Hi Fastlane,
Geez I love reading your post's lately.... "You are on fire" in my best NBA JAM jargon...
Man I could write a book on this, but lets cut to the quick for now.
Hiding the name of the middleware or even changing it is not going to help.
When you sign a publishing deal with a real publisher, you have to disclose all middleware, engines, etc that you are using in the game. You must also be able to prove you have a valid license and right to use and distribute such technologies.
No publisher will publish a game with out that confirmation. So if you have been hiding something, it will come to light very quickly, and could cost you a deal.
OK, if you come to a publisher with a finished game, you are very correct, they will not really care what the engine is. BUT, there are concerns over support history of the engine. Does the engine run properly on all the machines and video boards. If that is not the case, then you may have trouble. Perceptions of publishers on the hobbiest engines is they do not function well on an acceptible amount of computer configuratiobns. If ture, this means there could be a huge support burden to the Publihser. Thus phone calls to support staff at the publisher, returns from the stores, and eventually no one carries the precieved buggy game. IMHO 3DGS does not run well on a wide range of machines, if anything needs to be done to help make 3DGS a more professional engine that would be making the renderer consistent across systems. I digress...
If you are taking dev money from a publisher, they usally have a rough budget you need to follow. X $'s for Programming Y $'s for Art and Z $'s for the tech / middleware. Please be aware that if you go cheap on the tech / engine you will need to justify that to your publisher who is giving you $'s to create a game. A 100K budget will mean you should be using a 10K to 20K engine. This is something they are very aware of.
So make finished games and you will be fine as far as your tech and middleware, other than historical support burden costs.
If you take money in a development budget, you will have the publisher up your butt wanting to know where the $'s are being spent. Be prepared to justify all costs and results....
Follow Ichiro's advice make small games, that have little risk and life will be good.
Fastlane, your large project may be better served by another engine, if you can afford it. That's entirely your call.
Agian "You are on Fire" here on the forums, good stuff...
Ken
