hi , how many times have we seen threads where people mention
what is wrong with gamestudio and in each of these threads
you would also find the people that at the same time say :
"hey i love this engine ", "hey this and that is acceptable"
"could it be graphics ,workflow or ..." (ratchet your being missed already) ...

so i have this idea and perhaps jcl would take it to heart..

why dont we in this thread list all dislikes and likes of the
current versions of gamestudio ,wed ,med...

and ideas for what would be great to see in the comming future for gamestudio ?

there are many things i have noted among the common requests for gamestudio
developement future ..

some of these are things like

a beautifull collection of shaders almost as the athour of shade-c was doing ,
did you notice how many responses there were to the shade-c package? that alone
should show you that it is indeed something we need because not everyone is able
to create beautifull shaders and i have to point out that pre made ready to use
shader packages is a big thing it takes alot of work away and makes things so
much easier for any person hoping to achieve a good look in a short amount of time!!

a terrain editor with the ability to paint onto the terrain , that is a big feature
that all of us would welcome and it would certainly inspire more terrain based games
being made for sure ! ,now editing like that is great but we also need streaming
of these joined terrain's so that we could really develope large beatifull worlds .

some sort of build in path finding system ,as game designer we need a pathfinding
system integrated and ready to use ,there are many possibilities for this as there are
many diffrent way's pathfinding but even a simple system would suffice as long as it
takes the work away from people who dont want and cant and dont see the need to develope
it themselfs ,pathfinding should be a standard among engines ,even it would be some
simple a* system with a floodfill/node edit tool to make things easier.

a gui editor ! this is one of the things i would also want to see in gamestudio ,
a editor where we could design gui windows and layouts ,save it to file and be able
to load it into gamestudio and just go and code our events , lbgui the author of that
sure saw the need and as always it is the users that develope and try to meet the needs
of other users ,i for one must say that any person that contributes tools for gamestudio
is certainly a treasure in the mids of sleeping giants !!..

there are so many people on this forum that saw the need for tools and missing features
and i encourage these people to keep up with it ,only to mention a few of the projects
shade-c ,lbgui ,all the script editors ,all the templates , sivan with his builder

there are many many more to mention but to much for this post...
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

what would you like to see in the future ??????
what do you like about the current ???
what do you hate about it ???

and we may have users here that see a need for tools to develope
if they want to mm?

last night I also thought of time to make a wishlist thread in connection with the new WED , as its 75% state is probably a stage where it has meaning.

I fully agree with the statements above.

to keep up with other engines' toolset, an advanced terrain system (lod, streaming areas) with some vegetation (and other object) placement functionalities is needed today, in basic editions too, to help fast placement with auto alignment etc. and some optimization afterwards e.g. by mesh merging of models assigned as grass (probably easier to utilize than instancing).

I expect a more integrated editor with much more visual editing possibilities, for model material and shader settings, particle effects, gui, navmesh pathfinder, beside keeping the good old properties (fast object prototyping by blocks, templates for beginners in a few genres like rpg and shooter). and an easy editor plugin system.

yes, and an advanced shader system that smoothly works together is also a must. writing your own optimized shader framework is a bit overloading.

"fast object prototyping by blocks"

indeed !! do not throw away the blocks they are very very usefull

another thing i would simply love in wed is the ability to lightmap
any imported mdl model!!! (i have not seen this done with wed)

Something different I'd like to have is direct-x 10 / 11 support.
Yes, there might be more important features but DX9 is more than just outdated (11 years old).

Also, DX10/11 has some great features and is faster:
My brother's application needed 900mb ram and rendered at 180fps. After just switching to DX11 it needs 300mb ram and renders at 800fps.

The Acknex gods are on your side. From the Forecast:

@JustSid
As far as I understood him he meant lightmapping ON models, not FROM.

Kartoffel@ I guess lightmapping ON models without FROM them is going to be a little bit weird

I would like to see some improvements on OBB system, like different shapes (CAPSULE maybe), for all c_ functions.
Plus it could be nice to see some physX3 implementation, instead of the current one, cause it's integrated sloppy and well.. it's already outdated.
All-in-all I have nothing left to add, Wjbender nailed it pretty much effectively. But I'm afraid, that this thread is going to be ignored pretty much..

