Volitions Advocate on 13/11/2008 at 14:32

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I know this has been discussed before but I did a couple of searches and couldn`t find what I needed.

Anybody in here had much experience with some of these open source game engines out there?

I've been debating on whether or not to use a commercial engine and make a mod. or to go from an existing free platform and make a standalone game.

So for something that works with that system shock/dead space/doom 3 kind of feel what do you think would work well?

I've been looking for awhile and I've narrowed it down to the 3 most attractive options as far as I can see them, but some input would be really great.

(http://sauerbraten.org/) Sauerbraten
(http://www.ogre3d.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogcategory&id=0&Itemid=97) Ogre 3d
(http://www.panda3d.org) Panda3d

The_Raven on 13/11/2008 at 16:41

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I've also been researching this here and there, I doubt anything will ever become of it due to the fact that I have not reached that stage of programming yet.

Keep in mind that Ogre3D is merely a renderer, not an engine by itself; however, there are open-source engines out there that use Ogre3D as a renderer. I've been keeping an eye on the Yake engine for awhile now, but they're still in the beta stages and progress is slow due the low amount of maintainers for the project. The engine itself is meant to be a flexible as possible, which means that it isn't tailored to any specific use straight out of the box. Basically it take libraries/components like Ogre3D, OpenAL, ODE, etc.. and creates a way of manipulating all of these from its base section.

More accurate information can be found at its (http://www.yake.org) webpage.

demagogue on 13/11/2008 at 17:21

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I may be biased by reading up for and playing around with Darkmod editing, but id4 (Doom 3 engine) is a beauty to build with, especially with the Dark Radient Editor the Darkmod guys have built, you can script most anything you want, graphics and bells and whistles are even more impressive than Doom 3 or Quake 4 showed off (I just learned recently that even Doom3 and Q4 support megatextures, so big outdoors areas are now a go) ... to say nothing that it captures the SS2/Doom3 feel you're going for to a T.

And Carmack said it was the most elegant engine he's ever made, the one he's most proud of, even more so than id5 (which reverts back to some old hacks), which puts it in the running for most elegant game engine ever.

And, best of all, it will be open source very soon (when Rage is released, around mid-2009, you probably couldn't finish a respectable game before then anyway), so you get the best of both worlds ... commercial quality and you can still put out a standalone game when you finish it, independent .exe, no need for Doom3, and everything (here's my (http://modetwo.net/darkmod/index.php?s=&showtopic=8520&view=findpost&p=168969) source for saying that). Not to mention it allows you to modify everything; it'll be as flexible as any open source engine, and the sky's the limit.

There's also a ton of tutorials and assets already out there for it, because it's such a prolific modding community, so you don't have to reinvent a lot of wheels, and you've also got a huge group ready to answer all your questions. Anyway, I'm sold on it, even aside from the Darkmod connection.

Edit: Panda3D does look pretty cool, too, for a free engine ... But then again: "Panda3D originated at Disney, and is still being used for their commercial games." :erg:
It just doesn't seem right, lol.

Tonamel on 13/11/2008 at 23:27

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I didn't work with the engine directly, but I asked the guy who did, and he said it's basically a matter of support.

Ogre is C++, and has lots of plugins, but they're very difficult to get working properly.

Panda3d is python, and what the engine does and does not do is fairly clear (so he says). The biggest benefit is that since Carnegie Mellon's staff works with it directly, you're very likely to get fast and useful support from the people who actually maintain the code. He also mentioned that games using Panda3d have actually shipped and are in stores.

Volitions Advocate on 14/11/2008 at 14:21

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I didn't know about Idtech4. I knew that the first quake engine was open source, I didn't know that ALL of them were up to the doom3 engine. Do you have a source actually saying that it will go open source when Rage comes out? Everywhere I've checked carmack just says "i dont want to commit to a date but it will go open source some day"

Thats actually a really attractive option that I hadn't considered.

@volca

Yeah I know what you mean about the media created for the game as opposed to getting the "feel" out of the engine.

If i had actually elaborated a little more I might sound a little less naive.

I"m looking for an engine that is good at creating a great amount of detail in a small space. Something that can create small claustrophobic kind of spaces with a great concentration of detail and where entities are all very important. idtech 4 is great for this for obvious reasons. Also UE3 is really great because it can do almost any kind of environment and the tools are the best I"ve ever seen. And as long as you're a good modeller you can cram any space with as many static meshes as you want.

So i was thinking if my team and I are going to put all this effort into something we really care about. why make a mod? If i do a source mod the only people who will play it are half life fans. I could probably do a better looking job with UE3 with less effort, but who buys ut3 for mods? So i figure why dont' we put in the extra effort and time to make something stand alone so that we can either distribute it freely to anybody... or if it actually turns out really good we can sell it.

If that were the case UE3 would be the worst way to go. I remember when Doom3 came out Id was charging a flat rate of 250K to license id tech 4. Maybe not right when it came out but I remember that it was before quake 4 and prey were released.

Epic on the other hand is STILL charging MORE than that for licensing UE2. and they take a huge chunk of royalties. they dont even tell you what it woudl cost for UE3 they just say "call us and we'll talk about it"

So if we got a product up on steam for instance. valve gets 50% right off the top and then epic takes another percentage on top of that (i dont remember exactly what it was) My team ends up with a pretty small percentage. Plus Epic are being douche canoes right now, and I dont really feel like supporting them until they stop being babies.

The attractive thing about things like Panda3d is basically starting with just the essentials already done. And that its already available to use.

Thing is I'm not much of a programmer. I'm slowly getting the hang of it a little better now. I had a good 15 year hiatus since I was programming things on my 80x86 /w Dos 3.21 and a 16mb hard drive back in the day, and I'm not exactly up to snuff by todays standards. even as an amateur. which is another thing that makes the doom3 engine attractive.

Thanks for the input guys, keep it coming.