Professional grade world editor suite?

Hey guys,

We're hoping to find some sort of reasonably priced software for building 3D worlds, and have some special needs. We need features similar to what you might see in Crysis or Torque's level editors. Here are some of the things we need:

*Good tools to manipulate terrain and fine tune it

*Ability to paint textures onto terrain with brush
- Not required, but it's a bonus if we can set texture
constraints

*Ability to use "splines" for making roads, rivers, etc

*Ability to export the world into a usable format for engine or even Maya (basically cross-compatible anyway), BUT we need the textures to be exportable as well.

This is what my friend says he needs to effectively build the huge environment for our project. He's used to using things like Crysis, and WED doesn't have those sorts of tools.

He feels "apprehensive" about using 3DGS because WED doesn't have these tools. But what I've noticed is that engine's are a tradeoff, like most things. It seems the engines that have great design tools for artists have a yucky scripting language and limited programming functionality/libraries/etc. Then the ones that are great for us programmers don't have the fancy art tools. Some people even make games with VS C++, so how the hell do they design levels?! Lol!

Hoping someone can point me in the right direction with this. We need to design a *massive* world with lots of detail. I don't know a lot about level design either (he's the expert). Any advice/help much appreciated.

I would say that there is a reason that the CryEngine costs that much...
Honestly, I don't think that such a tool, even if it would work with A7, would be cheap; I also think that it would need lots of work to make A7 compatible with such an editor.
But I could be absolutely wrong.

What about Bryce? I've seen screenshots of things made with it, and it looks awesome.

Bryce is usefull for creating heightmaps...nothing else so far.. perhaps also skycube rendering, but I use only this awesome heightmapgenerator (Bryce 5.5)

To be honest, I'd be looking at getting a dedicated modeller using a proper 3D package, like 3DSmax, Lightwave, etc. and actually understanding the model format he will be exporting for in the final engine.

All full 3D packages have exporters, and what you want is a good pipeline for assembling blocks into levels, (which you could do in MED).

Get him to experiment a bit - collada, fbx, obj formats may all help get textured models across, and between the team you should be able to agree on specifications for models/artwork and full levels before really starting to commit to any engine and 3d pipeline.

Don
have a great day

Well, we already have Maya '09 Unlimited. I see a lot of problems with using it to build the whole world though. Namely, it doesn't have the tools that make a world builder a world builder. You can't paint textures onto terrain (afaik), and placing 3D objects will end up making it part of the terrain. Of course, we could do object placement in WED, but we do need to be able to manipulate terrain and place objects in the same program. This will be crucial when building towns, cities, roads, etc. We'll be needing to modify/flatten certain parts to make buildings "fit", and we'll need to be able to make trenches, foxholes, etc in the actual world.

Btw, we aren't planning on making different "levels", but instead, one monstrous world. So practically everything will be built of models, not blocks. We're going to have to break up the better part of North Africa into segments, construct it, edit it, and reassemble it the engine with proper coding techniques to make a seamless world.

How about torque's editor? haven't used it, but it has a road and a river tool from what I understand...

You can alway write your own Leveleditor, that uses the ingame rendering engine.
Because then you have the tools that fit to your style of game.

Exerything in a 3dgs Level, except the "BSP Blocks" could be create with our own editor.

If you are really working on an ambitious project.
Using your own leveleditor, or at least a "level refinement" editor
is the way to go.

Well, I have NO experience writing that sort of software. And it would be a huge waste of time imho.

But that DOES give me an idea. Maya is very modular in design, and it's not too difficult to write plug-ins for as I understand. So it seems probable that a small team could write a Maya plug-in for building 3DGS world with all of these features. Then it could export straight to engine formats, and tighten the workflow pipeline even further. I know there is one tool similar to this out there, but it doesn't have these features, and I've never heard a review of it. Maybe it could be a good starting point if it's author wanted to further its development though. It would also be great to have an integrated shader editor in it, which would let you work with things like terrain multi tex while you're painting terrain and doing other things. That would be like the ultimate tool if it also had a good water editing system.

Maybe I should contact the person who wrote the other Maya plug-in, and see if they'd be interested in spurring it on. Would be great to turn it into an open-source project for the whole community (and be FREE).

Only downside is that it would take a long time, and I fear that we don't have that time to wait.

IceX 2.2 + IceX Street Tool

Would be perfect for what you requested

check the videos on their website
http://www.stonehill-online.de

If you were to use the WMB file definition, i'm sure BSP blocks could be created.

Well, we may be switching engines. I've found an engine that has virtually everything we need, minus the spline tools (but I could integrate the tools with this engine relatively efficiently). There's also a great 3rd party editor (Grome) which has all the terrain/world tools, and works well with this new engine. It's geared towards MMOs and military sims, and is actually being used by the US Military in development of combat sims and trainers. It so far seems perfectly geared and oriented towards our project's needs, as really no engines have these features for highly-realistic military sims. They work great for fantasy and casual fps games, etc, but these sorts of sims have VERY quirky and specific needs. It also has native support for MASSIVE worlds, endless terrain, and even full-sized planets, lol (totally without using any "code tricks", all off the shelf). It's even got native support for realistic flight models! Omg! Über! Dwarfs and Trolls! <- kidding about the trolls..

