I'm really interested in buying Game Studio, but I'm not really sure which version I should buy. Mainly because I'm not really sure what the following are and what they give me:

bones animation
phyics object
beam generator
shader
I/O port control

If anyone could fill me in on some of this stuff I would greatly apreciate it.

Thanks,

Drew

I know what bones animation is! If you have bones animation you can assign a skeleton to a model and rather than moving the vertices manually you can move the bones. This is really helpful for making humans and animals and probably other organic things that in real life have skeletons. I think it's easier to animate as well as to make it look real.

My opinion on which to buy is, unless you have a lot of money, the Commercial Edition. That's the one I have.

Hiya.

You might be looking at the Pro version...

Bones Animation is 'kinda' implimented...I think. I actually haven't really tried to use them, but they are in there.

Physics objects: Limited to 1 for Commercial, Unlimited for Pro version

Beam Generator: Again, Pro only for some reason.

Shader: Yes, if you know what you are doing. The SphereEngine .dll's you can buy will give you a lot of ooomph for your money. But again, if you really know what you are doing you can write your own .dll's.

I/O Port Control: Not sure what you mean here. But, again, if you know what you are doing you can write your own .dll's for this.

What kind of application / game do you have in mind to make? That might be a better way of getting some answeres.

If you are just starting out, buy either standard or extra, and upgrade later. As for your questions...

bone animation is, as stated, the process of "lumping" vertexes together to make animation easier.

physics objects are the number of objects that can have the standard physics engine applied to. NOTE: You can write your own physics, in which case you can have unlimited physics objects. However, if you ues the default physics engine, your edition will limit you...

beam generator, i believe, is the particle engine. Particles are tiny objects that are mostly used for looks, such as fire, and explosions.

Shaders are 3d illusions that give your textures different effects. Look in the shader forum for different examples,as well as on the wiki... there are a few good screenshots there.

I/O port control... not 100% sure what thats about, but it most likely has to do with multiplayer games. I would imagine it has to do with users connecting to a host, but dont quote me on that .

So... based on that info, you may make a decision. A tip from me to you, you wont use most of these features in your first couple games, mainly shaders and physics, unless you have some expierence. (because you have to ask what they are, I will assume you dont haev much expierence) Again, extra will work for now, commercial will fill most needs, and pro is really only for those of us who are...

a) very rich
b) looking very seriously into developing commercial games

Regards

Raddaddy

Thanks everyone for replying, it has helped a lot!

Drew

yes i think the same. the best for you is now

buy the extra edition and then you will see if you can develop easy games in a short time

And then if you see ok you are fantastic in making games, upgrade to a higher version. But my opion is that the commercial has the lowest price for high features. Because there is a free physics engine and there are also some great engine plugins.

Regards,
beegee

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GenuineMotors.de

just to add a little about bones animation, it is not just to make animation easier...
some things you can do with bones that would be virtually impossible to do with vertex animation, like combining diferent animations in runtime and moving diferent parts of the model independently (like, for instance, making a character move his head or point his gun acordding to the direction the camera is facing)