Engine Choices - Not Sure Which Way To Go

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 7:40 am

Ok, here's a big long rant from my messed up mind...

[rant]
Dammit! I want to make my game as good as it can be! I'm not sure whether i should go with Irrlicht (which i like because of it's simplicity) or go with OGRE (which i like because of it's graphics and insane speed). I'm a GAME PLAY programmer WAY more than a graphical or low level programmer

(I've even considered Torque or other commercial engines...)

I just don't know what to do. I'm thinking maybe i should start with Irrlicht THEN swap to OGRE or just bite the bullet and start with OGRE... I want results! I'm used to modding for Q3 and QFusion and stuff, the advantage being i could get results quickly and they looked great

If i could i'd make my game as a MOD but all the RTS game engines out there SUCK! The only one i've liked is Dark Reign's Tactics Engine but it's freakin 2D and has some really annoying limitations... Not to mention its about 5 years old... I swear, if i could get my hands on the Tactics Engine source there's no knowing what i could do... Seriously though, the Tactics Engine is THE No. 1 engine for speed, features and general power.
eg. I made a mod for Dark Reign that crossed it with StarCraft, WarCraft 2 and Red Alert 1 & 2!!! It was awesome BUT it was in 2D

I want to realise my visions in 3D! I want an engine that can handle MASSIVE maps and HUGE numbers of units. I'm not after graphics, hell, i'd be happy with 500 polys per unit and 50 polys per weapon!! and it's possible too. I'm a pretty decent low poly modeler.

What to do?

Is there ANYONE out there who could help?? I'm thinking maybe i should just stick up my development documents up somewhere so people can see i'm serious about what i want to do

(If aprox. 20 pages of documents don't do anything then i don't know what will...)

I want to make a game that will suck me in as much as what Dark Reign did

it had an expansive story, cool characters and a gaming universe that included religious elements crossed with a traditional good-vs-evil theme. IT HAD IMMERSION!! When i played it i felt like i really was fighting in MASSIVE 2000 unit battles. Yeah, thats right. 2000. A strange number in the days of C&C Generals bloatware and craptacular StarCraft (That games AI s**ks balls...). 1000 or more units PER TEAM in a 5 TEAM MATCH!! 5000 UNITS! No other engine i know of can do that and still have the best AI of any strategy game. Not to mention 3 totally unique and different teams + 2 awesome expansion teams. And you could play on a 33.3K modem! and you could even have up to 8 players!

Dark Reign 2 was a TOTAL AND UTTER EMBARASSMENT to Dark Reign as a whole! They took a great game universe and f**ked it and now Activision doesn't seem to give a stuff about Dark Reign anymore.

Crap. I'm SOOO close to starting on this but, dammit! I'm not even sure that it's possible! But i can't get it out!! I think about it non-stop and until i get it out i'll never have confidence in my abilities as a programmer. This is a test on myself and my abilities and if i can't do it then WTF am i here...

[/rant]

Fugg me that was a rant and a bit... Sorry about that venting but i really do want to GET THIS GAME DONE!! I want to teach Pandemic a lesson on how to make a REAL strategy game worthy of the Dark Reign name AND have fun along the way... I just gotta get started... Once i get started the good stuff will begin

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 10:37 am

Damn. I really need to stop having mood swings...

I was nearly ready to ditch Irrlicht but after realising what I did and didn't need and how much work it would take to use another engine (eg. OGRE) I figured what the heck i'll use it

So that's it. I'll stay with Irrlicht.

so far my game system is using:
* Irrlicht
* Audiere (Because it's simple, may switch to FMOD or OpenAL)
* Cal3D - This is the big reason why i'm starying with Irrlicht. As i said i have sucky engine skills so this tutorial here: http://thomas.webtracker.ch/jahia/Jahia ... ce/pid/672 totally convinced me that Irrlicht will work the best
* I may potentially use Cg but as i said, my game favours huge battles and awesome AI over graphics. if i can nail the gameplay i won't need the graphics
* Possibly ODE physics. It looks easy enough to use and a lot of other projects use it too. i was going to maybe do the physics myself but i then decided doing so would seriously screw up my game plans
* OpenSteer AI. Easily THE best pathfinding and general RTS specific AI i've come across.

If anyone is interested in helping out or are just interested in what I hope to achieve, just fire me off a mail here: captain_killau.nospam@yahoo.com.au (remove .nospam)

Anyhow, sorry for that rant earlier (In a crappy mood) but I think i've now got it all sorted... I'll see what I can do with Irrlicht!

PS. My game WILL be open source and FREE. However, the art, assets and other stuff i'll probably license seperately... I'll see what works out the best.

Edit: Should i have placed this in open discussion or something?

Feel free to move this thread if it is wrong...

l0calh05t · Post by **l0calh05t** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 11:28 am

Captain_Kill wrote: * I may potentially use Cg but as i said, my game favours huge battles and awesome AI over graphics. if i can nail the gameplay i won't need the graphics

Actually, if you intend to implement large numbers of units etc, using Cg for vertex shaders might offer a great improvement in speed.

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 1:50 pm

I've heard of that type of technology before... I'd like to be able to implement it but I'm not a good engine programmer. So instead I'll just optomize the hell out of the rest of the code

But of course when I finish/beta test my game I'll have no problems with other people implementing features like that. One of the benefits of Open Sourcing games...

l0calh05t · Post by **l0calh05t** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 1:59 pm

Captain_Kill wrote:I've heard of that type of technology before... I'd like to be able to implement it but I'm not a good engine programmer. So instead I'll just optomize the hell out of the rest of the code But of course when I finish/beta test my game I'll have no problems with other people implementing features like that. One of the benefits of Open Sourcing games...

