Hello if one was to ignore the severe cost differences between the 3d engines out these days, what would be the best one? Unreal 3 engine, Quake, Irrlicht, etc. I was just wondering what would dominate in a FPS style game. Any engine can be compared(So many to choose from).
Winter Fresh
Best Engine Compare
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WinterFresh
- Posts: 2
- Joined: Mon Oct 23, 2006 4:42 am
- Location: Charlotte, NC
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GueZt_Coders
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Tue Jan 17, 2006 4:04 am
Hi Winterfresh.
The best way to leverage what your asking is to go directly to
UNREAL and QUAKE official forum and ask the capabilities of
thier engine, better be try to download the tech demo, or read
some facts and overview of thier engine so you can evaluate
from your self, if it fits your taste.
If you will ask if Irrlicht can do FPS style project from the help
threads, lot's of people may directly give you it's pros and cons.
or may start helping getting started.
I'm just tired of seeing post asking which 3d engine is better or
not from unofficial forum, from which usually turn into 3d
engine flames, that makes forum looks ugly.
Assuming I will not agree with TheC, and I will say No U3 sucks,
Q3 is cool and free, and some may post no both sucks and
irrlicht can do the job, and some may responds, this one is
better from all of the above.
Hope you got my point.
Cheers.
The best way to leverage what your asking is to go directly to
UNREAL and QUAKE official forum and ask the capabilities of
thier engine, better be try to download the tech demo, or read
some facts and overview of thier engine so you can evaluate
from your self, if it fits your taste.
If you will ask if Irrlicht can do FPS style project from the help
threads, lot's of people may directly give you it's pros and cons.
or may start helping getting started.
I'm just tired of seeing post asking which 3d engine is better or
not from unofficial forum, from which usually turn into 3d
engine flames, that makes forum looks ugly.
Assuming I will not agree with TheC, and I will say No U3 sucks,
Q3 is cool and free, and some may post no both sucks and
irrlicht can do the job, and some may responds, this one is
better from all of the above.
Hope you got my point.
Cheers.
Just part of irrlicht related project| CLEAR CODE NOTATIONS IS LARGELY SELF CODUMENTING!
For one thing the Unreal and Quake3 engines are already used in released titles and are both complete FPS engines. Irrlicht is incomplete and untested. Graphically, I've seen nothing to convince me that Irrlicht can rival either. But then Irrlicht is open source (as is Quake 3) and was written primarily by one person.
What does the debugger tell you? You did use the debugger, didn't you?
One of the strong points of Irrlicht is the non restrictive license.
Also it's very easy to use & extend.
Heck, it took me a couple of minutes to get ready to
integrate it into my already started project, without having ever used it before.
The Unreal engine has a long history, therefor more mature,
add to this that their programmers get paid...
Quake3 im not even mentioning(oops i did), it's old...
Instead of comparing engines, this is better than that etc
Try to find the engine that will suit your project best.
Add to this, time & cost, license, whatever.
If you like what you are looking at, choose that engine.
However the gold rule still applies:
If you throw garbage into any engine, it's garbage you'll receive.
Meaning, if your levels, textures, gamelogic, music, etc etc are crap,
the result will be crap.
I was first along the lines of writing my own engine,
halfway thru the game editor i decided to checkout Irrlicht.
Im certainly glad i did, because it was what i had been looking for.
Also it's very easy to use & extend.
Heck, it took me a couple of minutes to get ready to
integrate it into my already started project, without having ever used it before.
The Unreal engine has a long history, therefor more mature,
add to this that their programmers get paid...
Quake3 im not even mentioning(oops i did), it's old...
Instead of comparing engines, this is better than that etc
Try to find the engine that will suit your project best.
Add to this, time & cost, license, whatever.
If you like what you are looking at, choose that engine.
However the gold rule still applies:
If you throw garbage into any engine, it's garbage you'll receive.
