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[nayon]

So, I'm trying out engines with 3D capabilities. I'm being quite frustrated, either due to my lack of understanding of the engine, or the engine's lack of being win. Please help me out.

Blender Game Engine

This f**king sucks. I mean, just to add simple x-y movement to a sphere takes so long and it is so ungraceful, I can never deal with this. Or am I doing something wrong?

Irrlicht

This one's pretty cool, however I feel like it is underdocumented and it refuses to load certain 3ds files unless you modify them. Also, IrrEdit is horrible in resource management, I can't load anything ingame because all files point to random places. Other map editors (ie quake editors) require a quake engine to be installed (even gtkradiant) so I'm at a loss.

Ogre

Everyone says this is more complicated than Irrlicht so I am staying away.

Panda3D

There's no proper tutorial for configuring this with a machine which has python already installed, which I do. I've tried several things and they don't work. Also this one kinda sounds backwards to me.

Unity

I really wanna try this because it sounds awesome, but I don't have a mac and it looks expensive.

XNA

Sheesh. Even if it were deployable (framework issues, doesn't run an half the computers I try to distribute my exe), somehow I don't feel like using this.


So, what do you people recommend? AM I missing anything? Also can someone do a performance comparison of these?

[nihilocrat]

Ogre3d : I don't find it terribly complicated, it just tries very hard to be modular above all else. This is good for plugin developers, but might be hard for beginners to deal with. The sheer number of cool plugins for it, I think, outweighs a harsher learning curve. The fact that it concentrates solely on 3D, the quality of its maintainers, the use it has gotten in commercial games, all point to it being a top pick in my book.

3D : It packs in its own version of Python in the Panda3d/python directory. If you want extra libraries, just install them in its Python instance.

Panda is a strange beast; from the outset you can notice that it's what happens when some institution makes a 3D engine that only a tiny population is really supposed to use, and then half-heartedly release it to the public. It is a little counter-intuitive at first, but once you learn the "Panda" way of doing things, there are lots of already-prebuilt stuff in the engine that saves you a lot of headaches. However, as with anything prebuilt, if you want to use it to do something not predicted by the developers, you are sometimes fighting against the framework more than you are accomplishing the task.

Unity : I am in the exact same boat as you are! Sorry I can't give input, just saying "me too!". It looks like they are making a Windows version available soon, though. Gotta save up for it!

I keep meaning to try out Irrlicht myself... I might try and use it for my next project.

[Zaknafein]

I'm a long time user of the Truevision3D engine and I've been very satisfied with it all this time, so here goes my recommendation : http://www.truevision3d.com/

A couple of things worth mentioning about it :
- It's a 3D engine, not a game engine, and doesn't help much (nor does it get in the way) for game code.
- The documentation is pretty much inexistant, but the forums are very helpful and community members have made a number of tutorials and samples to get you started.
- There's a free unlimited demo, the full single-product license is 150$.
- There are bindings for any COM-capable language (VB6 works), C++ or .NET.

[Chris Whitman]

Ogre

Everyone says this is more complicated than Irrlicht so I am staying away.

I used Ogre a lot for little demos back in the day. It has a bit of a learning curve, but is really quite powerful, and once you get into it it is not as difficult as at first it seems. There is also a book on it written by one of the developers which is apparently quite good, so it might be worth checking out.

Unfortunately, it is still a general purpose 3D engine, meaning it takes a lot of work to layer something on top of it specifically suitable for games.

The thing is, Jon Blow is right in his lectures -- 3D is really quite difficult. To produce a full 3D game you are going to need considerably more assets than a comparable 2D game and a lot of very specialized skills. In 2D you can simply sketch out sprites and sprite sheets, but for 3D you are not only going to have to build models, you are going to have to make sure they are conducive to rigging, etc.

I'm not sure what your experience level with these things is, but I guess just keep in mind that learning an entirely new skill set is really a project in itself. If things seem complicated and confusing, it is probably because they are.

[TheBlackMask]

I am personally waiting for Unity 3D to come out with a Windows version.  It does cost some money, but they do have a 30 day trial, and that should be long enough to figure out if it is worth dropping $200 on.

[Chris Whitman]

My only real problem with Unity is that, while there is a very low price tag, you have to pay big bucks just to get Shader support.

It is now 2009. Everything, up to and including lamps and toasters, should support shaders by now. It is really a basic feature.

