features all game engines need

illo

hello everyone, Im compiling a list of awesome tools/wishlisty stuff that people have used or want to have inside a game engine.


things I like:
unity3d- max, maya, fbx, collada file types all supported and auto model/texture update

cryengine- road and river tools

m4dcow

I don't know what to call them, but in the uncharted series they have tree roots that are rigged up so that they can be positioned differently per instance. I also remember watching a Naughtydog person go through the process of building a level, and in the detail phase placed a plant of some sort on a wall, but could manipulate different pieces of the plant to make it snake around a wall. For some reason I remember this stuff being called "move mods" but a search didn't turn anything up.

But this stuff would be great for set dressing in other engines.

m4dcow

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6xICN8N-o78&t=18m31s"]Gamer Talk Community #01 - Lecture with Uncharted 3 Lead Technical Artist part 2 of 6 - YouTube[/ame]
Skip to about 18:30, describes Movemods.

gray

vectors?

edit:
matrices, definitely matrices.

Ark

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWEGt-MciS0"]S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky: Demonstration of new X-Ray engine with DirectX 10 2008 - YouTube[/ame]

The proper volumetric lighting and dynamic wet effects really stood out from the stalker games.

Don't think I've seen any other game do full scene sun-shafts the way stalker does it.

gray

cross platform. windows/linux/osx/android/console. that is a huge amount of work. but i think as the market gets bigger on new devices such as android its going to be a necessity.

ZacD

Minimal baking and compiling if possible.

bugo

Unity still needs a lot of work. Specially their material and server side.

leilei

jigglebones

The Flying Monk

More of an editor rather than an engine feature but,
Minium steps/time from 3d app to game, and reload assets without having to restart the app.
In UDK you can throw it FBX and PSD files at it and its fine. Other engines you need to export into format X, then run command line app Y, and then copy some(but not all) files to data directory Z. This ins't great for encouraging artists to check their work in game.

Idealy the engine can check if a file has been updated while its running and update it. So I have the game running in one window and Photoshop in the other. As soon as I hit file save in PS the game switches out the texture.

FlynT

ZacD wrote: »

Minimal baking and compiling if possible.

I'll second that!

Swizzle

FlynT wrote: »

I'll second that!

And I'll third it.

My god, working with terrible proprietary and/or outdated formats and janky import/export tools is a nightmare. Just let me use a friggin' FBX, for crissakes.

ZacD

Swizzle wrote: »

And I'll third it.

My god, working with terrible proprietary and/or outdated formats and janky import/export tools is a nightmare. Just let me use a friggin' FBX, for crissakes.

Yes, you should be able to import an art assest and see how it looks textured in 30 seconds.

JonathanLambert

UNLIMITED DETAIL!!!

Dataday

m4dcow wrote: »

I don't know what to call them, but in the uncharted series they have tree roots that are rigged up so that they can be positioned differently per instance. I also remember watching a Naughtydog person go through the process of building a level, and in the detail phase placed a plant of some sort on a wall, but could manipulate different pieces of the plant to make it snake around a wall. For some reason I remember this stuff being called "move mods" but a search didn't turn anything up.

But this stuff would be great for set dressing in other engines.

I believe this is because their engine is build upon MAYA itself. If we are thinking of the same thing, the artist can then quickly rig parts of a mesh and modify it accordingly. Since the engine can accept the rigs, and its built on top of maya, it gives them quite a bit of freedom to work artistically with the engine itself.

nyx702

ZacD wrote: »

Yes, you should be able to import an art assest and see how it looks textured in 30 seconds.

Yea I can't believe how this it's the first post. Being able to easily iterate on your asset and see how it looks in game quickly is #1 for me. Testing animation easily/quickly is #2.