Game Engines and Apps

[kyrathaba]

RPG Toolkit:

[kyrathaba]

Lightfeather is a 3D engine for Linux, Mac OS X and Windows. It is designed to be easy to use but still take advantage of the features of modern graphics hardware.

[Renegade]

Hey kyrathaba, have you seen anything that looks good for C#? (I'm sure you've looked into it more than me.)

[kyrathaba]

Honestly?  No.  Most of my finds seem geared to work with C++.  Aside from the very few listed in previous posts on this thread that will work with C#, I've come across scant offerings 

[Deozaan]

Hey kyrathaba, have you seen anything that looks good for C#? (I'm sure you've looked into it more than me.)

-Renegade (August 14, 2011, 08:58 AM)

Unity 3D can be used with C#.

[kyrathaba]

Thanks Deozaan.  Yes, I forgot that Unity 3D is C#-compatible.  Looks impressive and highly capable.  Quite a learning curve for me personally, but then, I haven't done 3D programming before.  Probably wouldn't be too bad for someone with more experience.

[Deozaan]

Yeah, there's definitely a lot to learn but Unity makes things fairly easy. A couple years ago I was attempting to make a game in Torque Game Engine (which is a now-deprecated 3D engine which has been "replaced" with the new Torque 3D) and I could not figure out how to do much of anything at all, even following a book or reading tutorials.

But with Unity I've been able to follow a few tutorials or read the documentation and work my way through making things happen. It's great and a lot easier than it could be.

An example is quaternions^w. I don't even understand what quaternions are or how they work. All I know is that they are 4-dimensional things that allow you to avoid something called gimbal lock^w that occurs when rotating in 3-dimensions (and I can't wrap my brain around them). I'm not sure I understand exactly what gimbal lock is either but I know it causes objects to not rotate the way you would think you are telling them to. Unity comes with built-in functions that automatically convert the "easy to understand" 3D rotations into quaternions and back again.

I've been really impressed with Unity and how (relatively) easy it has been to do things with it. And if you're willing to spend some money, there are some really great looking third party tools/plugins for it that make certain other things easy enough for people who don't know much programming to make games.

[kilele]

This one launched yesterday its first beta, I'm going to give it a try. The videos show a pretty cool interface and it seems easy to use to make classic arcade games. It's about to make a public release and doesn't have a forum yet.
Arcade Game Studio ARGS

[kilele]

Does anyone here know of game-editor ?
It would be nice to read a mini-review or your opinions about this multiplatform opensource product.

[kilele]

This BASIC programming language for games seems fun and allows to publish games as java applets which run surprisingly well on their site:
http://naalaa.com/

[Renegade]

A bit late, but...

An example is quaternions^w. I don't even understand what quaternions are or how they work. All I know is that they are 4-dimensional things that allow you to avoid something called gimbal lock^w that occurs when rotating in 3-dimensions (and I can't wrap my brain around them). I'm not sure I understand exactly what gimbal lock is either but I know it causes objects to not rotate the way you would think you are telling them to.

-Deozaan (August 22, 2011, 09:04 AM)

Don't feel bad. In the 1860's to 1880's the world of physics had only a few people that could understand the mathematics of Hamiltonian quaternions, which were a pre-requisite to understanding Maxwell's equations. Under pressure from other scientists and publishers, the equations were dumbed down to algebraic vectors so that us mere mortals could understand them. It had negative consequences in the same way that gimbal lock occurs and how Hamiltonian quaternions solve the problem. So, today we're stuck with electrodynamics that are partial at best. It's worse when in 1957 we discovered that we're doing everything wrong, and yet still plod on with flawed mathematics and physics. The problems that Hamiltonian quaternions solves echoes the same kinds of problems in the Einstein field equations and how they work by removing torque, which there echoes the gimbal lock problem of rotation. I'm still working on understanding the math for all of that myself, and don't expect to fully understand it for quite a while. The basics of a quaternion are pretty simple though, and very similar to how you might envision a complex number:

i^2 = j^2 = k^2 = ijk = -1

Still, it's a lot to wrap one's mind around, even in it's most basic formulation there. It messes with what one's idea of a square is.


On the game side, Monogame seems pretty decent. Still haven't given it much of a spin, but had a quick look at it. It covers a lot of ground.

http://monogame.codeplex.com/

[KynloStephen66515]

Bumping because mouser made me post a link he found cause he is too lazy to do it himself. (Although, with 30k+ posts...one would think he talks more than he does)

http://www.worldofle...se-how-to-choose.php

There has never been a better time to start designing game environments and level designs. More game engines and level editors are becoming readily available for free or small price of the game to anyone who wants to learn how to level design. But with more choices, comes indecision. Especially if you are just beginning your journey into level design and game environment art.

What game engine should you start with? What level editor do you choose to work with? What is the difference between a game engine and a level editor? How do you download level editing tools and game engine to work with? Is UDK better then CryEngine 3 SDK or is Unity 3D the way to go? Which Source Engine game should I start mapping for? What is the difference between game environment artist and level designer?

Where do I start?

In this tutorial I want to help you choose which level editor and game engine you may want to start with. I will cover the basics and then go more in-depth to help you choose the "right" game engine and level editor.