Meaning, if your levels, textures, gamelogic, music, etc etc are crap,
the result will be crap.
I was first along the lines of writing my own engine,
halfway thru the game editor i decided to checkout Irrlicht.
Im certainly glad i did, because it was what i had been looking for.
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seppuku arts
- Posts: 17
- Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:39 pm
Quake 3 is an old engine, rather out of date, but no doubt good for FPS games.
Irrlicht is pretty easy, has great tutorials, it has the resources out there to easily make a FPS game, also with the technology you can bring yourself up to date, as you'll have shader support, meaning per pixel lighting, shadows, normal mapping, ambient occlusion mapping, realistic water, bloom and more.
Unreal 3, contains a vast amount of shader support and looks very impressive with its own editor and other things and is of high quality being a commercially used engine and I'm sure to be very good for FPS games, if you know how to use it, you could get some awesome results, same for Irrlicht, the cool visuals tend to come with your graphic skills not necessarily your application, good 3D modelling, good texturing, good normal mapping and good ambient occlusion mapping should be able to create awesome looking work in both Unreal 3 and Irrlicht. So personally I would pick irrlicht, I mean this is part of the licence for the unreal 2 engine (they haven't got U3 details)
As a 3D modeller I hate Blenders interface and found better tools out there)
Irrlicht is pretty easy, has great tutorials, it has the resources out there to easily make a FPS game, also with the technology you can bring yourself up to date, as you'll have shader support, meaning per pixel lighting, shadows, normal mapping, ambient occlusion mapping, realistic water, bloom and more.
Unreal 3, contains a vast amount of shader support and looks very impressive with its own editor and other things and is of high quality being a commercially used engine and I'm sure to be very good for FPS games, if you know how to use it, you could get some awesome results, same for Irrlicht, the cool visuals tend to come with your graphic skills not necessarily your application, good 3D modelling, good texturing, good normal mapping and good ambient occlusion mapping should be able to create awesome looking work in both Unreal 3 and Irrlicht. So personally I would pick irrlicht, I mean this is part of the licence for the unreal 2 engine (they haven't got U3 details)
If you wanted to do something beyond the demo licence, you could really without a commercial fee, which is rather expensive, plus royalties, personally not worth it I say when you can make a game free with the combination-QuArK, Blender, Irrlicht, the GIMP, lithunwrap, rendermonkey and DevC++ at commercial quality as long as you have the skill. (I wouldn't use that combination myself, I do spend money on my productsRepresenting years of development and powering numerous best-selling titles on multiple platforms, the Unreal Engine 2 technology is available for license on a per-platform basis. Three platforms are available: PC, Xbox, and PlayStation2.
A PC platform license is only required if you intend to ship a retail PC game. If you are developing a console-only title, you may freely use the PC code for development, testing and for its back-end game-server components (for multiplayer games). Note that a PC license includes the right to ship your game on all personal computer operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and MacOS X; by paying once for the PC platform license you may ship on any or all of these operating systems at no additional cost.
Royalty-Bearing License - For retail console & PC products
A non-refundable, non-recoupable license fee is due on execution of the agreement. The cost is US $350,000 for one of the available Unreal Engine 2 platforms, plus US $50,000 for each additional platform. A royalty of 3% is due on all revenue from the game, calculated on the wholesale price of the product minus (for console SKUs) console manufacturer fees. In the case of massive-multiplayer online games, the royalty is also due on the additional forms of revenue including subscriptions and advertisements.
As a 3D modeller I hate Blenders interface and found better tools out there)Re: Best Engine Compare
By far the biggest difference will never be in the engine but in the team which does work on a game. A real good team might just create a better game starting with a new engine from scratch than a bad team with the most expensive engine available. The good team might even finish the game faster...
In the theoretical case of all teams being equal and having unlimited money and not careing much about the software licence: I'd select the engine which has finished games which do look most similar to the product which i'd try to create.
