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Game Engines and Apps

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Deozaan:
Hi everyone. I would like to make a list of game engines as a general resource, but also to start doing (mini) reviews on them. So if you've ever used a game engine, I'd like to know what it is, where to find more information about it, and what your thoughts were about your experience with it. It should also be useful to know how advanced you are as a programmer with the language the engine required you to use. Please include the following:


* Name of engine.
* Its website or where to get it.
* Whether it is 2D or 3D (or both).
* How much it costs. Be sure to include separate pricing (if they have it) for personal/educational use and commercial use.
* A short description of it (maybe something pasted from the website). Be sure to include some of its features.
* Screenshot(s) of it or a game made with it. (Be sure to include the URL to the game's website, if possible).
* Choose to be an optimist or pessimist: List the additional features of the commercial edition or the limited features of the personal/learning editions. (The difference between educational and commercials versions, basically.)
* What programming language(s) it uses and your general skill in that language. If it uses its own language, your estimation of the learning curve would be great. Also the availability of online/free documentation/tutorials on how to learn it.
* Your experience with it, bad and good. Perhaps more detail into a description of it, if you'd like.
* Any other information you might want to share.
* Links to galleries/documentation
Even if you've never used a game engine, if you don't see it here and you know about it, please provide as much of this information as possible. If one is already listed, go ahead and quote the original post and add any information/comments you want to about it.

If you can think of more things that should be in my numbered list, let me know and I'll edit the original post to include it.

Again, the ultimate goal of this is to create a comprehensive list of engines, including their pros and cons, ease of use, learning curve, availability of support (included help files, online documentation/tutorials/forums/community), and other information.


Mentioned Engines/Apps:
(alphabetically and who mentioned them)

Adventure Game Studio (3D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Alice 2.0 (3D) reviewed by Deozaan (Updated Sept. 27, 2006)
Allegro reviewed by Gothi[c] (2D/3D)
Blender3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
CDX (2D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Crystal Space 3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
Game Maker (2D/3D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Haaf's Game Engine (2D) reviewed by mouser.
Irrlicht 3D reviewed by Gothi[c] (3D Engine, does not include sound or networking)
Ogre 3D reviewed by Gothi[c] (3D Engine, does not include sound or networking)
Panda3D reviewed by Mahesh2k
Quest 3D reviewed by Gothi[c]
SDL reviewed by Gothi[c] (Primarily 2D, but supports 3D via OpenGL)
Sphere (2D) reviewed by Gothi[c]
Stencyl (Flash)
Torque 3D
Torque 2D
Unity (3D)

mouser:
a comprehensive list of engines could be asking for too much maybe, especially given that their are entire large sites devoted to listing engines, but maybe a comprehensive list of the very TOP engines, or engine REVIEW SITES ?

I really do hope we see more game development by dc members!

Deozaan:
a comprehensive list of engines could be asking for too much maybe, especially given that their are entire large sites devoted to listing engines, but maybe a comprehensive list of the very TOP engines, or engine REVIEW SITES ?

I really do hope we see more game development by dc members!
-mouser (September 26, 2006, 02:58 PM)
--- End quote ---

Okay, maybe not a comprehensive list of all of them, but I would like a large list of good, usable engines to give people some variety and choice. And how about a link to one of those sites devoted to listing engines?

mouser:
let me start with a 2d engine that i really kind of like, the only problem is that it's windows-only, which could be a real drawback for someone looking to make a popular game.  It's also not very actively developed and doesn't have a giant community, more drawbacks.

HAAF'S GAME ENGINE

http://hge.relishgames.com/

HGE is an easy to use yet powerful hardware accelerated 2D game engine. It is a full featured middleware for all who want to develop commercial quality 2D games rapidly and easily. It covers all imaginable 2D game genres: you could create everything from a simple puzzle to advanced multilayered platformer or strategy without even thinking of any non game logic code! And you don't have to know anything about "window messages", DirectX programming and all that stuff. Instead you can start developing your own game within 15 minutes!

HGE runs on Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP and requires DirectX 8.0. It will run even on low-end video cards, including built in video cards such as Intel Solano (i815 chipset). HGE can be used with virtually any C++ compiler including Visual C++, Borland C++, MinGW and Metrowerks Codewarrior.

 Strict concentration on subject "2D games"
Task oriented design. Nothing redundant and lots of higher level features.
 
 Simple interface and extreme easiness
You don't have to know anything about system programming and don't need any additional libraries. Classes and headers that make sense. Very easy to set up and use.
 
 Technical advanceness
HGE is built upon modern Direct3D API what allows lots of special effects and great performance. Alpha blending, color tinting, geometry transformations etc. without performance hit at all!
 
 Complete and clear documentation
All the features thoroughly grouped and described, lots of general game development hints provided.
 
 HGE just feels right!
HGE is highly consistent. Every minor feature is carefully planned and interconnected with others.
 
 Free
HGE is distributed under The zlib/libpng license, i.e. it is completely free for any uses including commercial ones.
--- End quote ---

Deozaan:
Alice 2.0
http://www.alice.org/
Free, Open Source.

