Game Engine Opinions

jgall21

<font color="blue"> </font> Hey people Which Game Engine in your Opinion, do you think is the most advance and could have used more work on. This is just a conversation Thread. In my opinion id say the Source engine is the most advanced engine ive seen so far, for the people who dont know, The source engine was used to power games like Half-Life 2, Hence the name Counter-Strike Source, Day of Defeat Source, Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines and more to come. have a look at some of these game @ http://www.gamespy.com. well hope to hear some feedback People. <font color="blue"> </font>

pogonip

Unreal Engine 3.0 rulz j00....

JKMakowka

Don't feed the troll

CheapAlert

i like doom because it owns

iMag

I like pong's graphics engine, you just can't beat those sexy pixels

John Warner

custer's revenge, baby

Justin Meisse

Corncob 3D

CheapAlert

[ QUOTE ]
custer's revenge, baby

[/ QUOTE ]

I wanted to make a gargoyle-in-france mod of that

KDR_11k

Unless you're excluding engines without any games available I'd say Unreal Engine 3.0. Perhaps there are better ones but none have been announced so far. UE3 isn't just an engine, it's a complete toolkit. Also, it's available for the Xenon and they're promising PS3 and Revolution support.

sundance

ut2004 is cool for vehicles...

but then the joint ops engine is bigger and holds more vehicles and people...

depends what you're doing with the engine...

KDR_11k

Every engine does vehicles, they're just not always implemented ingame. Doom 3 has them as extras in the SDK.

Frankie V

The best engine going is the one in my 1986 Volkswagen Jetta

sundance

LOL!!!

jgall21

[ QUOTE ]
The best engine going is the one in my 1986 Volkswagen Jetta

[/ QUOTE ]

hahahahaha lol

Irritant

Ok, on a technical level, the best engine that is released(so Unreal 3.0 doesn't quite count yet) is easily the Doom 3 engine. The source engine has nice physics code, but the renderer is pretty average. In fact it looks as if little has changed since the HL engine other than adding some better game art and a few effects(pretty water, etc).

The Source engine is really no better than the current Unreal engine, which isn't to say it's bad, but they cannot do what the Doom engine is currently doing.

Now if your talking about things other than visual appeal, and factoring in things such as physics, speed, etc, then I think the current Unreal engine is probably the best, and you really cannot discount the Quake III engine just for sheer prettiness and that it's probably the fastest engine out there that still has a reasonable amount of eye candy.

It really all depends on how your "rating" the engine, and what aspects to consider.

If the question is "what's the most advanced engine?", then the obvious answer is Doom III, and soon to be replaced by the Unreal 3.0 engine.

And Sundance, vehicles have nothing to do with the engine. Vehicles were in Q1 mods for god sakes

jgall21

hmm good point Indeed, the Unreal engine when released will indeed be the most realistic engine available, Currently I still rather look @ valves source technology compared to ID's Doom 3 and Still doom 3 didnt have too much freedom to move around but then again ive never seen other games utilize the doom 3 engine, doom 3 was way too confined and I did not see too much level of detail campared to the source engine. the source engine looks the best with the best meaning:
Athlon 64 FX-55 (2.6GHz)
ATI RADEON X800 XT 256
512 PC-3200 RAM

thats what I seem to have and it is pretty damm good looking

KDR_11k

When you're licensing an engine you don't have to care about whether they have games already. UE3.0 is available for license NOW. On the other hand I expect Doom 3 to make quite a few steps forward as well. iD doesn't use all the features available to them because no PC could handle that so their engines remain relevant after the showcase game got released. Consider what people did with Q3A later on. Stuff like soft shadows is supported in D3 AFAIK but is disabled for performance reasons in the game. There's a mod that adds parallaxing to the normalmaps. Engine-wise I have no idea who is ahead but UE3's toolset seems like an invaluable asset to keep your production costs down (Mark Rein proclaimed they could develop next-gen software at only 1.5 times the cost of current gen stuff). Just remember that whatever it is that you start developing now will arrive when the hardware is MUCH more advanced (remember how everyone was shocked that Doom 3 would require at least a GeForce 3 when it was announced?). Well lit outside areas will be possible in Doom 3 by then.

Also, when you're licensing physics don't matter as much, you can just license the current Havok version if you're unhappy with the default physics (but realistically, unless you're going for HL2-style gimmick gameplay the default physics are more than enough).

jgall21

well put my friend well put. I seem to be learning alot more from people with the knowledge, I am however a rookie @ 3d design, who has yet to descover an engine i could work with. so far everything looks like Doom 3 and UR 3.0

Asherr

my thoughts on game engines from my own experience trying to mod them:

Doom3:
runs poorly without a highend graphics card if you want it to look half decent. lagged up on my computer when more than 2 enemies were present even on lower settings.

code: easy to code for, stuff like weapons have all the code you need in one file (model, texture, damage, speed, ect..). also all you have to do to find the weapon code is look under base/def folder. everything is easy to find. Doom3 contains a nice GUI editor tool you can use or you can run Doom3 in a window and have your HUD file open and alt tab back and forth to see your changes in game. (binding a key to reloadgui helps a lot too).