In the theoretical case of all teams being equal and having unlimited money and not careing much about the software licence: I'd select the engine which has finished games which do look most similar to the product which i'd try to create.
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seppuku arts
- Posts: 17
- Joined: Mon Oct 30, 2006 12:39 pm
Thats pretty much it, its not the car, but the driver behind the wheel, an expensive sports car is nice, quick around the track, that's if you can handle it around the corners without crashing and have the endurance to complete the circuit without too many pitstops, otherwise the banged out Skoda driver will win.
Re: Best Engine Compare
OK, let us get this straight: a 3d engine is a 3d graphics rendering engine; it does not include support for physics, ai and all that. Then there are Game Engines which attempt to support network, sound, physics, and ai. THE UNREAL ENGINE IS A GAME ENGINE! It is really not fair to compare a Game Endine to a 3d engine by itself. I will only be comparing the rendering capabilities of the Unreal engine; not the other "game" features availble. Personally, I don't like game engines, since their "all-in-one" design leads to limited support for different add-ons. Anyways, here is my take on 3d engines. Note that I have added the Ogre3d engine which I currently believe is the largest open-source engine availble. There is also Crystal Space...WinterFresh wrote:Hello if one was to ignore the severe cost differences between the 3d engines out these days, what would be the best one? Unreal 3 engine, Quake, Irrlicht, etc. I was just wondering what would dominate in a FPS style game. Any engine can be compared(So many to choose from).
Winter Fresh
IRRLICHT:
Irrlicht 3d engine is great for beginners. It has an easy to use interface, basic collision detection, and very rudimentary physics(i.e. gravity). Irrlicht supports 6 different drivers, and can easily run on more "legacy" hardware. However, this "legacy" support results in very small support for the newest features found in graphic cards on the market. The Irrlicht engine can be considered the second largest open-source engine on the net, with a fairly large community. Two interesting points to be aware of though: There is only one registered programmer for the Irrlicht project(NIKO). There are currently NO commercial apps using Irrlicht that I am aware of.
QUAKE ENGINE:
I think the Quake engine is too old to be of any compitition to any other modern 3d engine. I have not programmed with it myself, but the community is small, and the Quake engine just barely supports modern hardware. The bottom line; do not use unless you are maybe running Windows 95/98/ME!
UNREAL ENGINE:
The Unreal GAME Engine seems to be geared towards commercial-only entreprises. Nothing wrong with this, but you can expect a different level of interface. Also, Unreal IS NOT CROSS-PLATFORM. THIS IS A MASSIVE MINUS FOR ME! No OpenGL support either! Sure, all the editors and such make Unreal seem really easy to use, but where is the support forums or the community to help you out? There just isn't any. That is where you can see the difference between community projects and commercial projects. The commercial liscensing for Unreal is really limited too. Personally, I wouldn't consider using Unreal.
OGRE3D: YOU CAN FIND IT AT http://www.ogre3d.org
It has a sizable community( 11000++ users, estimated 100,000 computers using it for development, and over 175,000 posts in the forums!) Ogre is faster than Irrlicht for loading meshes, but slightly slower for bsp loading. This is because Ogre can use the latest and most advanced hardware available. The new version, DRAGON, supports DirectX9 and OpenGL. The older version also supported DirectX7 as well. OGRE IS TOTALLY OPEN-SOURCE AND CAN BE USED FOR FREE WITH COMMERCIAL APPS. The new version coming up for release soon, code-named Eihort, will also have a special liscense for Microsoft XNA. Ogre has been used for many commercial apps, and some of the screenshots are amazing. Ogre is a lot more complex than Irrlicht, but supports twice the amount of features. Ogre, to me, is the ultimate, free, open-source 3d engine around. It excels at everything it does.