Alice v2.0 is the next major version of the Alice 3D Authoring system, from the Stage3 Research Group at  Carnegie Mellon University. It has been completely rewritten from scratch over the past few years. The focus of the Alice project is now to provide the best possible first exposure to programming for students ranging from middle schoolers to college students.-Alice Website
--- End quote ---

Example videos of the program can be found here: http://www.alice.org/Alice_movies/

Alice uses it's own programming language that is mostly completely visual (drag and drop) as an effort to help absolute beginners to programming learn basic concepts while allowing them to see instant, visual results. A 3D "Hello World" program is much more impressive to a beginner than a simple text output.

Game Engines and Apps

Object placement is easy using the built in world viewer. It has buttons in the upper-right corner that allow you to move the object horizontally (along the X and Z axes) and vertically (Y axis), rotate them, resize (scale) them, and more. The program comes with a built-in gallery of objects (at the bottom of the screenshot) and even lets you connect to the online gallery from within the program. It is streamlined, as if the files were already on your computer, except there is some download time to place them into your world.

Game Engines and Apps

My personal experience with it is that it is very exciting to see what can be done so easily, except it it so easy it's hard to figure out. The program comes with four tutorials that show you how to use the GUI and covers some basics of making objects move across the stage. However, these tutorials teach very little about how to actually piece together your coding in ways that go beyond the very basics of actions. Documentation on how to make your own functions, how to pass variables, etc. is practically non-existent. I can't find any websites with Alice tutorials or documentation. The only thing I've been able to find are a couple of books that are between about $25-$45 on Amazon.com. I also found the books on the SafariX website, but they cost just about the same thing for the equivalent of a rental. Not worth it to me, especially for a programming reference book.

At first I thought development on Alice was dead, but there is a community forum that gets a few posts every day, one of them very recently talking about the updates on Alice v3.0. This forum is also the only source of free help I can find on how to use the program. There are a couple of people who seem to know it fairly well, but a lot of the time it seems they're just trying to figure it out themselves.

It seems powerful enough to make relatively simplistic games, if you can figure out how to work it, and may be perfect for beginners to manipulate 3D objects with instant results. But for a powerful, make-any-kind-of-game-you-want type engine, it's best to look elsewhere.

Overall, I would like to use it a lot more and get to know the controls and what the limits of it actually are, because it looks robust enough for a decent one-player game. If only I could figure out how to keep the motion I create from being all choppy (I don't know how to get the animation to transition from one motion to another without a pause in between them), how to use variables, create my own functions, or even type in my own code using the internal syntax that I'm sure is being used underneath all that drag and drop stuff. I'm hopeful that the books would describe how to do all of these things (except typing my own code, which I just don't think is supported), but again, the price just to learn it is a bit steep if you only find out that it's not good enough to suit your needs and you never want to touch it again.

Pros:

* Free/Open Source.
* Instant results.
* Very little/No coding experience required.
* Installation free. Just unzip and run.
* Online forums where you can ask questions and hope somebody else is there to answer.
* You can import files from other modeling programs like 3DSMax that export into .ase format. There are also some utilities you can download that will convert some formats into .ase, so just because the modeler doesn't do it, doesn't mean it can't be done.
* It has the ability to connect to a VR Headset for more interaction, though I lack the know-how and technology to figure out how to do that.
Cons:

* Other than 4 very basic tutorials and a couple of example worlds, almost no freely available documentation on how to use it.
* It's not completely stable. It crashes sometimes, but most of the time just reports an error and you can try again. (It has a SlowAndSteady mode, which is supposed to be more stable.)
* Online forums where you can ask a question and hope somebody is there and will answer.
* Practically no documentation on how to use it.
* Not designed specifically to make games. Its primary function is for storytelling.
* You can't export it to a stand-alone exe file. You record a movie of it (but you need your own video capturing software) and take screenshots, but it can only be run (and thus interactive for a game) within the Alice program.
* No advanced mode that allows you to type in your own code.
* Oh, and did I mention it has practically no documentation on how to use it?
Summary: It's exciting to see something in which you can have such instantaneous results from without knowing all the details about how to manipulate objects in 3D space. It's great to be able to put an object on the stage and use some simple commands to get those objects doing things. Unfortunately it's a bit frustrating to see this program seem so simple to operate but then have a hard time figuring out how to use it. That coupled with the lack of documentation included with the program (not even a help file that describes the classes and methods used within the program) or online, and the fact that the only way to find comprehensive help on the subject is to shell out $25-$45 dollars is disheartening.

Here is a link to videos of projects made with Alice, along with a description of the curriculum used: Building Virtual Worlds. (most of the images are broken, but most of the videos I tried worked.) Be sure to check out the Calvin and Hobbes video (it's a little more than halfway down) if you were ever a fan of the comics!

EDIT: I posted a link to this thread in the Alice Forums, and a couple of people have responded with their opinions and suggestions to add to this mini-review. Alice Forum member DrJim's opinion regarding Alice for creating games is a simple "Don't." For some of the reasons I already listed, being that you can't export Alice worlds to anything beyond HTML and a video capture. Mr Nemo agreed about Alice's primary use being something different than to make games, but pointed out that two-player, head-to-head gameplay was possible (see Spy vs. Spy video from above Building Virtual Worlds link) and that while Alice cannot export into a standalone .exe, it is freely available on the internet for anyone to download and run. He also reiterated that since Alice is open source, a person who was adequately motivated could indeed modify the code to provide more support for game creation.

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