C4 engine :

Well after months of using my EePC my computer is back with
some good affordable GTX460 and with some last CPU and motherborad.

So i wanted to test C4 latest version and here is my opinion :
- fast and powerfull : really fast with lot of animated characters, lot fo trees, project shadows of trees, real shadows of characters,
dynamic lights of weapon, flashligh etc ...
- Vast envionement : well big forest with detailled trees
and voxel terarin having shadows all runs really fast
- top notch effects : it's normal map and full screen effect like real time motion blur of the scene, or plasma ffect, explosions all runs really smooth.
- the commercial price : 285$
for such price it's really good caus you have on your hands
some AAA engine indeed !

What i don't like (caus i'm not rogrammer !) :
- C++ i hate programming, i already do another languaues in
my job, i think i don't need more in my leasure
I prefer easy and direct scripting.
- I've seen an example of programming animations on the WIKI,
i found it complicated and long as hell !

Well in fact not a lot of indie affordable 3D engines offers such power and such finished and playable demos.
For it's price, all it's features (No other have such Voxel terrain technologie) , it's some AAA engine for indie people

I think for prototyping spending 280$ or more for pro version i htink its' too much !
I've not tested the tools and workflow , but i don't think it will be more complicated than A8 today !

But for people (or team) having a serious project , and where one guy is strong in programming in C++ , it's a really affordable, fast and powerfull engine


Why does image tags don't work in this site ??

[img]http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=c4/lost5[/img]

[img]http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=c4/lost2[/img]

[img]http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=c4/island1[/img]

[img]http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/shot.php?shotname=c4/hm6[/img]

So you played only the demo and now you want to judge the technology behind it?

First of all, the price is very cheap for a technology like this with full source code.

Regarding the tool set: The tools are great, import is not as easy as in Unity but still much faster than any pro engine that needs Max or Maya plugins and special conversion routes for textures, materials and whatever. Even UDK is more complicated in terms of import.
C4 reads Collada files very good, with or without animation. Textures will be converted to a C4 format that can use GPU compression similar like DDS.

A big advantage of C4 is it's great zones and portal system. It allows to create really big interiors and renders only what you see. All features are rock solid and well thought.

The voxel terrain is impressive, you can sculpt caves, bridges, whatever.

I am not the most advanced C++ programmer, but I can read the source of the C4 samples. The demo is understandable but not the best example for a beginner because of all the features.
And yes, the other samples are also not very short. The reason is, that there are so called controllers that have to be written and have to be registered to be available in the editor. So it needs some code to set everything up. But in the end, when you are though it, it will help a lot to write more code based on it and it helps to have these features available in the editor.

Many if not all of the coders I met talk good about the structure and organization of the C4 source code and of the API design (especially people coming from Torque or Ogre).

I personally prefer to code in a language without pointers and references and type-casting and all these barriers. I can indeed achieve more with less code in other tools. But this is my own preference. I wrote a little physics game in Unity in an evening and a memory 2d game only with the GUI in another. So I can create results faster with their more simpliefied API. But on the other hand my performance stress testing indicates that Unity has not the fastest renderer currently.

So in the end it is the same story as always: Use the tool that fits your needs best! But dont judge it only from a demo! Do some stress tests, some import tests, some playing around with the GUI, with the functionality to move, translate and rotate objects, whatever. In the end, the programming language should not really matter, when the technology fits perfectly to the desired game. We can learn a new programming language faster than the company behind an engine will implement the features that we miss.

May you publish your performance tests ?
Did you try DXSTUDIO ?

I agree with you Frank_G !
Indeed i can't say a lot only based on demos.

Your points you've tested brings a lot on favopur of this engine indeed !

I justed wanted to point how much i was impressed by the demos
and tehcnology involved in it, with high settings ( big resolution, all advanced 3D features on big values or max).
Cant' imagine what would do Unity third person demo ported to this engine !

Well for programming i also prefer accessible scripting.

Bbut indeed the technology behind is solid as hell done by one
big expert of advanced 3D technology !
Conitec should hire him

Hiya.

I can also vouch for C4. I was one of the first adopters (back when there was only one price and it was for "everything, forever"). I've seen it grow, and knowing Eric, the pace isn't likely to change. That is, it's a good pace, not too slow, not too fast. Eric also is probably one of the most receptive, helpful and honest developers I know. He doesn't promise things he can't deliver, and when he gives a "likely date for release", its pretty dang close...and if it's not because of some gotcha-bug, he lets everyone know what it is and how long of a delay. Very open.

Seeing what the C4 engine has planned ( http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php/Official_Roadmap ), I'm *really* looking forward to it all! I'm not a programmer, so I haven't done much more then just poke around and keep up to date on the engine...but once some of the new stuff gets implemented, C4 is gonna be tough to beat!

No, I did not test DX-Studio. I have read through the feature list and did not find any technique like occlusion culling, portals or similar to achieve something bigger than a small scene. So I just went away.

