A game engine?

[syltman]

Sliver-light runs on Linux , and can now do full 3d games, as you can run xna inside of it.

But it uses Mono no?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

I too, would support a movement towards supporting UDK modding.
It's a very powerful piece of software with a good license plan and large-spread support.

CryEngine is good, but I'm not sure it currently has the support unreal does. That might be appealing to you however, if you're looking to break into a niche rather than support a trend.

I have no experience with Unity and I'm not a huge fan of Source. Great engine, but I think it's pretty saturated modding wise.

 

[syltman]

UDK, CryEngine and Unity all don't support linux either so they don't get any support from me. Source engine is going to get a linux port soon so that I do support.

 

[Jazztastic]

I've heard Source is clunky and weird.

I use Unreal Engine 3, and I've been working with a modding team for a while as a level designer. I know it fairly well and I can say it is incredibly flexible. While it isn't a super easy transition from the World Editor, after spending a few hours I understand it now. Plus Epic is really nice about the whole liscensing thing (which was a big incentive for my team).

Never tried Unity or CryEngine. As far as I Cry is really good, I've seen some soft-body physics demos in it and it looks incredible.

It doesn't matter so much the power of the engine as the creativity of the people using it. Look at wc3. For something so old it's being stretched to limits Blizzard probably never thought were possible. Imo the community will pick up whatever engine you pick, but I myself would prefer Unreal.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Game engines are for wusses. Real people use C/C++ to solve all their game dream needs!

 

[rover2341]

Game engines are for wusses. Real people use C/C++ to solve all their game dream needs!

ya and they finish there projects after years and years lol

 

[Dr Super Good]

Look at 0 A.D. for a sucess story. of game development. It is looking damn good for a game that is free and entirly open source.

The problem is the average WarCraft III or StarCraft II mapper lacks the skills and experience to work at such a level.

 

[syltman]

Another idea could be to have a straight up game making forum and then sub-forums for assets etc.

 

[sonofjay]

Wow if this is implemented then I'll really be happy since I'm a programming student(but next year our univ will implement game designing on I.T. course) and that will really helps me a lot.

 

[NightElf125]

I vote for Unity. I'm in school as a Game Design major and that's the engine we're working with in my classes right now. It's a good solid entry level engine, much easier than some of the others mentioned here.

 

[Dr Super Good]

What about support for Direct 3D 11.2?

 

[Ralle]

Game engines are for wusses. Real people use C/C++ to solve all their game dream needs!

When you learn to program, you quickly find out that reinventing the wheel is bad practice.

What about support for Direct 3D 11.2?

Are you talking about game engines or just throwing this out there?

 

[Foronisus]

i say Unity too

 

[Animalpower]

We do not need a new game engine that would be no warcraft 3 anymore.

 

[General_Anon]

We do not need a new game engine that would be no warcraft 3 anymore.

Warcraft is a 7 year old game, dude. It's gonna die eventually anyway, especially with Starcraft II modding kicking in. It's time to expand.

 

[Animalpower]

But at least someone would play it in the future. I will play it for sure.

 

[Asomath]

I see you're concerns Animalpower. But, I’m positive there is no need for concern on the Hive's WC3 front. Ralle won't divert critical resources or attention to the development of the game engine expansion, surely not enough for WC3 to be lost from focus. It'll simply be a test of the possibility of more integration in the future.

~Asomath

 

[Foronisus]

so shall this be implemented?

 

[sonofjay]

We shall wait my friend.

 

[Pinachet]

Unity seems on the rise, but the community and the resources are either pay-to-use or completely unexplained. Would be cool to see some content here, even some articles?tutorials. Would be rather convenient imo

 

[Kitabatake]

I also support Unity.

Unreal engine may be good for making fps games but I've gotten the impression that it requires an unreasonable amount of time and dedication to produce games of other genres with it.
I assume that the other FPS oriented engines like cryengine also share the same clumsiness.

 

[Dr Super Good]

The big question is...

Do we have any resident experts for such game engines?

 

[Ralle]

You don't need experts to have some fun. You will eventually become an expert.
I know this is far fetched, but I am thinking far ahead right now. What if somebody built something like Wc3, you know, some kind of multiplayer engine where everything is synced. Hive would become like battle.net.