Generally speaking, in my opinion, use Irrlicht as a beginner, and then switch to Ogre3d once you understand the basic 3d concepts. There are also two other 3d engines which I haven't mentioned here: Chrystal Space 3d as well as Panda 3d. Chrystal Space has a smaller community, but it appears slightly more powerful than Irrlicht. As for Panda 3d, the disney logo at top is enough to make me leave the web-site really quickly. All this is just my oppinion; other users may have others; but I think that many would agree with my concept of using Irrlicht as a beginner. After that Ogre seems deffently the right choice.
I hope this has helped
Last edited by 3ddev on Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:15 am, edited 2 times in total.
Corrections:
Irrlicht's devteam has three not one developer. Niko, hybrid and bitplane.
Ogre's current version is nicknamed Dagon not Dragon.
Eihort won't have "a special license for XNA". It will have a commercial license that lets you circumvent LGPL restrictions in that you don't have to make source changes available you did to Ogre (or to an application statically linked to it) when you redistribute it. That has in itself nothing to do with XNA and it is not the only requirement to develop games for xbox360.
I don't know why you have to scream that Ogre is open source and free. It is true, but so is Irrlicht with irrlicht having the more liberal license even.
Irrlicht's devteam has three not one developer. Niko, hybrid and bitplane.
Ogre's current version is nicknamed Dagon not Dragon.
Eihort won't have "a special license for XNA". It will have a commercial license that lets you circumvent LGPL restrictions in that you don't have to make source changes available you did to Ogre (or to an application statically linked to it) when you redistribute it. That has in itself nothing to do with XNA and it is not the only requirement to develop games for xbox360.
I don't know why you have to scream that Ogre is open source and free. It is true, but so is Irrlicht with irrlicht having the more liberal license even.
Good stuff from Mr 3ddev, but I'd like to add:
1. All 3d/game engines have their pros/cons, and "best" is a subjective term. For example, Irrlicht lacks for some things but its license allows you to keep your modified Irrlicht code.
2. Irrlicht: Full source is available. You don't have to release your modifications. Base code has no animation interpolation and PVS leaves something to be desired.
3. Quake engine: Full source code is out there, so you can add what you wish. Modifications must be released, though, or you can pay id for a license to keep you code $$$.
4. Unreal: Is there any source code for any version of this engine? If not, you're just making a mod. Also, does commercial exploitation mean a royalty to the Unreal makers (if allowed at all)?
5. Ogre: Great engine. Got most of the things you'd like "out the box". Modifications to Ogre's dlls become open source, though.
6. Quake3 BSP format in Ogre/Irrlicht:
Ogre Quake3 bsp loader uses bsp PVS to decide what's visible each frame and builds Ogre materials from Q3 shaders. Irrlicht bsp loader loads quicker because it loads the level as a mesh and is then "done" (no PVS calculation) and does not support some of the Q3 shader functionality that Ogre bsp does.
1. All 3d/game engines have their pros/cons, and "best" is a subjective term. For example, Irrlicht lacks for some things but its license allows you to keep your modified Irrlicht code.
2. Irrlicht: Full source is available. You don't have to release your modifications. Base code has no animation interpolation and PVS leaves something to be desired.
3. Quake engine: Full source code is out there, so you can add what you wish. Modifications must be released, though, or you can pay id for a license to keep you code $$$.
4. Unreal: Is there any source code for any version of this engine? If not, you're just making a mod. Also, does commercial exploitation mean a royalty to the Unreal makers (if allowed at all)?
5. Ogre: Great engine. Got most of the things you'd like "out the box". Modifications to Ogre's dlls become open source, though.
6. Quake3 BSP format in Ogre/Irrlicht:
Ogre Quake3 bsp loader uses bsp PVS to decide what's visible each frame and builds Ogre materials from Q3 shaders. Irrlicht bsp loader loads quicker because it loads the level as a mesh and is then "done" (no PVS calculation) and does not support some of the Q3 shader functionality that Ogre bsp does.
