It is pro only. In the Share-it thread there's a link to the A7 features chart. 4 per vertex is pro only. All others are only 1. Both render to texture and multi-item physics have trickled down to Commercial, but BSP was the sacrifice; however looking back at some posting history, it's going to be a new, cool version of BSP that will eliminate the concave block error (eventually...I interpreted it as eventually eliminating this). ABT is the scene management for the other versions. Pro also gets the nifty sounding Distribution Manager and of course your normal resource packer and more advance MP.

D3D: There is no need for speculations and hopes: Here you can see the A7 features and you can realize that you need Pro to have 4 bones per vertex:
http://www.3dgamestudio.com/order7.htm

PS: I still wonder what "Zone/MMORPG" means

Thanks Orange/Frank seems i've missed the new chart. And it really @#$%^ to make 4 bones per vertex a A7 Pro feature. Lucky I don't have Extra edition, then I would have no bones at all. I'd started learning to use for animation and now. Just like buy the pro otherwise we give you a handycap. So now I can make a pirate with one leg (so to speak) I mean his legs wont bend so good with the skin right?

In the past i've taken the big step and purchased Gamestudio Pro. Then became very disapointed with among other things the MP functions, for which i've paid the high amount. So i'm not going to take that road again, as I just do this for fun and not with commercial intentions.

Well anyways this topic was about BV alias GameCore. Hope they fix their problems near 2008 and not have these kind of limitations.

To get back to the original question ...

Yes, I remember BV ... still own a silver license and will wait to see what a.) the interim version 1.5 and b.) the GameCore version will bring before making a definite decision.

I've upgraded to A7Pro partially because of the experiences with BV. It's not a bad engine, just some bugs and bad communication up to this point. But, what A7 offers beyond some updated technical stuff, is a very active community. Whether it's the AUM (thanks George !!!), the 3DGS Magazine, the web resources or the plethora of helpful hints here in the forum, 3DGS offers a lot more than some other engines. You get more forum-posts here in a day than on other forums in three months !!

I also own a Lawmaker license and found out after I purchased the weekend warrior license that I can NOT make a standalone EXE with that version. This means I'd have to take my PC to someone's house if I wanted to show them my creation. Also LM has a rather unusual setup. So that was money burned (in my case! - your mileage may vary).

Torque has a lot of support and is a very capable engine (even though it's a few years old by now ) But a lot of stuff has to be taken into consideration when developing anything for it. Partially cryptic, and generally always client-server oriented. Still a good engine.

So, in conclusion (IMHO):

BV has some potential. If you believe gekido's speel about the future of GameCore, then be patient and wait. If not, find another engine that fits your needs now.

Just remember that the grass is always greener on the other side.

And don't discount 3DGS ... it has a lot going for it !

Cheers,
Andreas

Yes Andreas C is right.

I own Torque 1.5 to, Realm Crafter and i have tested the bronze license of BV, and its has a lot of future (if they can go throught the bugs), Torque is really weird with models their format is really strange.

I have left Gstudio and back to him a lot of times, and now I see is becoming more powerful if only could have a better rendering results it could beat Torque, BV and C4, even could break into the users of Ogre3d for being an easiest Engine.

Truevision 3d I think will be the rival of GStudio and not Bv.

Given the simplicity of 3DGS's scripting language, it doesn't really have a rival (and if the stats I know about that someone told me about a few years ago are still true today, this is one of the reasons why 3DGS is the #1 selling game engine by a wide margin). Anything that requires you to know C++, C#, or "regular" language to use the engine is automatically disqualified. I and others like me couldn't use them, but we can use c-script, and Lite-C is close enough to c-script that it's still the simplest of all the scripting languages available in any engine.

Once the FBX importer is properly implemented for importing a scene, with the option to flag certain objects as models, many of the restrictions for most users will disappear. I've been using 3dgs since A5 was released, and have been using it with Max(which has an exporter in Max2GS-Max2mdl duo). So the art import restrictions were not as bad I guess, but most of the 3dgs users don't have a modeler which can use these tools to import entire scenes of models into WED. I think that the FBX importer will solve this, eventually. Between this, Lite-C, and the new engine, 3dgs is really taking steps in the right direction.

I sometimes think back and laugh at how archaic A5 was compared to A7. It didn't have many essential features, probably the biggest being no per-poly collision.