

[Christian Knudsen]

Ooooh, very nice! That guy looks just about ready to kick some ass with those potions!

[zweifel]

It is been a while since I posted here, so here we go with some updates...

We are looking mainly now for one more concept artist (with a focus on nature, fantasy and/or oriental elements), one more 3d character modeler and one more animator (with a focus on fighting).

And at the development side we need a graphics programmer with a shader portfolio.

Work in Progress (this time from our Engine now supporting bump mapping and other shaders):