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Sorry, but this is far from D3 quality

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Thank God. Yes, I might be the one person that is not impressed with the muddy mess that are Doom III's graphics. I do admire the lighting/shadows, though.

None of the engines mentioned here can acomplish an equivalent to Doom3 at least not without investing a massive amount of time and labour - When you look at/play Doom3 the its easy to overlook how long and how great a volume of resources such a game took to put together. e.g. 25,000 textures alone so I believe.

The Reality Factory cell division demo uses textures cleverly and obviously painstakingly created (well done Pickles) to achieve the Doom like feel. Nice intro video too.

All of these engines have some good points and some bad ones which make none of them particularly helpful to indie developers who need an all round engine with a complete set of "basic" game requirement features (as well as any more advanced ones included) capable of rapid development to produce a reasonably saleable end product in a reasonable amount of time - that is unless you just want to make something for fun - which is admirable too of course.

AMP2 for instance has no terrain support.

Reality Factory does have a full compliment of features offering the ability to provide both indoor and outdoor (terrain) environments (as does both GS and Torque). RF also has an excellent feature set e.g. weapons, AI (not GS or Torque), special effects and more and rightly said it has an excellent top notch forum, perhaps the best - meaning its full of helpful people. RF I am not convinced offers high enough frame rates to consider making a modern game development with - (the complex environments that may accompany such a production), though the new release, currently in beta may well enhance this.

If your game design dictates smallish levels (cleverly designed) with a limited complexity, short range of sight and fogging your outdoor levels then RF may well offer you the nearest thing to a complete indie game system.

Most of the engines are undergoing development which promises us more and better in the future but for that day we shall have to wait and see - it may or may not ever happen.

Whichever engine here spoken of you aint gonna make a Doom3 or i'll eat my hat.

:-) maybe I will

it dont matter what engine we use be it doom 3 crytek or source no one here is ever gonna match doom 3 or any other aaa game
we just dont have the people power or the money to do it
game engine aside
indie must thing smaller abd make it fun
thats the best bet

now onto tech
i had a run aroun thread abit ago about lightin in GS
and shaders
first off gs is so far off from how current tech its scary
take note i posted this torque light pack pic



and a gs user responded with

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My models are highlighted by dynamic lights..not the sun, though I use it in certain dramatic lighting situations and would so no matter what engine I used.

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lets clear this up abit first of all you only have 7 dynamic lights + sun
so you are sunk right there
on top of that your static meshs wont cast a shadow map
you have 2 choice
1: use standard dynamic
2: use stencil
your done already

lets go over it i want to make a complex railin system that will cast a shadow
based on over head lights lets say this rail system is much to complex for bsp
so we will use model at this point with gs your stuck with stencil or no shadow at all
the other alternative is to build a rail system that sort of matches the model
out of bsp then flag it too none
so it will cast a shadow
whack design at best
paying for next version of gs
finaces there r&d plain and simple

3dgs engine will always be king and hold crown of ease of use
but it will always be way behind and limited

it dont work both ways

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lets clear this up abit first of all you only have 7 dynamic lights + sun
so you are sunk right there

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No you're not. I have about 35 dynamic lights(70 when you count the non-color shadow influencers) in one level. There are few limitations that can't be overcome with a little forethought. This 8 light limit has nothing to do with 3DGS and everything to do with DirectX.

Once again, you show you don't have a clue about what you're talking about. There's nothing whack about anything with A6. You simply have to have a brain to figure out how to get the results you're after.

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No you're not. I have about 35 dynamic lights(70 when you count the non-color shadow influencers) in one level. There are few limitations that can't be overcome with a little forethought. This 8 light limit has nothing to do with 3DGS and everything to do with DirectX.

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i have unlimited dynamic light and shadow mapping for model
you have neither yes an issue with directx 8-9 mabey
but a 1999 engine with a creative coder with access to source over came it
why cant conitec
you will never win this argument
because the engine i speak of does things you just cant do

you dont have cross platform your limited on dynamic light you have not model shadow map your terrain is cr*p
your network non existent and so on and so on

quit tryin to compare a hoppy engine with an industry strength tool
coded by people who shiped aaa games
you cant win this

once again i will say this engine hold crown ease of use
but thats it
but this wont last long
see my other post i made about inside info

hang around gg chat
lots of great info comes across there about whats up and coming

aie aie aie !