 

[Foronisus]

You don't need experts to have some fun. You will eventually become an expert.
I know this is far fetched, but I am thinking far ahead right now. What if somebody built something like Wc3, you know, some kind of multiplayer engine where everything is synced. Hive would become like battle.net.

agreed no need of experts... if Hive make this than im sure there will be experts belive me.

 

[Dr Super Good]

I know this is far fetched, but I am thinking far ahead right now. What if somebody built something like Wc3, you know, some kind of multiplayer engine where everything is synced. Hive would become like battle.net.

The problem is you need a visionary project leader who actually knows where to head with it.

What must it support? How will it be better than other games of the same type (StarCraft II)? Who is it aimed at?

 

[Grey Nightmare]

Making an engine isn't all that bad of an idea... Like Ralle said, you have to start somewhere. You seem to know your stuff Dr, couldn't you set us on the right track? o.o

 

[eubz]

I just went here it's really cool. I vote for unity.

 

[Dr Super Good]

You seem to know your stuff Dr, couldn't you set us on the right track?

The right track to where? That is the big question.

 

[Pyritie]

I wouldn't stick to a certain game engine, they all have their pros and cons and knowing this field, they all change rapidly. One might end up dying off, another might become too money-grubbing and drive off a lot of developers... I think you should keep it open-ended.

I do agree that the hive needs to expand to something more than just WC3 modding. It's too late for SC2 modding to get enough activity, so becoming a general game modding/creation site would probably help.

You'll need to do quite a lot of restructuring if you want to be successful though (and in more ways than just the staff). I do hope you plan on being active enough this time, Ralle.

 

[Ralle]

I wouldn't stick to a certain game engine, they all have their pros and cons and knowing this field, they all change rapidly. One might end up dying off, another might become too money-grubbing and drive off a lot of developers... I think you should keep it open-ended.

I do agree that the hive needs to expand to something more than just WC3 modding. It's too late for SC2 modding to get enough activity, so becoming a general game modding/creation site would probably help.

You'll need to do quite a lot of restructuring if you want to be successful though (and in more ways than just the staff). I do hope you plan on being active enough this time, Ralle.

I will do what I can!

Since Statharas is banned atm he asked me to post this for him.

I have seen this. It is like a simplified version of the first level of Spore.

 

[Dr Super Good]

Revilo, that demo performed horridly... They wrote it in Python or some interpreted language?

Modern computer systems have very powerful 2D capabilities. A lot of people are not even aware how good 2D games can look even on low performance systems. The problem is no one develops high powered 2D games these days. Most are 2.5D or developed improperly using low performance platforms such as Flash or Python.

 

[Ironside]

CryEngine3, UnrealEngine4. The latest game engines with immense graphical and technical boost. I have been spreading the rumors for these engines, because I find them to be the future of the modding world.

And yes, I'll post a few videos:

Valuable Previews

But how hard is it to actually do things like triggers in those engines? Already the terraining looks a hundred times harder than in warcraft 3.

 

[Pharaoh_]

But how hard is it to actually do things like triggers in those engines? Already the terraining looks a hundred times harder than in warcraft 3.

Well, you usually don't expect an improved engine, made by an entirely different company to work like our beloved WarCraft III

 

[Nestharus]

I now suggest cry engine 3

http://freesdk.crydev.net/dashboard.action

edit
However, with all fairness, I'd recommend a section for Unreal, a section for Unity, and a section for Cry Engine

Profit
1. Unity
2. Unreal
3. Cry Engine

Long Term Profit (with lots of money, like $500,000)
1. Unity
2. Cry Engine
3. Unreal

Power
1. Cry Engine
2. Unreal
3. Unity

Tools
1. Unreal
2. Unity
3. Cry Engine (unsure between Unity and Cry Engine atm)

Support
1. Unity
2. Cry Engine (tuts by actual devs of engine)
3. Unreal

Ease of Use
1. Unity
2. Unreal
3. Cry Engine

Scripting:
Unity uses Mono allowing you to dev in Visual Studio with c#, Boo, and or JavaScript
Cry Engine uses Lua
Unreal uses Unreal Script

Coding:
I haven't done in-depth research Unreal, but Cry Engine and Unity Pro* ($1500) allow you to load up dlls like plugins and those dlls can access the engine API. You also get very limited access to source (header files) for the dlls.

Networking:
With Unity, anything can be done. There are at least 3 3rd party tools that event support MMO stuff like server load balancing

Cry Engine: can do dlls for good networking

Unreal: Unknown, but it is known that basic networking is supported where information is sent from the server to the client. Won't go into the in-depth features of it (read the entire document on it) as I'm sure nobody here really cares or wants to hear it.