mapping: using Radiant is ok and i used to like it quite a lot but now not so much (see Source and Hammer). the engine does not handle large open enviroments well. you just cannot use one light as a sun for outdoor lighting, the engine chokes. one of the guys from Raven (jedi academy guys) had a little tutorial about seeing how many lights are hitting a surface, basically if more than one light is hitting a surface in Doom3 it's not good and you should break up long brushes. this can lead to a lot more rather unnecessary brushes, in my opinion. (if you want a long corridor with say 4 lights at intervals, instead of 4 brushes, floor/ceiling/two walls, you would need to use 8 or 16 brushes). you can't define an intensity for a light, only it's dimensions (which are x,y,z, a box. what kind of light source has squared falloff?), the larger the dimensions of the light the brighter it is, the brighter it is the worse it runs. though it is nice that you can apply material shaders to the lights to change color, texture, make them flash, rotate, shake... Doom3's realtime preview is nice also as it let's you see your map exactly how it will look in game. lots of nice tutorials over at Doom3world

Source:
runs well on regular pcs without the need for a fancy graphics card. light blooms, nice water. rarely stuttered even with half a dozen enemies and large open areas.

coding: gah! how many freaking files do you need for one weapon? and they are all scattered throughout various folders. i can't find hardly anything when i want to try and modify something. everything is in C++ also...

mapping: woo! i love Hammer it was a little awkward to use at first after using radiant for so long (q3, jedi outcast, jedi academy...) but once i got used to it i loved it. lighting is nice as you can have a single light source for large outdoor areas and it lights everything like a real sun. you define the brightness of a light and not it's dimensions and there are several different light types to choose from. blend textures and painting terrain are really nice. my only real complaint with Hammer is the lack of realtime lighting preview in the editor.

UT:
ran exceptionally well though UT2k3 is a several years older than D3 and HL2.

coding: havent really done much with the UT engine (only have UT2k3 installed) but from the looks of it UT coding is somewhere between Doom3(easy) and Source (hard). some C++ but easy to find what you need. a little annoying haveing to edit the .ini file to look your mods instead of just having them in an appropriate folder.

mapping: haven't really done any mapping with UEd. from what i have done and remember from previous versions (the original UT) i didn't like the camera controls in the editor. i haven't used UEd (or the Unreal engine in general) enough to form a real opinion of it.


over all i would say:
Doom3 - easy to mod, poor for large open areas. ideal for low light, tight corridor games (like Doom3 )
Source - need to find yourself a good coder, easy mapping allows whatever style level you want. should be good for anything you want to do if you can find a coder.
Ureal - don't really have the experience to form a solid opinion but it looks like a happy medium between D3 and Source.

sundance

yes, irritant, but how well are/were vehicles implemented in some of these older games, the old game redline had them, but they weren't very well done. likewise airquake 2 and transformers quake 2 have vehicles, but all kinds of problems with them. and that's laregely due to the fact that they're not implemented very well, and the engine not being intended to use them

Irritant

It's all in the implementation, Sundance. It has little, if nothing to do with the engine. Code for vehicles is done in the game code. Think of it this way: What engine features would affect vehicle code? Lighting? Netcode? Texture rendering? Physics? Oh wait, yes, that is also done in the game code.

I just added vehicles to my game, based off of modified q2 source.

KDR, I wasn't aware the UE3.0 was available, I thought that was still in development. Either way, it looks to be on par or better than Doom 3, but then again I haven't seen what it can do on a normal PC. You're on the money regarding large areas.

Of course the Source engine can do large, open areas, because it isn't doing much regarding lighting like D3 is.

In all honesty, if the point of this thread is to discuss engines for the purpose of using one for a game, then I would strongly consider an open sourced engine like Qfusion as a starting point over the Source engine. In fact there is another engine based off the Q2 source, I think it's called Xrazor, which does Doom3 style lighting(they even run D3 content, and it looks just about as good). It hasn't been released yet, but when it is, expect a number of other Q2 based engines to implement those features.

Qfusion supports: shaders, light blooms, vertex lighting of models, stainmaps, advanced particles, curved surfaces, hi res textures, etc. So what does Source offer over that? Remember to think of *engine* specific items, not game code.

CheapAlert

HL2's physics are licensed Havok physics anyhow, UnrealEngine2 has Karma, and Doom3 has proprietary physics.

Irritant - Darkplaces Q1 is the nicest NQ engine out there, does Doom3-style lighting and more, all it can't do is a consistent skeletal model format and ragdoll physics (ragdoll physics is already being done in QC, "Sagdoll".)

Gmanx

Until I see Chaos Theory properly, I would say that the engine used in Chronicles of Riddick was overall the best I'd seen - but I don't think there's a catch-all engine yet (bar unreal 3) which will do dynamic lighting, shadows, indoors, outdoors (foliage), water etc - but I'm not sure there needs to be.....

