Which game engine ?!

Hello,
I am interested in buying the A7 pro for commercial purposes, but was wondering how good the engine really is compared to others like Unity,3Drad,Shiva,torque .. etc (I like the C-lite scripting language and the engine looks very capable...) Any thoughts ?!

Good question. Are you more a programmer or an artist? A7 provides a great engine and language with features which allow you to be creative as a programmer, whereas someone less keen as a programmer will prefer something like Unity or Torque, which provides more modern built-in graphical features with much less effort and an easier content-creation pipeline.

If you can get into shader programming (which is my favourite part of programming, and is quite easy to learn with the workshop) you'll quickly learn that A7 gives you a good interface to innovate and do whatever you want, whether it has been done before or not. This in particular is why I prefer A7 over anything else.

I hope this is helpful

Jibb

A7 has a very simple scripting system that enables you to write complex 2D and 3D applications very quickly. I am only 15 years old and have found A7 to be rather simple to work with, despite the fact that I am working with complicated systems (3d graphics, vector math, networks). Don't let those words scare you, it is much easier to work with than a *normal* development system like the Microsoft Visual products.

Essentially, A7 is a rapid prototyping engine that lets you get good results fast, like Delphi.

Now, the including tools (WED, MED, SED) aren't perfect and some say they leave something to be desired, but you can download the trial version to try them if you're not sure. If you don't like the included tools, A7 lets you use external tools (Blender, 3DS Max, Maya, 3D World Creator, etc.) to create your game/application assets, and you can use your favorite text editor to create code.

If you don't have the time to download and experiment with a trial version, you can view some shots from the Gallery at the 3D Gamestudio homepage.

That really is an understatement. The tools simply suck. I agree though that the engine itself is quite nice and capable.

SED's pretty solid though, and something we take for granted. UDK (that is, Unreal Engine 3 and its Development Kit) doesn't even have a script-editor, let alone one with an integrated compiler.

Jibb

I have to disagree here, I actually like some of the tools, specifically SED and WED. WED is a lot like World Craft, which I'm very used to. It has all the functions you need to build great looking levels, even if it doesn't come with a lot of cool extras. Some people may not like the WAD texture system, but I've never really cared about it myself.

I'm not really an artist, but concerning MED I've heard its not as good as Blender, Maya, etc. For one the skinning system is awkward :\ While I can understand a *real* artist not being satisfied with MED, it has fulfilled my needs so far.

SED has been a little buggy for me at times, but I really appreciate the simplicity of it and the mini-documentation bar at the bottom of the interface can be extremely helpful.

Tools dont suck. They are around avarage.

besides, you can choose to not to use the wad system, you can add folders to texture manager.

And yes, the command help thing a great feature of SED. SED is good.

Yes, SED is good enough as a simple script editor.

WED and MED are horrible usability nightmares though. If you are into retro-style Quake editing (which was state of the art 14 years ago) they may be ok for you but not if you have ever used something more modern.

At this point, I have to agree, WED and MED are horrible.
Well, I give SED 8.5/10, and I give MED and SED 3/10

What do you guys hate about WED and MED? They seem like perfectly fine tools to me (well, ok, not MED: artists, you should use something else here)

Hiya.

I don't mind WED, but it has some serious problems from an artists POV.

(1) "Hiding" a group hides it COMPLETELY. QuArK 'hides' groups by changing them into faint wire frames that fade over distance. Makes it easy to work on your current section without getting confused about just where that other hallway is, or how big the archway into the adjoining room is.

(2) No 'real-time' lighting, particles, animated sprites or models, etc. For a modern world editor, this is almost a must have, IMHO. (by real time, I mean moving a light and seeing it update automatically on the screen as you move it around the scene, as well as animated lights...like flickering, strobing or color changing, for example).

(3) Sounds can't be easily placed with a visual representation of their size/intensity/falloff. While not absolutely needed, it sure makes it easier!

(4) Easily adjustable texture stuff. Adding textures is easy...but adding a bump and spec map to a block isn't easy. And forget normal/parallax maps. The rigamaroll you have to go through to get a simple crate with a color, spec and normal map on it working is a royal pain. The editor should allow the user to select a mode/block/face and then add texture, bump map, spec, alpha, parallax/normal, luminosity, etc. right there, in the editor, by selecting one of those nice and handy " [...] " boxes that opens op a standard windows file dialog box. When the artists finds the texture he wants, it should automatically be added to the project file or .wad (in the appropriate folder of course). And all this should be in real time.

...there are other things, but I'm sure they've been expounded upon dozens of times already. For a great editor, I'd take a look at Unity and QuArK. Unity for 'everything', but QuArK for customization and 'building-style' stuff.

(1) This never bothered me, but I suppose there should be an optional which can enable/disable this feature.

(2) Such is an effect that is really only supported by intense hardware, which many users of 3DGS simply don't have. Essentially the lighting effects would have to be calculated in realtime, which would have a terrible effect on one's processor. That and none of the surfaces in the level would be optimized or culled, and that would hurt the performance a lot. Thus, while such a feature would be useful, it's too demanding of one's rig to be very effective. :\

(3) I think you're right on this one. There could be a preview button in the sound's dialog box that enables you to hear what the sound would be like in game, from the 3D view's current position.