Another major plus is that it's highly modular, and it's API fully integrates with Visual Studio. I'm new to C# (only experienced previously with C/C++, and I'm really even new to Lite-C), but I've practically picked up all the basics today. I wrote a fully functional web browser, word processor, and calculator in C# today after reading the doco, no outside help or templates. I find already that the power of C# (but also flexibility and simplicity compared to C++) actually let's me work faster than with Lite-C and any scripting languages. I originally planned on writing our full MMO in C++, but I think C# has won my heart already. It almost felt like second nature when I started fiddling with it last night.

So I've got a full demo of it, with no limitations. But it's only the beta version I got (because they need testers, and hope to encourage you to buy), and I'm only allowed to use it while beta is still open (I think, not sure on rules so must read again). But I'll be able to make my final call on it before then. It's just a VERY expensive AAA engine. But I'll be able to purchase the full/pro license before long, IF I decide we need it. I think it's going to be WELL worth it for OUR project though, due to what we're aiming for. Most people just don't need this stuff to make great, successful games, and A7 is perfect for them.

But I'll NEVER leave the community here. I'll still always love A7 and all of you! Lol! So even if we do switch, I'll still be around and tinker with A7 in my free time, and annoy all of you forever! I'll probably help folks out with their projects when I have time, if they want. I just always want to work with A7, because it's so fun, heheh. If it would work with A7, I MIGHT even try making some free tools for the engine *in the future* with C# (not promising). I just couldn't subject myself to the hell of doing things like that in C++, lol. I love, but have a fearful, grudging respect of C++, so I avoid doing anything "for fun" with it, if you know what I mean. So hopefully new engine tools/plugins written in C# will work with A7, because I'll give it a try when the time comes.

Thanks for everyone's help, with everything. I'll let you know about what decision we make, and I'll definitely be sticking around regardless of what we choose. A7 has just been too much friggen' fun to ever abandon. Good luck to everyone with their projects, and may God have mercy on our souls with what we're about to get into, lol.

Have you already 3D art and assets, design docs ?

Caus that's not the engine that makes your game.
For example if i modelise with minimum 2D art, i know it will never reach a good model with good design and study.

Same thing if you can't have 3D artits working fast and producing today AAA characters with normal maps animations,
Artists making great levels and textures ....
The AAA engine won't make the essential graphics and 3D art for you !

Depends on your game , if it is terrain, some ennemies,some buildings, it won't ask you as lot of work as very studied levels, not only outdoor.
But Unity for example , that have complete terrain tools , amazing workflow , and that you can extend easily with C# could be an option for you.

Ummm... Yes, lol. Our artists are professionals with masters degrees in 3D and game design. This isn't a "n00b dream effort" here (<- insert dwarfs and trolls here, lol). Some might think I'm a noob to programming because I've asked a lot of questions about A7 and Lite-C, but just because I was new to those two particular things. Not programming. I'm a little new to the graphical things, but I'm fully capable of writing professional applications, and have picked up on graphical programming with ease. I was actually considering hiring a team of programmers (friends) to develop our own engine, but deemed it unnecessary. Like I said, when I have free time I still want to work with A7 for fun, and I'll probably be making some new tools for it soon enough.

Unlike most, this isn't a hobbyist game we're making. This is a very serious commercial project. And we need the new engine to do it efficiently. I'm more comfortable working with a "higher" language in Visual Studio with an integrated engine API anyway; it's what I'm used to. Since we're also prospective investors, we're getting it at a rock bottom price. It's really an unbeatable deal, and I'd feel stupid not to grab it. Plus it's got all the design tools the artists need for building this massive world. So we're all going to be very happy and be able to work at warp speed compared to what we've been doing. I really love A7, and always will, but it just can't meet our needs on this. So this is the only way we're going to finish that I see.

We'll have an official website with videos of our work up pretty soon. I just have some loose ends to tie up to port everything over. But rest assured, we're deadly serious about this and the devil himself better not get between us and our goals.

P.S.- Yes, to be more clear, we've got design docs, lots of art finished, tabulated ballistics calculations, flight model tables, armor penetration tables, basically all the parts of the puzzle. We've just got to put it all together. This venture has been mainly to see if A7 was going to meet our needs, but we've decided it hasn't after testing. So we've just got to move on to something that we KNOW can meet our needs.

hey, if your looking to hire programmers or prop artists, im always available for work

Awesome. We've got to finish our prototype/demo as of now (and get our publisher on board), so I can't literally hire yet. But I'll contact you when commercial work is kicked off for sure. Drop me a pm right quick, why don't ya?