Best Engine Compare

Discuss about anything related to the Irrlicht Engine, or read announcements about any significant features or usage changes.
hybrid
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Post by hybrid »

Just for info: Most changes sent in from the community are fixed and reworked by me or other developers. And probably more than 50% of the code I have checked in until now was made by myself :D
And there are also other developers - ar least two: burning video who contributed the second software renderer and also works on the internals of Irrlicht from time to time, and Etienne who made the first official OSX ports.
Legion
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Re: Sorry...

Post by Legion »

CuteAlien wrote:
3ddev wrote:Irrlicht might benefit from a LGPL license.
Just for info, the irrlicht license was the main reason for me to chose that engine over ogre. Not because i want to hide my changes to the engine, but simply because a lgpl licensed engine can't be used in a legal way when porting a game to game consoles (and that's official info from the ogre-development-team. I think it has to do with lib's needed for console development and static linking). And that's something i hope to do with my games someday. So please no license change ;)
Yes i fully agree with this, this is one of the "problems" of LGPL.
Additionally say you want to obfuscate to the fileloading engine,
by introducing your own fileformats (to reduce game mod/hacking).
You would have to work around that if you use an LGPL engine,
by exporting functions/classes so you can have the routines in the main program and not the library.
Because all changes to the engine has to be made public if asked about it.

The GPL vs public domain/BSD breed of licenses has been ongoing for years.
But nothing proves that GPL or LGPLed projects would benifit more.
Most important is the communities, if a project has a strong community it will benifit from it.
I have no doubts that irrlicht will continue to be driven forward.
I for one will post tutorials and things as soon as i have something to share.
trunks14
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Post by trunks14 »

Oh yes ogre has many eye candy features but, one thing i love 'bout irrlicht is its simplicity, once i tried to get started with ogre, but it was painful, while irrlicht statically links a lot fo libraries, an ogre installation needs tons of dlls, and configuring irrlicht is by far easier, ogre 'almost' makes you to install SP2 and .Net Framework, i dislike the .NET platform btw.

and i dont agree that irrlicht is for begginers, while Ogre has a lot of features built in, in irrlicht you have to code it yourself, so it is likely you'll have to know Direct3D and etc. But there's little ogre can do irrlicht can't, that's why many of us have to wait until afecelis comes out with something new :D
Not yet.
3ddev
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@Saturn; @trunks14; @Legion; @Hybrid...

Post by 3ddev »

@Saturn:
Sorry about the "screaming." And it looks like Hybrid removed the bold style. I find it hard to read long paragraphs on the computer in the normal font. I thought that maybe other people would find it easier like myself if I did it in bold. I won't do that again, but just for your info, when I type a document, I always make it bold when typing and then change it back to normal before printing! :lol:

@trunks14:
I personnally like Ogre3d's many dlls. I find it useful to able to delete, say, the bspmanager dll if I am not using quake maps; it saves a lot of space and makes the overall engine cleaner. I agree with you about the fact of Irrlicht's simplicity, but that is why I also believe that it is perfect for beginners. The setup for Ogre is VERY difficult for newbies, but you get used to it. They have finally scrapped STL Port which is a relief, and makes the setup more easy. If you really haven't tested the full capabilites of Ogre, then don't consider it a "bad" or a "too complicated" engine. On all of the computers I have tested, Ogre has a better graphics rendering than Irrlicht. That doesn't mean that Irrlicht isn't good; Irrlicht is excellent! It just doesn't have the comercial quality graphics that I am looking for. As I stated in the thread with a title something like "Niko wasting his time on IrrEdit?", I think that in several years Irrlicht will be at the same level as Ogre. Until then, however, I plan to primarily work in Ogre. I will still program my smaller, "funner" games in Irrlicht, as well as complete my current racing game. Oh, you stated "ogre 'almost' makes you to install SP2 and .Net Framework, i dislike the .NET platform btw. " Ogre doesn not require sp2 or even XP, nor does Ogre even use the .NET framework. MOGRE does, yes, but that is totally different. As for diliking the .NET framwork, I would agree with you up until now. However, with the .NET 2.0 AND 3.0 included in Vista, I might reconsider.

@Legion:
I know all about the public domain/BSD license disagreement. In Irrlicht, many users have had to make adjustments to fit their needs. That is why there is NXIrrlicht and IrrSpintx. So maybe the zlib license is better for Irrlicht overall. However, with Ogre, the engine has reached a stage where users really don't have to make many changes; it is all there "out-of-the-box." If someone makes changes, it usually is quite important, and so be very bennificial if released back into the community. In conclusion, maybe zlib is best for Irrlicht and LGPL is better for Ogre. I am just so glad that Sinbad decided on scrapping the old GPL license! That oringinally dettered me from using the engine! :lol:

@Hybrid:
Sorry for stating that "most" of the patches on your web site were not made by you. I now realized by reviewing the site again just how much you had actually done. However, there is still a lot of patches derived from IrrSpintz. As for Thomas Alten, I recognize his major contributions to the Irrlicht engine, most nobably the software renderer. It makes the oringinal software renderer like obselete! Also, bitplane has created many rather cool add-ons into Irrlicht. I plan to ask him to make a dynamic skydome similar to the one found in Ogre. That would be really cool, especially if dynamic scripting could be added with it! Sorry about the bold type too, but I stated my reasons above. I just wish my eyes would stop giving me such troubles :( Just wondering, but why is the old software renderer still included in Irrlicht? If any users' computer can't run something else, then I think that it is about time for them to update! :lol:
rogerborg
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Post by rogerborg »

My opinion on the Irrlicht / Ogre debate is that Irrlicht will allow you to exceed its bounds faster. By that, I mean that you can get on with actually writing your game, and get it playable and feature-complete. Once you've done that, then you can worry about the latest visual bells and whistles, which, bear in mind, will have got bellier and whistlier during the time you spent actually writing your application.