Myself, I usually have problems when it comes to coding entity managers & messaging systems. Anyways,in case you are interested in it , I found an article about animation using Cg (which is what you would basically want) http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20030 ... do_pfv.htm

bal · Post by **bal** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 2:00 pm

Hmm. This afternoon I looked to the Ogre engine. The graphics are better but I don't even manage to compile a single project. Also the code is not as easy as Irrlicht's. I think I'll first learn Irrlicht until I reach its limits

l0calh05t · Post by **l0calh05t** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 2:03 pm

Yeah, ogre is quite problmatic. Besides, Irrlichts API is structured a lot better (IMO). But I don't think you have to stop when you reach Irrliochts limits, just extend them!

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 3:45 pm

Good point localhost, IMHO things like bumpmapping and stuff don't seem THAT hard to implement... but I'd prefer to spend the time on gameplay programming and leave stuff like that to the experts. ie. Niko. Apart from that my code is kinda hacky... OK for gameplay but bad for an engine!

Just a general question here: Has anyone got Cal3D working well with Irrlicht? It's no big deal if no one has because I can always do it myself...

PS. The more I think about it the more I think Irrlict will be the best... Thank you people for showing some interest (and for offering suggestions), it's a big confidence booster. Most people I tell this idea to think I can't do it

l0calh05t · Post by **l0calh05t** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 8:40 pm

Haven't tried Cal3d yet, but I guess if it can export a file format which irrlicht can read it should be no problem.

Ps: If people tell you that you can't do it thats only one more reason to do it!

Electron · Post by **Electron** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 9:40 pm

It's funny, everyone says Ogre is faster butwhen I tested it myself it seemed darn slow. Their quake map example only ran at about 30fps for me (Irrlicht's q3map demo runs at 120+ fps for me). It did load shaders but displayed the extra stuff very poorly. I'm sure it is capable of being fast, but that experience combined with the fact that it is very hard to compile it with dev-cpp (and I'm sure I'd want to make some modification) made me decide to leave it, at least for now. It also seems horrible bloated IMHO. It's a >30mb download and it doesn't even come with a precompiled binary. It also seems to need several support dll's just to run

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 10:33 pm

One main thing i like about Ogre is its terrain rendering. A MASSIVE heightmap with a fair amount of detail and water and i still managed to get around 300fps... (This was on a 9600XT 256MB @ 1024x768)

You know how I posted a screenshot of that terrain engine in my other post? Anyone up to the challenge of porting it to Irrlicht?

It's in C++, OpenGL and GLUT. If no one else wants to I may do it myself but I'm not entirely sure how to start... I don't even know why that other engine is so fast and has such high draw distances... It seems like a brute force algorithm but it can't be... Anyhow, that algorithm is PERFECT for my project. Insane level sizes are just what I'm after... and apart from that the max BSP size is only 64k x 64k which is tiny for an RTS. Oh yeah, that renderer loads Total Annihilation format maps, it also keeps all texture data so as a result maps look awesome. If people are interested I'll post a link to the code and a demo which uses it here.

PS. Cal3D is actually a library which loads its own format. Considering the X file format's rough past I'd rather use a system which I do know works. It's multi-platform compatible and is relatively simple although I still don't get it

warui · Post by **warui** » Wed Jun 30, 2004 11:10 pm

Captain_Kill wrote:One main thing i like about Ogre is its terrain rendering. A MASSIVE heightmap with a fair amount of detail and water and i still managed to get around 300fps... (This was on a 9600XT 256MB @ 1024x768)

That's because OGRE has LOD, and Irrlicht still lacks it.

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 1:04 am

Oops

Anyone got an idea on when Irrlicht could be getting terrain LOD? For now I don't need it (I can use BSPs) but i'll need it sooner or later.

One MAJOR feature I want to implement is BSP buildings, ie. buildings that you can walk around inside of. I could use models but I think BSPs could work the best. The buildings themselves will be relatively simple but I'm worried about the lag each time one is loaded... Dammit, not sure what to do because buildings that you can interact with is an ABSOLUTE must.

Captain_Kill · Post by **Captain_Kill** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 2:24 am

OK, I'm VERY happy now

I've been messing about with Irrlicht just to see how easy it is to do things and it's a BRILLIANT engine! I seriously can't believe how simple it all is!!

Thank you Niko! This is great! It's STUPIDLY simple and most of the time if there's problems it's my fault

which is good because it's forcing me to fix up my code and do it well

So again, THANK YOU NIKO!! (And anyone else who helps out...)

If people are interested, when I have something a BIT more substantial I can post it here

There will be one little problem however, you'll require Quake 3 as I'll probably be ripping off Quake 3 models and stuff until I make my own... And it won't be much too, but I'll give a start for anyone wanting to make an RTS

If you're all lucky I may even have OpenSteer working!

Back to coding!! MUHAHAHAHA!!

PS. In an early test I had 30 or so Sydney models on screen at once. Which ain't much but it's a start

Edit : Just looked @ OpenSteer's source... It's a bit too weird but they are improving it soon anyway so i'll probably wait until then. For now A* looks like a pretty good choice

Valkyr · Post by **Valkyr** » Thu Jul 01, 2004 3:10 am

Captain_Kill wrote: you'll require Quake 3 as I'll probably be ripping off Quake 3 models and stuff until I make my own... And it won't be much too,

Besides pondering to morality of using other artists work without their permission...

May I ask why you're using Q3 models for an RTS? Is it an RTS like C&C or is it something more like a top-down GTA?

It seems like you would want to create smaller, lower poly models for an RTS of this magnitude. Even if you are inexperienced I'm sure you could still model some decent low poly units for your games.

Well... know that I think of it, working with less polys will probably be tougher, but I think you just need to create very undetailed models and the texture artists take care of the rest.