You posted this inbetween me reading 3ddev's post and replying to it.Saturn wrote:Corrections:
Eihort won't have "a special license for XNA". It will have a commercial license that lets you circumvent LGPL restrictions in that you don't have to make source changes available you did to Ogre (or to an application statically linked to it) when you redistribute it.
I did not know that Eihort will have a revised license. Thanks for the clarification. 
Sorry...
Ok, I did get "Dagon" wrong. 
Sorry about that. "Dragon" has been wrongly used all over the Ogre forums, and I might just be picking up some bad lingo that way. As for the new license discription, maybe I should have given more detail. The new license which allows commercial apps with XNA is proposed, and no final decision has been arrived at. It was May/June since Sinbad(the main Ogre maintainer) discussed his ideas on this subject. Currently Eihort is in the un-stable cvs release, and the license has not yet been added.
@sio2 Yes, if you buy the license for the Unreal engine, you get the full source code with the license. That is what it says on the website.
@Saturn You mentioned that I screamed that Ogre was Open-source and free? I agree with you that Irrlicht's zlib license may seem more liberal, but the LGPL has many plusses. The fact that everyone has to release their changes to the SDK means that everyone gets the lastest fixes and add-ons. Nobody can modify the SDK without providing the updates for the community. Really, if I made an add-on or fix to Ogre, I would be more than happy to let other users use my improvements. I don't find the LGPL license at all worse than the zlib; it maybe even better for some people like myself who have no inclination to modify something that is perfectly good. Irrlicht, on the other hand, while very good, still needs many improvements. Irrlicht might benefit from a LGPL license. Just my thoughts.... as for screaming Ogre is free, I felt it was important when comparing to the Unreal Engine which IS commercial. Sorry if it bothered you, but to me totally free and open-source sdks are very important!
ADDON: I just couldn't miss adding this. Steve, the maintainer of Ogre, has quit his job to work 100% of his time on Ogre related developement and consulting via his software company Torus Knot Software. In the future, Ogre looks like it will grow even faster than before with this new arrangement. I just can't wait to see what happens.......
Sorry about that. "Dragon" has been wrongly used all over the Ogre forums, and I might just be picking up some bad lingo that way. As for the new license discription, maybe I should have given more detail. The new license which allows commercial apps with XNA is proposed, and no final decision has been arrived at. It was May/June since Sinbad(the main Ogre maintainer) discussed his ideas on this subject. Currently Eihort is in the un-stable cvs release, and the license has not yet been added.@sio2 Yes, if you buy the license for the Unreal engine, you get the full source code with the license. That is what it says on the website.
@Saturn You mentioned that I screamed that Ogre was Open-source and free? I agree with you that Irrlicht's zlib license may seem more liberal, but the LGPL has many plusses. The fact that everyone has to release their changes to the SDK means that everyone gets the lastest fixes and add-ons. Nobody can modify the SDK without providing the updates for the community. Really, if I made an add-on or fix to Ogre, I would be more than happy to let other users use my improvements. I don't find the LGPL license at all worse than the zlib; it maybe even better for some people like myself who have no inclination to modify something that is perfectly good. Irrlicht, on the other hand, while very good, still needs many improvements. Irrlicht might benefit from a LGPL license. Just my thoughts.... as for screaming Ogre is free, I felt it was important when comparing to the Unreal Engine which IS commercial. Sorry if it bothered you, but to me totally free and open-source sdks are very important!