With Ogre, you'll have to invest a little more up front to learn a larger API, and (I firmly believe) you're more likely to get tempted into tinkering with pretty tech demos than actually completing a game. It also railroads you a fair bit more in terms of non-functional requirements; for me, its insistence on using its own memory manager was a show-stopper.

Of course, a disciplined team can (and demonstrably do) use Ogre to produce commercial games, and that's who I think will benefit from it: serious, dedicated teams working to a schedule and on a budget. Irrlicht is, I feel, more suited to hobbyists. I find it far more pleasant to work with and modify. It's just more enjoyable to use, and that's a big plus.

What I'd recommend is that if you go with Irrlicht, that you abstract it out through your own interface, to ease the transition to Ogre (or, god help you, Crystal Space) at a later date, if you get so far with your application that you outgrow Irrlicht.
Saturn
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Post by Saturn »

rogerborg wrote:It also railroads you a fair bit more in terms of non-functional requirements; for me, its insistence on using its own memory manager was a show-stopper.
In OgreConfig.h change

Code: Select all

#define OGRE_DEBUG_MEMORY_MANAGER 1
to

Code: Select all

#define OGRE_DEBUG_MEMORY_MANAGER 0
It is for debugging only and even with this option set to 1 it is only available in debug config, and not in release config.

It is planned to add a completely voluntary memory-manager-hook to force Ogre to use your own memory manager.
rogerborg, probably in order to let you wonder about another feature and what you can do with it without getting your game done. ;)

While I find your thoughts convincing from how you presented them, I still see more Oge projects than Irrlicht projects out there. And not only professional work, but works by amateurs/hobbyists too.
rogerborg
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Post by rogerborg »

Excuse me, I was over simplifying the issue; my problem with Ogre (in that respect) is that it's overly burdensome to modify it to use my memory manager of choice, Fortify. I'll certainly come back for another look once the custom hook is implemented.

I completely accept that Ogre is a more fully featured engine than Irrlicht, and Ogre (or perhaps Crystal Space) are the only serious choices for the release of a commercial quality game. However, Irrlicht is fit for the purpose of enabling rapid application development. It's my (professional) experience that the display portion of a game is actually a relatively small part of the total development effort, and that the majority of development can be carried out with a basic engine, with the display components tucked away behind an interface that allows you easily to switch to another engine later. Irrlicht, in my opinion, fulfills that requirement more cleanly than Ogre.

In short, I prefer to use Irrlicht as the renderer subsystem for my game for now, rather than commiting to having my game be an Ogre application. Fair enough?
techiemac
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Re: Best Engine Compare

Post by techiemac »

3ddev wrote: There are currently NO commercial apps using Irrlicht that I am aware of.
Well maybe I can bring awareness to this topic :)

Currently we are going to be using Irrlicht for a commercial app for a pretty big project. This is not some small shareware project (not to say that there is anything wrong with small shareware projects... I have registered quite a few very useful shareware projects :) ), its a project with a tight deadline and a tight budget (of course what project doesn't suffer from having tight deadlines and budgets).

I went through a product evaluation cycle to determine the best engine to use for our product. It involved hacking away, trying some samples, looking at the feature sets, etc, etc. We found Irrlicht was fairly well designed, appeared to be easily extensible, and we wouldn't have to send half our developers back to school to use it. But a big part of our decision was no reliance on 3D hardware, cross platform, well designed code, and certain licensing requirements.

That's how I came to Irrlicht. It has many great features, cross platform support, and a license that makes our lawyers happy.

So, yes, we are going to be using Irrlicht. I can't really go into details about what for and how quite yet but I can say that I'm pretty happy with it!
roxaz
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Post by roxaz »

its nice to hear. when will you show us your progress? :)
techiemac
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Post by techiemac »

Well since we are still in development, I probably can't show anything.

But I can say that it's not a game.

I actually knew about irrlicht during the evaluation of engines based on some stuff I was playing with at home (the hobby category... yea I'm a geek, I code for work and I code for fun). But I thought I would pick it up and include it in the evaluation. Lo and behold, it fit our needs.

The point is that even though some technology or tool may not be good for my solution, it doesn't mean that it's not good for other solutions.

The moment we get into the "This is better than that" argument, we begin to chase features that maybe we don't need. Irrlicht is nice because it doesn't include the bulk of a physics engine, audio engine, ai engine. Not having the kitchen sink is a nice thing when you only need a fork. In other words, really I only need the graphics part of an engine but if I do need extra, there have been many good projects that hook into Irrlicht.

It's easily extensable and that is a big reason we chose it.

Also, it's open source... of course as a responsable user of the engine I'm going to at least try and post bug fixes when I find bugs (currently I'm chasing one now) :)
roxaz
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Post by roxaz »

and try to show us your progress :P you know im very curious (and i gues most of ppl do too) about your mysterious project. ass soon as you will be able to show something (screens at least) plz do :)
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