Final Overview:
Brute Power: Cry Engine
Easiest to get into from modding: Unity
Most Tools for Cool Stuff: Unreal

To people who are for modding on SC2, it still isn't ready for modding. There are still incomplete features in it and some things are still not at all dynamic : \. However, when it does become complete, if a game engine seems way too much, SC2 is a better option as the dev time goes way down. Just wait a bit until they release some more patches to make the modding stuff more complete =).

edit
For those excited about Unreal Engine 4, Cry Engine 3 was doing those same things 3 years ago ;p. Unreal Engine 4 catches up to Cry Engine 3 for the most part =). However, considering the massive amounts of tools and support unreal is known for, this might make Unreal Engine 4 a better choice than Cry Engine 3 if the udk is updated.

edit

A look at Cry Engine 3 Editor

 

[Dr Super Good]

To people who are for modding on SC2, it still isn't ready for modding. There are still incomplete features in it and some things are still not at all dynamic : \. However, when it does become complete, if a game engine seems way too much, SC2 is a better option as the dev time goes way down. Just wait a bit until they release some more patches to make the modding stuff more complete =).

It supports all that it needs to support to make good games. The Diablo I demo on BattleNet for example. You have grown too overly fond of dynamic coding practicies. I do agree that typecasting would be nice but that has potential problems.

 

[rulerofiron99]

Has anyone mentioned Dota2?

If I'm not mistaken, the editor should be pretty decent, or at least the game itself highly moddable.

They just need to fix the horrendous bandwidth issues :S

 

[Drunken_Jackal]

Well I for one would go with those lesser game engines, such as HPL ( Used in Amnesia ), Nebula 2 ( Drakensang but its 2.5D ), jMonkey ( Seems good but has problems on importing Blender stuff ) or Panda3d ( Very good indie game engine solution ).
I generally like those free and open source since we can freely edit it and commercialize it if ever. But most are not woo-able.
If I would pick those quite popular, I would go with OGRE ( Used in Torchlight ), CryEngine or XNA. UDK can also be good, since Dungeon Defenders, one of its titles, was made in less than a month. Udk takes 25% income while Cry takes 20%.

I dont really like Unity since it seems for those hobbyist and mobile developers. But, I seem to like C4 and UDK. Its a shame nobody mentioned C4. Theres also one called Carbon. Seems good.

Between this Unity and UDK talk, Unity is more user oriented, but UDK has better functionality and focuses more on the technical aspect. Many like Unity though, maybe because you can use the free one for commercial purposes.

Id go with those free and open source ones. There, we can easily extend its limits and create our own additions. Also, not everyone can afford priced engines.

More suggestions: Source, Havok? Gamebryo? Polycode? Horde3d ( Its like OGRE, a rendering engine )

Edit
Forgot to tell, Unreal has something similar to GUI. Forgot what its called.

 

[Dr Super Good]

They just need to fix the horrendous bandwidth issues :S

Probably not going to happen. You cannot stream character data and not use bandwidth.

 

[Statharas]

Unity being weak and stuff... Pssht, I begged Ralle to early unban me just to post in this thread...

Turns out there was a ban bug that kept us banned ...

Anyway, Unity is relatively simple, and the physics are amazing. I should just sit here and make you a box filled with marbles and let objects drop inside it...

Really, i am working on a locomotion system, allowing complex action game movement and animations right now, and it's quite simple. I've messed around with the shaders unity uses and tried making my own, and saw that the shader source code was simple to understand.

Frankly, CryEngine and UnrealEngine are TOO powerful in my opinion. I tried opening a demo project on my computer, and it felt like holding lava. Unity on the other hand, allows you both to achieve that kind of graphics, but without burning your computer down.

 

[Nestharus]

Ok everyone, I propose a plan.

The majority of users on this site are wc3 GUI people.

Step 1: Get all of the GUI people into vjass so that they learn how to program. I suggest vjass as it is the easiest language for them to learn when moving on from the GUI. In my little tutorials, I set up the intro code so that it looks like the GUI (more like the SC2 GUI, but w/e).

Step 2: Transition everyone from vjass to c++. I have a project set up with lots of definitions so that people can essentially code vjass in a c++ project. From here, the transition into c++ can be slow and gradual = ).

