What to use for an indoor/outdoor RPG?
Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2008 5:00 pm
Hello!
My team and I have been conceptualizing and designing our RPG project for a while now (around a year and a half, possibly more) and as we're approaching a final concept, I've taken up the task of deciding which libraries/engines to use and what parts to write ourselves.
This is our first game project. We are not programming experts, but we aren't completely new in the matter either - I have personally dabbled with Objective-C in the past (have written a couple small apps with it) and have also worked with a couple forms of BASIC. I am currently learning C independently (through online tutorials and books), and two other people on our team are computer science majors who have taken Java and will be taking C/C++ courses very soon. To tell you the truth, our initial idea was for an MMORPG, but it quickly became obvious to us that the project was too ambitious at this point and that we should develop our skills with something smaller (hence the offline RPG).
The RPG will feature a mix of indoor and outdoor areas. We would prefer if we could develop the visuals to the point of being a feasible competitor with the "big boys" in RPGs - not necessarily matching them, but having a quality nice enough to not be a major con when a potential customer is comparing games. Basically, we don't want a final product with visuals equivalent to that of a PS1 game. I don't know if that is possible at this point, but it's what we'll be aiming for.
Ideally, this game would also be multi-platform from the start, meaning that good OpenGL performance is very important - we can't have Linux and Mac OS users experiencing incredibly lower framerates than our Windows/DirectX users. We feel that this is important after seeing the recent 2-4% marketshare shift from Windows to Linux and Mac OS, as slight as it may be, because this shift might (and probably will) continue. Two or three of us are Mac/Linux users as well, which also influences this decision.
Our primary modeling tool will be Blender or possibly Wings 3D. What is to be used for other pieces of the game is still being debated.
Taking all of this into account, what would be the best option for our project's graphics engine? Using Irrilicht, OGRE, writing our own (highly unlikely considering the team's lack of trig and higher math skills), or something else?
Thanks in advance to anybody with advice on the matter.
My team and I have been conceptualizing and designing our RPG project for a while now (around a year and a half, possibly more) and as we're approaching a final concept, I've taken up the task of deciding which libraries/engines to use and what parts to write ourselves.
This is our first game project. We are not programming experts, but we aren't completely new in the matter either - I have personally dabbled with Objective-C in the past (have written a couple small apps with it) and have also worked with a couple forms of BASIC. I am currently learning C independently (through online tutorials and books), and two other people on our team are computer science majors who have taken Java and will be taking C/C++ courses very soon. To tell you the truth, our initial idea was for an MMORPG, but it quickly became obvious to us that the project was too ambitious at this point and that we should develop our skills with something smaller (hence the offline RPG).
The RPG will feature a mix of indoor and outdoor areas. We would prefer if we could develop the visuals to the point of being a feasible competitor with the "big boys" in RPGs - not necessarily matching them, but having a quality nice enough to not be a major con when a potential customer is comparing games. Basically, we don't want a final product with visuals equivalent to that of a PS1 game. I don't know if that is possible at this point, but it's what we'll be aiming for.
Ideally, this game would also be multi-platform from the start, meaning that good OpenGL performance is very important - we can't have Linux and Mac OS users experiencing incredibly lower framerates than our Windows/DirectX users. We feel that this is important after seeing the recent 2-4% marketshare shift from Windows to Linux and Mac OS, as slight as it may be, because this shift might (and probably will) continue. Two or three of us are Mac/Linux users as well, which also influences this decision.
Our primary modeling tool will be Blender or possibly Wings 3D. What is to be used for other pieces of the game is still being debated.
Taking all of this into account, what would be the best option for our project's graphics engine? Using Irrilicht, OGRE, writing our own (highly unlikely considering the team's lack of trig and higher math skills), or something else?
Thanks in advance to anybody with advice on the matter.