The results of playing around with my corridors and textures in different engines are:

C4 rendered fast and looked very good. Zones and portals work perfectly but there can be slight events of stuttering when you turn around close to portals. Because of the forward renderer you need to setup lighting with lights using small radius and no or only little overlapping. Because of this and because of the collision mechanics it is better to split meshes into several parts. Big meshes will be influenced by more lights causing more draw calls. The interior shadows are stencils, so you need closed meshes and you get sharp shadow edges.

Unity provides both: forward and deferred rendering. The deferred renderer allows me to use as much lights as I want. So I can create more realistic lighting. But the deferred rendering creates way too much draw calls. The same scene with forward rendering uses only a quarter of draw calls. The same applied to the displayed amount of polygons. I had only a couple of thousand polygons in view, but the deferred renderer produced more than a million polies. The reason is probably that the scene gets rendered a couple of times (once for each shadow casting light, once for the depth map and so on).
But the occlusion culling works perfectly in Unity. So it also renders only what you see.
Movement with the included character controller produces stuttering even when I have enough FPS.
For collision detection I needed to add extra low poly geometry otherwise the CPU gets heavy work and there is no multi-threading.

I had better results in UDK. It renders amazingly fast and movement is very smooth. The shadows are baked but the normal and spec mapping works perfectly on top of the static lighting. The latest updates also added a lot of real-time lighting effects.

But in the end I was suprised about the power of the Vision3d engine from Trinigy. It can do the same like UDK, Unity or C4. It can render in forward and deferred mode and it can use directional lightmapping using static shadows the right way with shaders. It can use shadows via stencils and shadow mapping via shaders.
It calculates static lighting information into cells to be applied to moving geometry if needed. The lightmap compiler is the fastest I ever saw even with multisampling and radiosity activated. And the renderer is very optimized. It splits geometry automatically into mesh groups using the same materials to reduce draw calls. The editor is way more intuitive compared to UDK or C4. It can be compared best to Modo with its different layouts and panels.

Torque3d failed because the zones and portals are not working and I experienced other bugs.

So in the end it depends on the project again: I would use Unity for everything small just because of the easy scripting and the number of available platforms.

But if I need the power for bigger game maps I would probably switch to Vision3d (if I had enough budget). UDK and C4 are more cheaper alternatives.

By the way: UDK also supports iOS and Android now and Vision3d just got an iOS port and a web-player (besides all the available consoles ports). So there are lots of options today to go multiplatform.

Thanks for your answer
You are very useful, as usual

I had in mind to switch to dxstudio for small projects as an alternative to Unity since its programming style is ugly, in my opinion, while dxstudio is quite clean

However I tested dxstudio s couple of years ago and it was unbelievely slow so I quitted with it
I wonder whether it has been improved in the mean time

Anybody using it ?

I found the programming in Unity not ugly at all. I can do so much with just a little code. The names of the class members and properties are so intuitive that it is easy to get into it. I found it much more intuitive than names like vec_for_anything.

The only problem that you might have is the usage of components. This can produce some longer code lines. The reason for that is that a component is not a member of the class you are just using, it is actually external code that is linked with the current object. So you have to name the component and its type and this creates more text. But most of the time you attach code directly to a game object and because of that you have very easy code. Only if you address objects outside of the current game object you need some more code. And you can also store something like this in a variable to call it more easily next time.

But there are reasons to use components. I saw this a lot in the modern game industry. Engines like Vision3d from Trinigy or many in-house solutions of professional game companies use components as well. This is a flexible solution. You can attach them to many objects while you dont have to include the functionality as a member into each class. Thus it is more efficient uses less memory but is not as convenient as just calling a class member.
But there are good reasons that the industry went this way.

@Frank_G :
For DX Studio, i find the price of Pro version Too Hihgh for indies, and the language is Javascritp : Slow because it's interpreted !
But it seems to have some good points and templates for beginners, seems easy to learn and have complete tools like
full terrain , vegetation editor.
The thread was c4, and by comparison of egnine,s There is one engine you didn't have talked : Shiva 3D !
It seems to be a good engine for medium to little games,
workflow and tools seems good , i have just tested some
demos on the engine editor.
Do you have used it ?

Yes, I have used Shiva, I followed some tutorials and I rendered a couple scenes with my models. The editor is a bit differnt than others so I could understand it only with the help of a tutorial. But then it made a lot of sense to me. The scripting is LUA but I did not do a lot scripting there, so I cannot tell much about the API design.

Graphically Shiva is very good and it supports a lot of platforms even Linux among them. But since I also did not find occlusion culling, zones or portals I would use it for small projects on a phone as an example.

Compared to Unity it is still slow, but both have their pros and cons.

Thats simple, i tested at work on a good PC , but with no
3D gameing card, but that can do some 3D !