(4) Yes, yes, and yes. Manipulation of textures could be much better.

Of course, since I'm mostly just a programmer I don't look into many of the details of these editors, so a lot of it doesn't bother me. But like I said before, a serious user might need something better.

i like A7 most.
unity is ok.. but not as easy as A7.. and UDK ( hate it ).. *buah..* no!


Sure.. MED ist a bit shitty ^^
and WED is not the best level editor.

But i like the SED and Lite-C. SED only needs a better testplay function.. sepsecially for Onlinegaming..
This Server/client changes sucks.. better would be Server_test and Client-test buttons..

But hey A7 is not completely done yet ^^ It´s getting better and better.

MED is great... when you use it as a conversion tool (hub between maya/max and the game).
MED has evolved alot since i first used it (way back in A5), so I cant complain about it really.
WED.. well, my levels are made out of models, so all I rally do in there is assign my actions and setup numbers, no problem there either

SED though, I love that, does exactly what you want, no gimmicks involved!

A7 is a great engine to use, just be aware that it's somewhat more scripting geared, if you're an artist, get a scripting buddy to help you, or try another engine (as said before, Unity, Torque etc etc).

regards,

At last! Someone agree with me

Well the truth is in the middle here, you need 2 mouse clicks for adding a normal or parallax map to a block. And of course you need to make that map before and copy it to the texture folder...

A7 will never be done, hopefully. If the Acknex series ever reaches a "final state", maybe Conitec will be nice and make Acknex open source... Although I wouldn't count on it.

After three month usage i give max. 7.5 to SED. Maybe i should gain more experiences whith that, but based on my lifetime experiences (more than 25 years) with tools, i have to say 7.5 is that.

I suggest try before you buy.

GameStudio, ShiVa, Unity has free edition to try. You shall take a look at their tutorials/books.

I tried ShiVa and Unity in my leisure time. Among the 2 I prefer ShiVa because you got all features of their free version, though you can't publish.

GameStudio and Unity give you a trimmed version of their engine, although you can publish, however you can't try the 'pro' features.

I just feel more and more GameStudio is target for student for learning a programming language. They limited on Windows platform, no Web publishing, though they plan to port to mobile platform, but which one? Windows Mobile?

I also chose Gamestudi because the programming language is very easy to learn, has power to make all kinds of software in no time compared to other languages, it`s cheap, stable, has nice graphics althogh Unity and Torque are better here, it has a big, helpful, critizising and friendly community and nice gamemaking tools (WED,SED,GED,MED). You can customize the fast rendering engine by writing plugins in C++ and publish the game without any license payments. And, there`re many community add-ons like IntenseX, Intense Pathfinding, Anet or IceX that make game design and programming much easier. Negative aspects are that you`re bound to the PC and can`t port to Xbox 360 / PS3 or Wii. iPhone will be possible in near future according to the programmers of the engine.
I would recomment to start with GameStudio with the free version. By doing this you can learn the workflow and the lannguage. If you don`t like it you will have an easy time to switch over to other game engines because Lite-C is nearly the same as C or Java.
Gamestudio enabled me to program a working Unreal Tournament like game nearly completely by myself! If I would have used other engines I needed twice the time for this big project I think.

@all: I personally like WED. I use it for building UT-like block levels and really can`t complain about it. Okay, it would be very nice to have a working build-and-watch-in-wed feature to check the lights but hey, I paid 170€ for a software three years ago that enables me to make games in the quality of Adrenaline as a one-man-team at the moment. I really can`t complain about Gamestudio. Like I said it`s much more stable and transparent than most engines out there. I`m really happy about it!

I only have the trial version of 3D Gamestudio, so I guess I can't really complain about the editors, but I do want to bring up a question. I alos own Torque, and I likes its world editor compated to Wed. I use TrueSpace to create my models, so I haven't really used Med, but from the looks at it, it seems comparable to MilkShape, and others (Gmax, Quark, etc.) so what is so horrible about the editors. SED seems like a pretty good script editor BTW. (What do you guys want in a editor?)

Back to Torque. Its the only 3d system (besides Blitz3D) that I've used, so I have nothing else to compare 3DGS WED to. But I figure, once you've trained yourself in the system, what can be so terribly wrong with them. Hey, you want to design games or not!

well... let me just say that gamestudio isnt very art friendly, you can create great games, all unique since the scripting is very powerful, its limit is your skill BUT when it comes to making that game look visually appealing then theres where this engine falls, the time it takes to set up a beautiful scene is VERY long, working with shaders and WED/GED

torque is more fun to play with i guess, adding models and seeing them look good is quite easy but i always felt like i was making a mod rather than a full game so i dont know much about it

unity also seems very art friendly but since am use to 3dgs scripting, i stopped using it after i couldnt find the scripting interface

i love the scripting of gamestudio, pretty much dislike its art pipeline, check my youtube page below and you can see what i've done so far with scripting, you'll see that even though unity/torque may look better, most of their games are pretty much lacking in terms of functionality and being unique

if your problem is the visuals, I'm doing an experiment right now, trying to hook up different rendering engines to game studio and so far, i succeeded in one which is mental ray. my goal is to create a game that would be seamless like the one you can see in gears of war and mass effect 2 and I'm pretty much sure soon that i will succeed .