demagogue on 14/11/2008 at 20:30

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You're right on the quote, he didn't commit to a date.

I recall reading that id releases its engines when there are no more prospective licensees that want to use it. So the Rage date isn't the right one per se. It's just, once idtech 5 comes out, it's only a matter of time before it obsoletes idtech 4, so it's relevant. But I guess I overdid the case. Looking at it on wiki, I see that their engines were open sourced about a year after the first game on the next one, which still isn't as far away as you might think, in game-making time.

I think why the 2009 date was in my head was more because it fits a pattern (that iirc I read from the Darkmod guys): Doom came out in 1993, it was open sourced in 1997, idtech2 in 2001, idtech 3 in 2005. Notice there's a 4 year split every time, which would put idtech 4 at 2009. That's really the only evidence I have ... not so great, I know. But add everything up together and it's still looking like 2009-2010 isn't unreasonable to think.

Keep in mind, too, that it can still work for you even if it's a later rather than sooner. It depends on what you want the open source for. If you don't mind how core things like the renderer work in minute detail, you don't need the source for actually making your game as a TC. The Darkmod gives you an idea of how far you can go without source code.

And even if you finish it before it goes open source, you could initially release it as a Doom 3 mod (or Quake 4 or QW:ET, whichever hard-coded features you think are better for your project), and then when it goes open source within surely < the next year, you can re-release it as a standalone game then, and it's not a lot of extra work, and 99% of the d/l'ing public will be none the wiser. That's sort of a compromise position, but looking at all the pros and cons, it could still be the way to go all things considered. It's such an awesome engine and a pleasure to work with that it could be worth it.




Oh, I agree with you there. I loved that movie, and think about TRON, Dragonslayer, Lion King...

I was referring just to their record on video games, which was still in my head following (http://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=123801) this thread.

Qooper on 17/11/2008 at 21:57

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Open source engines by the bucket load. The problem is without tools they are useless. Sauerbraten is actually new to me (dunno how it has managed to keep under my radar), but I can say it's worth examining since it has a powerful editor.

Have you taken a look at (http://www.jmonkeyengine.com) jMonkeyEngine? jME is built on top of a Renderer-interface (like Ogre3D) instead of a static renderer. The default renderer at the moment is (http://www.lwjgl.org/) LWJGL. Dunno about portal support atm, but last time I checked, well, it was in there somewhere (though barely maintained). jME also has a nice scene editor called (http://www.monkeyworld3d.com) MonkeyWorld3D.

Since you'll be writing an indoor game, you're going to need an engine capable of portal-rendering. An alternative: anti-portals. UnrealEngines use these. If you have outdoor scenes mixed with indoor scenes, then it would be handy if the SceneGraph could handle both quad/octree and anti-portal -based culling. Optimizations, optimizations, but you said you wanted a lot of detail, didn't you? :)

Writing a level editor that generates portals for you is a challenge. Let's take the Hammer editor, for instance. After making a map-file, it has to be compiled into a bsp, i.e. a Binary Space Partitioned file. This file already contains portals that have been generated using one of many suitable algorithms. One alternative is to place them manually. This has the advantage of being able to optimize maps for maximum performance, but with large maps it's a lot of work.

With all that in mind, you'd be better off with one of the existing level editors. If you're not looking to make a commercial game then id4 might be your perfect engine.



Keep in mind that Panda3D is very powerful (core written in C++), and it's easily extensible through Python. It has everything needed to achieve the SS2 ambience: (http://www.panda3d.org/showss.php?page=0&shot=ssg-blackout/blackout6) have a looksie.



You might be interested in (http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/) SteamWorks. It's a completely free of charge electronic publishing service offered by Valve. You don't have to pay any percentages to anyone, and you're not required to sell your games on Steam. If you ask me, it sounds a little iffy. There has to be a catch, but I haven't had time yet to look into it.



If by level editor you mean scene editor, then (http://www.panda3d.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=5085) yes, a broken one. If not, then no. But you can use Blender to model levels (which is worse than writing double precision floating-point assembly).

Also, listen to Volca. He's wise to advice you to do things in parallel. You should avoid the waterfall-model at all costs. It's pretty easy to tell whether a project is healthy and iterative, but you need to pay attention to how things are going. Last but not least, good luck! If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. Who knows, some day we might be working on a common game project. :)

EDIT: Oh, almost forgot. If you can, choose an engine that supports or is implemented in a language that is effortless to use and has a lot of expression power. Working with C/C++ code can be very tiresome, even though it gives high performance once compiled. I suggest favouring Java, C#, Python, anything that's a little bit more dynamic. I'd also suggest going for open technologies, like OpenGL and OpenAL.

demagogue on 30/11/2008 at 22:20

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I don't know about that. Ask the Darkmod guys in their (http://modetwo.net/darkmod/) forum.

Edit, while I'm at it:


By "It just doesn't seem right" I was speaking more about the type of games Disney makes ... sort of guilt by association. I didn't mean anything about the engine itself.

Hemebond on 1/12/2008 at 06:09

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Huh? I've only ever played Doom 3 in wide-screen. In fact I play every id game in wide-screen.

Volitions Advocate on 2/12/2008 at 14:06

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no i hadn't tried that. I found somewhere else a set of console commands that were supposed to work but they didn't. I'll be playing with this. thanks.