I tested two things :
- A8 engine with the last RPG template from AUM98.
- Then i tested DX Studio with a simple scene (one 3D barrier,
one light, one little piece of terrain mesh) and made an exe !

DX studio program was running so slow like only some 2 or 6 Frames / second) ; too much slow.
But A8 RPG template was running greatly and incredibly smooth.

For me that sort of little test really show what engine of the two have good 3D optimisations (somethings perhaps you won't see directly on a big big last powerfull PC) !

So yes, DX Studio even in the last version is too much slow, i think it's simple , Javascript is interpreted language also, and that's also one point that really slows it down !

For me it remains a little toy , or a little engine for 3D artists to play with but it's not for
making games using a good amount of effects and polygons as some of 3DGS indeed.
The only advantage i found was all the workflow and it's intuitive world editor and objects properties access !

Well just my test and my taste

JavaScript is probably not the problem, it can be pre-compiled. The renderer and the optimizations to save draw calls, textures and polygons will probably cause more problems.

yes, interpreted languages don't have to be that slow anymore.

i think dxstudio uses the firefox javascript engine and if it uses a rather recent version then it should feature a jit compiler.

Same here
It was so slow that I thought to have made something wrong
I am not a fps fanboy, I dont care if an engine run at 50 fps rather than 60fps but 5-6 fps is not acceptable of course
By the way I still refer to 2.0 version, I was so disappointed that I quitted wiyh DXSTUDIO even if I like its workflow
Did you test version 3.2 ?

Same as Ventilator and Frank, it is definitely not because of JavaScript
It does not even depend on the lack of portals ( It must have zones, I suppose) since I tested some animations on a blank screen

In fact i have tested the version on their download page ,
so i premuse it was 3.2 !

I like their advertising title
"The most powerfull 3D Toolkit on the world ?"
It's a question in fact caus they say after that : We'll let you decide that !

It's pure teasing , caus when you test i think lot of people knowing others 3D engines have been really disappointed it's so so slow !

Good news:

Perpetual updates are back!

Zbrush like ; i like that a lot.
But this engine is the hell to program in C++ , just take a look at animation on the WIKI !
I talked about it in other engine in C++ that was lot lot more easy to program (something like simple functions to call , somwhat like the functions you call in C Script);
And they said indeed that C4 was really complicatde with too much predifined things and rules to follow.

But if you have a skilled programmer on your team it can be a big deal

Interesting :

Most likely, the iOS version will be available by Q2 2012, but it could be much earlier. (A lot of work has already been finished.) The Android version would either be released at the same time or follow within a quarter.

Let's wait to see if it will be complicated C++ or not ?
And will it contain all helpers (virtual pad, touch functions etc ...) we can find in some others 3D engines for mobile ?

I bought the C4 engine one year ago. And I don't like it. The world editor is nice and the features are kicking some other engines away, but the tutorials and wikipages are mostly outdated. Instead of releasing more and more features, the c4 creator should focus on documentation and renewing the tutorials. And realy, the demos are helping no one if you want to do other things than see spheres jump up and down. So the c++ code is realy clean, but if you have to write pages of code only to init the engine and than additional pages to let some balls jump up and down, than this effort is not worth the result.
Neoaxis engine is nice. But not everyones taste. It is based on the ogre engine. I like how it handles light. I never red how it does things. But I had a scene with at least 30 dynamic lights in it. And the engine didn't slow down at all. THe editor is crap.

but if you have to write pages of code only to init the engine and than additional pages to let some balls jump up and down, than this effort is not worth the result.

I agree a lot with that, even managing animations is too much like on the WIKI.
There are engiens having more highter level programming, all stuff being alreday optimised and coded C++ internally.
Even Ogre 3D that is C++ alos seems incredibly lot more easy :

// Set idle animation
mAnimationState = mEntity->getAnimationState("Idle");
mAnimationState->setLoop(true);
mAnimationState->setEnabled(true);

//Update animation function
mAnimationState->addTime(evt.timeSinceLastFrame);

It's only 4 lines, some others engine propose one line with a call to a function with paramters !
It's lot lot more easy than C4 and it's framework and all precoded stuff.

Just my personnal taste also !

I wonder myself why C4 is so complicated
Same as jenGs I found the " ball " demo absolutely ridicolous
Why should you write so many lines of codes just to achieve a so simple results ?
Yet, the designer is known as a programmer guru
maybe such programming style has some advatanges in the long run, I mean for huge games or in term of flexibility ?
Just guessing
Anybody know the answer ?

I think this is the bad point puuting out all people seeking simple and direct commands to call.
The engine would be lot more popular perhaps if it was as simple as program as some other 3D indie Engines.
The response i think is , the author of the engine is very skilled and implemend all 3D techniques for you in the Low basic level (and some tools indeed like the editors).
But he don't have implemented anything mid level or hihg level, because he never took the place of a programmer needing direct and easy commands.
He is a pure highly skilled 3D programmer , so he don't have the vision of hight level programming !