Re: Engines

RonJF · Post by **RonJF** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 1:14 am

Hi,
I have C# programming experience, but I'm completely new to 3D programming, so please forgive my ignorance. My questions are:

Isn't Direct3D an "Engine" for developing 3D games? If so, why do I need another "Engine" to develop 3d games? Do developers use Irrlicht (and other engines) to make 3d programming easier?

Thanks,
Ron

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 4:04 am

Engines like Irrlicht work on a higher level than the Direct3D and OpenGL libraries. The job of libs like D3D is to give a common interface to the graphic card. So you can access the basic functionality of all graphic cards through it in a similar way.

An Engine like Irrlicht builds upon that and offers the typical functionality you need to actually write a 3D application. It offers functions for scenemanagement, collision, gui, serialization and more. Also Irrlicht does abstract some of the basic functionality even further so you can use it to write platform independent code (linux, windows, mac and now even some mobile platforms) and it can render using the different low-level libraries (like DirectX8, DirectX9, OpenGL or even Software).

Also note that Irrlicht is mostly a 3D renderengine. For writing a complete game you will need some more libraries ( Sound, Physcis, Network).

RonJF · Post by **RonJF** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 8:22 pm

Thanks,

Where does AI come in on all this. Will I need to write my own AI code, or are there good libraries for this as well?

Ron

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Mon Feb 02, 2009 9:19 pm

Well, what are your requirements?

RonJF · Post by **RonJF** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:51 am

I'm looking into building a fishing game, so I'm guessing I'd need some sort of AI for the fish.

Ron

rogerborg · Post by **rogerborg** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 8:16 am

Unless you intend to model some sort of intelligent super-fish, then a finite state machine should do just fine.

BlindSide · Post by **BlindSide** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:13 am

rogerborg wrote:Unless you intend to model some sort of intelligent super-fish, then a finite state machine should do just fine.

And just to confuse the poor bugger, I'll link him here.

jontan6 · Post by **jontan6** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 1:53 pm

RonJF wrote:I'm looking into building a fishing game, so I'm guessing I'd need some sort of AI for the fish.

Ron

i think there is no ai engine for fish. mostly ai for path finding in strategies or something like that

Nox · Post by **Nox** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 2:25 pm

In fact there is a ai for swarmanimals like fishs. Steering behaviors! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boids

RonJF · Post by **RonJF** » Tue Feb 03, 2009 6:16 pm

rogerborg wrote:Unless you intend to model some sort of intelligent super-fish, then a finite state machine should do just fine.

So typically, FSM is used to animate characters in a game (like a FPS)?
Do some engines include FSM for character animation?

Ron

Irrlicht Engine

Re: Engines

Re: Engines

3d Game Requirements

Re: 3d Game Requirements