Reality factory is DirectX 6 and 7 !

it's bumpmapping is basic bumpmapping not
DOt3 or Specular bumpmapping !

the engine doesn't support pixel and vertex shaders !

when you llok at screens : there are nothing great that have been done with it !

it's an outdated engine !

if it's progresses now : that's cool !

but the time it progresses or incorpore new technology thaht 3DGS have like stencil shadows or pixel shaders (if one day they'll get it working) ,
we'll have 3DGS A7 !

I'm gonna make crazy some people :
sorry !

that's just my opinion and dont' take it too bad torque engine users !

Torque have great terrain editor and other things :
but it is an outdated engine :
there are only nowadays 2 or 3 commercial games made with it !
and Marble BLast is the best !
I don't see a great MMORPG like orion made with it !

The code of torque is very complicated when you want to modify it !
it's not for people who want direct and Fast results like with 3DGS !
it's tons of line of complicated code (not script ; i talk about C++) !

and with 3DGS you don't have to modify code to do your game
you can create your personnal scripts (very easy and powerfull langage !)

Torque not bad , but not very powerfull like lot of people think :
there were great slowdown of their Torque shader demo on my
2.5Ghz,Radeon 9800Xt at 1024*768
and i run Doom3 with all details at 10424 ; half life also and no great slow down at 1 FPS or Less like in the T Shader Demo !
No Torque is not as powerfull as you think !

And i don't want to try to understand Torque during 6 months to do something
and loose all my time programming the engine instead of creating a game !

Sorry just my point of view !

You are correct about the Torque Frame rates - if you try the Shader engine demo as it is currently you will find a big drop in frame rates compared to the Standard engine which in itself has questionable frame rates.

I can say from direct experience that I have a City level created in GS with hundreds of MDL entities one of which is a whole city block of 30 buildings. The models are additional to all the buildings created as level blocks. All of the MDL entities have little effect on the level frame rate which varies from a consistent 40 - 75fps in a level where there is a long line of sight along streets.

I have just tested the said single City model of 30 buildings as DTS model in an empty Torque level which when looking away from the model gives a fPS reading of around 160fps - if I turn around and look at the city model the FPS drops to 6fps - yes thats six frames per second.

Theres a lot of debate about these different engines around various forums and really reading the official hype, engine specs, forum debates, claims and counter claims and alike is really a waste of time - if you want to know which ones are best at what - more importantly which ones are even capable of making a "complete" game of any standing - then you will have to test out something thats been made with them thats extensive showing the capabilities of the various engines under stress. The trouble is you will be hard pressed to find any such thing made by any of them.

Most of the indie engines out there and some others which are referred to as more advanced engines which indeed they may be promote themselves as such with a simple one incomplete level - hardly a demonstartion of an engines capability or power. Theres nothing there to demonstarte such.

The Torque engine for instance (just using the example not picking on it) as you know has a demo FPShooter which despite its excellent terrain, water, sky combo has very little else - try filling it with some complex geometry and 30 different actors running around and see what happens.

In terms of generating anything like a quality modern commercial title content none of them currently have anything that I am aware of that can show us they can achieve that. There are a few exceptions to this I am sure but the general claim of many indie engines (and each do it) to be the best and easiest to make a game with requiring little programming is really misleading. If it were so there would be many more games made with them as there are combined a great deal of users worldwide but try as you may its going to be hard to find many completed games made by them or even playable demos of any stature. Yes admittedly you can make a game - "of sorts" with any of them if you want to keep it simple and primitive, but not many do. We are spoilt by modern commercial titles and want to aspire to achieve more and rightly so.

In truth all of them for one reason or another are either lacking the features needed or for differing reasons are extremely difficult for indie developers to be productive with. Whether it be difficulties with collision, AI, terrain or the bugs and more that some of them have - you are likely to spend a lot more time working out how to achieve what you want to do instead of actually doing it. By the time you get your game made if ever it will be outdated and you wont be happy with that.

GS at least as far as I have been able to ascertain in testing most of the engines discussed here without doubt is the fastest in production time and frames rates which are its strengths but it does have other poorly supported features and the continuing ongoing forward development of the engine is holding back small developers in my opinion while they await a stable production environment. At least it is is my case.

Using backwards compatibility to previous versions one could call upon a great deal of others experience and knowledge gained over a long period of time and a vast array of script examples and tutorials to help in your gamemaking production, most of what you would need or need to learn could be found somewhere here - with the move along the road to the new engine that is likey to be all lost as much of that content is to become obsolete - unless you can be the first to solve the new problems, create the new scripts, content, tutorials etc and lead the way then you may have to wait a long, long time before as a GS user you will be in such an enviable position again.