Scott Ruggels

Chaos Theory was done in UT2 or UT2.5. I saw the presentation of it at GDC> Very slick modifications to it, with good animation blending and real time IK so the feet never slide, even when changing direction.

Scott

ElysiumGX

I think the Doom3 engine is the most advanced if you only want to consider the use of shadows, normal mapping, small dark corridors, and a game that will only run on high end hardware. Don't consider gameplay. So...

I think the Battlefield2 engine is the one to watch for. From the reviews, the mod tools are excellent, using Python for easy scripting of game assets. It handles large environments (foilage and a cool water shader), vehicles, and focuses on enjoyable multiplayer gameplay.

The FarCry engine is excellent, but I think it needs more work. The Sandbox editor is the most fun map editor I've used. The engine focuses on dark indoor corridors, and light outdoor tropical environments along with a cool ocean shader. But I think the FarCry engine performs poorly. So I'm waiting for the next, more optimized, release from Crytek.

Just two that haven't been mentioned yet.

I love the Source engine. I think it looks awesome. But I also know how difficult it is to code for it. Plus the need for Visual Studio .NET.

I think if you consider the most "advanced game engine" to be the one that allows for easy modification with the possibility for many types of game concepts, that dream will come from the Epic guys. UT2k4 has done well with this. And their engines always run so smoothly.

KDR_11k

Note that a licensee has access to the full engine source so if you don't like e.g. Doom 3's intensity handling you're free to change it. Perhaps you could even implement a form of lightmaps (of course with the light vector so the normalmapping works). Also, you can add scripting systems if you want but these days most engines already come with that.

Does UE3.0 include some basic AI system? Doom 3 has the AAS which allows an agent to navigate through a map without any waypoints and can easily be autogenerated. The alpha bots (SABot) available for D3 are already more intelligent in terms of pathfinding than the HL1 bots were after a few years of development.

I said it before but some apparently haven't got that point: Current hardware requirements are completely uninteresting. Anything you start to develop will be available for public consumption in roughly two years, perhaps more. By then what we know as high-end graphics cards will be sold for 100 bucks and less.

Nostradamus

Reality Engine - http://www.artificialstudios.com/

Oh yeah and check this out
http://www.artificialstudios.com/compare.php
oh and happy easter

jgall21

The Reality Engine looks very nice indeed.

thnom

I think people are thinking too "in the box" with this.

I mean shit, just read what's been posted and you'll see that people only are considering Half-Life 2 and Doom3 (two of the biggest names).

What about FarCry? It allows for huge environments, great propierty physics (they make be Havok, not sure) and awesome visuals. It also allows for better visuals with less than doom3. Doom3 ran like shit, looked like shit (I don't think it looked real/good), whilst FarCry runs better with huge landscapes. I don't have hl2, nor played it, but FarCry, the engine, looks better. As for support it has a level editor and that shat, so that is my pick for best engine- FarCry

Downsizer

My team uses the RealityEngine. It's not built for any specific game type, and the art pipeline is all done through max, so most of the game is artist controlled. They dont use BSP, so your not geometry limited. They use per pixel culling, so the world builder must control visibility. Physics are'nt that great out of the box, but every single object can have physics applied to it, there is no distinction between world or actor geometry. HDR lighting is amazing, and it's all Dynamic PRT, so your sun can actually move and transition etc. Tv screens project there images onto walls based on luminence etc. My team should have a visual demo of some of the features out within the next 3 months, if Artificial Studios allows us to release it.

The down side is that it's C#. You can either script in C# or compile your scripts. Either way, a programmer will have to get involved on some level.

KDR_11k

Either way, a programmer will have to get involved on some level.

Surprising you mention that because it's generally assumed that when you ask for an engine you'll need a few code monkeys. Is there any engine that can be handled without a coder?

JKMakowka

http://www.ogre3d.org/

jgall21

hmm well all game engines have thier share of problems, but the next generation seems to be getting better @ resolving issues.

Downsizer

www.quest3d.com does'nt use a programming language, and most of the major engines have a scripting interface that uses a script language instead of a programming language. Trust me, take a look at VB script, then look at VB.NET. You'll be greatfull for the scripting language. Torque, Unreal, Doom3, all have scripting interfaces. RealityEngine just runs uncompiles c# code that is retricted to engine functions.

I'm just saying that i'm an artist with a technical background, I can pick up a scripting language if I really need to. C# on the other hand, is a different story. I actually had to outsource coding to india, as much as I am against outsourcing, it's the only affordable way at the point.

KDR_11k

Scripting is just programming with slower functions that requires you to learn a new syntax.

flachdrache

Bloody nutz and bolts under every surface *eg* - i avoid to change the animations for a q3arena mod for months now - ohhh the horror ... but it just makes no sense with a propper dodgeroll animation , bloody hell.

Doom3 is the pretty imho, all the scripting (shudder:) but i guess as easy/difficult as q3 shader files.
Have no clou about the souce engine but the open terrain and the under/water scenes in HL2 are just great.

Dont know much about engine/coding (just a hobby) but the great thing is you can grow old with the code - darkplaces, tenebrae all the other q1/q2 modifications = great, great looking work .