Step 3: Get everyone up to speed on Lua. Lua is the scripting language for CryEngine. I really don't recommend UDK as even UE4 is just catching up to CryEngine 3 :\. Also, it uses their own proprietary Unreal Script... Unity can be used, but you can't do dlls unless you fork over $1500. I really do think that the Cry Engine is the best option to globally support. So, get everyone caught up on Lua (it should be pretty easy).

Step 4: Start getting people into the Cry Engine IDE. I'm going through a LOT of online tutorials, so I should be able to organize all of those tutorials so that others have a much easier time learning Cry Engine. For modellers, people will need to move to maya and 3dsMax I suppose. For texturing, photoshop : |. Those applications are really pricey, so we'll have to figure something out.

Step 5: the hive is now a super game dev modding community =P. Beginners can go into Warcraft 3 GUI and move up through these steps until they are in Cry Engine ;D. I personally think that the Warcraft 3 GUI is probably the best thing for beginners to use when first learning how to code. For modelling, I'm not that experienced there, so I don't know what a modeling program would be a good choice to start with. I'd think that big ones like Blender, Maya, and 3dsMax would be overwhelming for beginners.

What about SC2?
I don't believe that SC2 is at all needed in this model =).


Why do I want to do all of this? So that I have people to work with for making games : D. Also, so that there are lots more game resources ^)^.

 

[Statharas]

Nestharius, no offense. But you're mad.

Why would you need DLLs anyway, Unity games can be made, well, for free. Unity's Javascript mono language is so easy to understand, that lua seems hard.

 

[Nestharus]

I'm just saying that for the big programmers, being forced into only scripting is not really a viable option, which is why the $1500 cost for Unity Pro becomes a necessary one : \.

Also, Lua is a rather bare language ;p. I looked up a video tutorial series for it for someone and you can learn the entire language in about 45 minutes (9 videos, 5 minutes long each) if you are a beginner. I learned it in about 8 minutes.

Just from my standpoint, Cry Engine better prepares everyone as they use Lua for scripting (which is used in virtually everything for scripting now), Cry Engine for the engine (a major AAA engine, that experience will help them in the game industry if they decide to go there), access to c++ (experience in c++ for game dev only helps), access to the low end graphics stuff (graphics programming is an entire field).

I just don't see the benefits in Unity that I see with the Cry Engine :\. Yes, there are some, but Unity won't really prepare you for the industry as well as the other 2 engines will, and it's a kill for programmers. If you are an artist, fine, but if you are a programmer, gg, you have to use UDK or CryEngine, and UDK has its proprietary Unreal Script and its limited Kismet.

 

[Statharas]

Because tossing a
Destroy(Nestharius);
is complex.

 

[Dr Super Good]

This is why real programmers make their own game engines! muahaha!

 

[Ralle]

I think Nestharus is onto something. I would love to host everything he makes here. Perhaps make something like the old JASS classroom. CryEngine would be one direction and I don't see why we can't have more.
But Nest, why go to c++, when you have lua?

 

[Statharas]

Frankly, i can wrap up a small unity tutorial section all by myself.

 

[Ralle]

That would be awesome.

 

[Statharas]

As for the GUI part, I am a gui user that barely has experience in coding (Yeah, i've gone through C++, C# and C, but only syntax, i barely know stuff about programming), but Unity is really easy to code in.

 

[Nestharus]

c++, when you have lua?

c++ can do things Lua can't.

Consider this... plugins section (for dlls) that have things like mmorpg networking plugins, rts plugins, and so on ;D.


also, consider how the tools section could transform. We could have some awesome AI tools, mmo tools, char creation tools, loot tools, item tools, spell tools, etc, etc ^)^.


that is why I say c++ and not Lua =P.


Lua can also be extended by c++, and I'll be sure to go over that. Furthermore, you can easily make plugin dlls, and that's something else I'll go over.

 

[Dr Super Good]

C++ and C are unsafe in the hands of unskilled programmers. Yes people like me and Nestharus will probably produce safe code (I hope) but most people will not. A simple unchecked array size can cause a buffer overflow which is enough for a hacker to take full control over a computer system.

If you are going down the C and C++ route, you are better off supplying GNU modules for any game developer to use. These libraries can be open source and ready to use to fufill the requirements of complex systems that normally take programmers many days to code. An example could be a pathing mesh algorthim for movement pathing which takes a mesh and produces a path.