[nayon]

I'm not sure what your experience level with these things is, but I guess just keep in mind that learning an entirely new skill set is really a project in itself. If things seem complicated and confusing, it is probably because they are.

Well no matter what my experience level, I have to use one for my senior project anyway. But I also want to use an engine for games. Well, I got an A in my computer graphics course, so it is safe to say I am familiar with 3d concepts and 3d math (wrote a raytracer! it was hell!), and I am also familiar with general game design concepts. Assets generation is of insignificant consequence, my primary concern is engine. And I have no gripes about an engine not being open source. So yeah.

[nayon]

The complication isn't about the math or programming or whatever, it is about the logic of the engines. The way they load assets, where irredit requires everything to be at a specific place, or irrlicht won't load some 3ds models because they're not formatted the way it wants, or stuff like that. I can surpass my own limitations, but I cannot surpass the limitations of the engine.

[gnat]

Blender Game Engine

This f**king sucks. I mean, just to add simple x-y movement to a sphere takes so long and it is so ungraceful, I can never deal with this. Or am I doing something wrong?

I haven't used BGE for awhile.. but as far as I remember it's like:

- select an object (a cube, whatever)
- go to the logic panel
- add a keyboard sensor, assign a key
- add an AND controller
- add a motion actuator, change some location values for movement
- link together the sensor, controller and actuator that you just created
- start the game

Voila, movement.

This method is UI based, although apparently everything is accessible through Python as well.

[nayon]

Blender Game Engine

This f**king sucks. I mean, just to add simple x-y movement to a sphere takes so long and it is so ungraceful, I can never deal with this. Or am I doing something wrong?

I haven't used BGE for awhile.. but as far as I remember it's like:

- select an object (a cube, whatever)
- go to the logic panel
- add a keyboard sensor, assign a key
- add an AND controller
- add a motion actuator, change some location values for movement
- link together the sensor, controller and actuator that you just created
- start the game

Voila, movement.

This method is UI based, although apparently everything is accessible through Python as well.

Yeah and you do that for EACH keyboard button. After 4 directional movement with jumping you get 15 boxes on your screen. That's not nice. Though I'd be interested in writing python code instead, do you know how I can do that?

[ggnosfex]

Well, seeing as nobody said already, I'll recommend you to check out Torque. It comes in a wide amount of flavors of engine types, and it is so cheap to get (free, if you don't want the source code, $100 u$d for all of it (methinks, do not remember) ). Besides, Torque already handles some game features, so, its a renderer + gameEngine.

[gnat]

Though I'd be interested in writing python code instead, do you know how I can do that?

Nope, i've never done that. Whether or not it is worth the research is up to you.

[muku]

I'd also like to throw out Horde3D, which I always thought looked very interesting; never tried it though. Possible downside is that it requires an OpenGL 2.0 card, but that shouldn't be too restrictive nowadays.

[Eclipse]

having my own 3d engine for quite a time i don't follow much more the lgpl engines scene, but i was both an irrlitch and an ogre user back then (like 4 years ago and more!)

irrlitch is quite simple but slow and unoptimized, the API by itself is not bad and there are many samples in the download, i think you only need to spend a bit more time messing around with it

ogre is (or at least was) way better performance wise but it's overstructured and designed much more like an OOP  virtuosism than a real engine should imo, it's really messy and you will find yourself doing stuff like thing->getThingManager()->anotherThingListener()->getChild()->setWhatever() sort of stuff.

[Ivan]

http://www.ivansafrin.com/crap6/luaedit5.png

i'm gonna try to release this soonish

[Jared C]

http://www.ivansafrin.com/crap6/luaedit5.png

Oh, yus!   This looks very cool.   What language does it use?

[BorisTheBrave]

Um, lua? 

[dbest]

Wudnt Lua be used only for the scripting? I dont think it can handle rendering all by itself.

[nayon]

Looks cool, but doesn't using lua come with a performance cost?

[Kaelan]

Looks cool, but doesn't using lua come with a performance cost?

Everything comes with a performance cost. The cost for using lua is negligible. You should be concerned about the 'my-free-time' cost to *not* using a dynamic language (like lua).

Lua's one of the fastest dynamic languages out there. It's possible to build a slow game using lua, but you're not going to do much better unless you code everything from scratch in C++.