Game Engine

[Kyle]

Hello all,

I'm doing a bit of research for a company I am a part of and needed some help on video game engines. While I am conducting research I thought I could use help from anyone here who would like to.  I did look at the FAQ, but my questions were not really answered.

The criteria for Crystal Space that I need investigated is: performance of the engine, compatibility with the MacOS and/or Linux, ease of having a 3rd person POV, legal risk, quality risk, and the ability to port to a different engine at a later time. Thanks!

Maddog.

[jorrit]

Hello all,

I'm doing a bit of research for a company I am a part of and needed some help on video game engines. While I am conducting research I thought I could use help from anyone here who would like to.  I did look at the FAQ, but my questions were not really answered.

The criteria for Crystal Space that I need investigated is: performance of the engine, compatibility with the MacOS and/or Linux, ease of having a 3rd person POV, legal risk, quality risk, and the ability to port to a different engine at a later time. Thanks!

Maddog.

Performance is hard to say as it is extremely hard to compare engines (due to lack of compatible geometry data). I personally think Crystal Space performs pretty well but I have no hard figures or comparisons.

Crystal Space works very well on MacOS/X and Linux.

3rd person camera is no problem at all. Most games using Crystal Space use a 3rd person camera. Crystal Space itself doesn't care about it.

Legal risk? What do you mean by that?

Same for quality risk?

If you make a game with Crystal Space it will be VERY hard to port to another engine later unless you take care for this from the very beginning in the design of your game. But even then it will be hard. I think this is true for any 3D engine though.

Greetings,

[Kyle]

Legal risk? What do you mean by that?

Same for quality risk?

Some engines, even free ones, have certain licensing agreement people have to adhere to.  That's basically what legal risk is referring to.  As far as quality risk, does it look nice?  How does it compare to the look other games, taking out of consideration the millions of dollars Microsoft can shell out for there games.  Thanks for helping me!  It is greatly appreciated!

Maddog.

[jorrit]

Legal risk? What do you mean by that?

Same for quality risk?

Some engines, even free ones, have certain licensing agreement people have to adhere to.  That's basically what legal risk is referring to.  As far as quality risk, does it look nice?  How does it compare to the look other games, taking out of consideration the millions of dollars Microsoft can shell out for there games.  Thanks for helping me!  It is greatly appreciated!

Maddog.

Well Crystal Space uses LGPL which is a standard license.

I'm probably a bit too biased to answer the quality question but I would recommend to check out the screenshot and movie section to judge for yourselves.

Greetings,

[morgul]

Personally, I think that you could have made Doom3 in CS, if you took enough time. *most* CS applications don't show off how pretty it can be, or how 'cutting edge' it's graphics are. I've been doing tests, and honestly, I'm floored by the performance I get with an unheard of number of polys in a map. (I'm not suing LOD, or anything.. those poys are all getting rendered...)

So, to be blunt, I think that CS is going to be as pretty as you want to make it. It will take a *little* bit of time to get it to look nice, but that's true of almost every 3D engine. Sure, I have a list of features I'd like to see added (And I'm not sure where to list them for discussion, but I might do it in a seperate post) but, hey. This is OSS. It means I can add them if I really feel it needs it.

--Chris

[jorrit]

PErsonally, I think that you could have made Doom3 in CS, if you took enough time. *most* CS applications don't show off how pretty it can be, or how 'cutting edge' it's graphics are.

Actually some people are just in progress of making something Doom3 like with CS. We'll sure see more from them in the future I hope

Greetings,