@Saturn I wouldn't exactly call hybrid and bitplane programmers parsay on the Irrlicht team. Rather, they are the cvs maintainers and bug/patch fixers. They are also invaluable to maintaining the forum. Without them, Irrlicht's community wouldn't be nearly as dedicated nor popular for new users. Maybe you haven't read Niko's interview with the Linux developper's center? Niko stated he wasn't willing to have any other programmers on the team. That interview, granted, is a bit old, but I don't think things have changed that much since then. Niko still solely assembles all the new SDKs, although many of the new features will be included from the cvs. I am not sure if you realize, but many of the patches from Hybrid's patch page are patches made by the community; not by Hybrid himself. I know that I was maybe a bit wrong in my statement, but I feel Irrlicht will never reach the number of maintainers/developpers as Ogre3d. I am not sure which setup is best: lots of members all contributing to a project; or a small team working tightly integrated. I can see why Niko keeps the Irrlicht team small, but as a result there have been fewer Irrlicht releases. Ogre on the other has had many updates over the last 5 years, most of them major. Again, my apologies for the statement. I hope though, that maybe Irrlicht can expand to include more developpers like Ogre3d. MVPs are a really good idea overall!Corrections:
Irrlicht's devteam has three not one developer. Niko, hybrid and bitplane.
ADDON: I just couldn't miss adding this. Steve, the maintainer of Ogre, has quit his job to work 100% of his time on Ogre related developement and consulting via his software company Torus Knot Software. In the future, Ogre looks like it will grow even faster than before with this new arrangement. I just can't wait to see what happens.......
3ddev, the "screaming" was because of the all-caps style. (and still the all-bold)
Actually I share many of the views you presented here, as may be obvious from my other posts and blog-comments.
The role of of bitplane and hybrid is probably similiar to the role of pjcast, genva et al for Ogre. No big change in the engine goes by Sinbad. He has the ultimate veto right, make no mistake there.
Though with some 3d genius like genva and a general understanding about direction and the degree of communication by all co-developers, such a veto is not probable to happen often.
What I am not content with in irrlicht, is the lack of communication. I don't have and have no way to get any sense of where Irrlicht is going. Regarding Ogre I get a pretty good idea about it. Sinbad often talks in his blog about it and he gives it in his answers to forum posts asking it or requesting features.
A "small" aside regarding the LGPL license and Ogre:
LGPL does not mean, that changes have to be committed back into the engine. They have to be made available as source on redistribution of Ogre. That's a difference. If you want to have a change committed into Ogre now, you have to send back an agreement, that you allow TKS, Sinbad's own company for Ogre development, to redistribute your changes royalty-free under other licenses. So, if you don't then the change doesn't get back into Ogre. Also no one who redistributes Ogre has to make his source changes publicly available. He only has to make them available to the folks he redistributes it to. If they don't pick it up or redistribute it themself, then no other party has any rights to get these changes.
3ddev, you are right in general here, I just want this to be some education regarding LGPL.
(and still the all-bold)Actually I share many of the views you presented here, as may be obvious from my other posts and blog-comments.
The role of of bitplane and hybrid is probably similiar to the role of pjcast, genva et al for Ogre. No big change in the engine goes by Sinbad. He has the ultimate veto right, make no mistake there.
Though with some 3d genius like genva and a general understanding about direction and the degree of communication by all co-developers, such a veto is not probable to happen often.
What I am not content with in irrlicht, is the lack of communication. I don't have and have no way to get any sense of where Irrlicht is going. Regarding Ogre I get a pretty good idea about it. Sinbad often talks in his blog about it and he gives it in his answers to forum posts asking it or requesting features.
A "small" aside regarding the LGPL license and Ogre:
LGPL does not mean, that changes have to be committed back into the engine. They have to be made available as source on redistribution of Ogre. That's a difference. If you want to have a change committed into Ogre now, you have to send back an agreement, that you allow TKS, Sinbad's own company for Ogre development, to redistribute your changes royalty-free under other licenses. So, if you don't then the change doesn't get back into Ogre. Also no one who redistributes Ogre has to make his source changes publicly available. He only has to make them available to the folks he redistributes it to. If they don't pick it up or redistribute it themself, then no other party has any rights to get these changes.
3ddev, you are right in general here, I just want this to be some education regarding LGPL.
Re: Sorry...
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 ;)3ddev wrote:Irrlicht might benefit from a LGPL license.