PATHFINDING,
IOS, ANDROID SUPPORT

What I actually like is the whole absence of an engine tied project management. It's supereasy and straight forward. You have your script and your files and you access them the way you have them stored. Couldn't be better. (No, I'm not ironic or sarcastic. I really like it this "oldschool" way.)

I hope the new WED brings some tools for terrain creating. Everything about that is already said.

For MED: I usually use it as an importer and finetuner for MDL files. And I wouldn't care if the abilities for modelling aren't further developed, if instead the workflow for importing and handling is improved. There will always be better tools and I don't think MED will ever be able to catch up. That work is better placed on engine features.

Well my overall answer to this topic is that I'd like to see 3DGS arrive in this decade. In my opinion there has to be a turn of tides in terms of the general orientation. I mean look at the homepage and read what's there - there are quite some things where you notice that the mentality of 3DGS got stuck many years ago. As an example:

That is said pretty much at the beginning of the engine description on the homepage. This worked back in the days when software like Blender didn't exist or wasn't nowhere as advanced as it is today and where professional software like MAX did cost a lot more than it does today. I mean think about it - here they try to encourage their potential customers to use MED instead of whatever else they are using. These times simply are over. THIS is how the industry works nowadays. You fire up your software, you create a high- and low-poly model, you create a diffuse, specular and normal map plus maybe animations or even LOD stages (if you don't want to use engine internal LOD systems). Then you take your asset and expect the engine to accept all of this with no sweat. This is where 3DGS in my opinion falls flat as it never really adapted to this trend...

I mean this is no AAA magic. Pretty much everyone expects an engine to immediately handle a model with a normal and specular map. That also becomes a problem when looking at the editions: The Extra version (you pay 100 € for) has no shaders - they don't become available until the 199$ Com edition. I think this really is horrible as we in my opinion now really are talking about the most basic tech level an engine should deliver nowadays and I'm not even mentioning that the handling of said shaders also by far isn't that "self-evident" even if you have the Com edition. 3DGS needs a "fire and forget" solution here. You want to use a diffuse, normal and specular map? No sweat - just tell which textures to use and here we go. Works with the lights you add and in general is a no brainer. That especially is needed for those "beginners" the homepage also talks of who are meant to use prefabs in order to click together their games...

This sort of also applies to the resource packer. I still don't get it why you need to buy the Pro edition just to prevent people from seeing your raw files. Not mentioning that this leaves an extremely unprofessional impression...

Maybe a small addendum to me quoting the 3DGS homepage as this probably should be the first and most easy thing to fix. There are quite some sections that should be revised or even removed. I'll name just two examples I won't even comment on:



So with 3DGS getting a new orientation what would I like to see? Well at first I think it's way too late for the mobile market and the Acknex engine also lacks certain qualities to really compete. I know that this actually is in development but I really doubt that this is what 3DGS desperately needs right now. There simply are so many competitors from specialized lightweight solutions to full sized allround engines like Unity all offering very efficient workflows and literally years of experience with those mobile platforms. I don't think mobile deployment for 3DGS ever will go beyond a "nice to have" feature for the majority of users...

I think 3DGS should aim for a niche. It's no use trying to compete with an engine like Unity with its in comparison insane level of workpower nor has it big chances on the mobile market as there don't just exist competitors like Unity but also all those smaller engines already (I can't remember good examples right now but there for example exist engines just made for 2D games which are very efficient at their job both in terms of performance as well as workflow for such games). In the end I can imagine 3DGS going down the "FPS Creator" route where it aims for newbies. What would be needed here are good editors together with good templates. The editors (hopefully) already are changing to give a way better / more modern workflow and the templates always have been there too although they should be a bit less tedious to use and understand. Basically this would be about what Unity sort of offers when thinking of those Kits they sell in their asset store. Things like ORK or the Playmaker are what I have in mind here. Especially the later with easy to understand node based development is nice (and sells well) and sort of ideal for the development for newbies as it offers way more potential / influence than just applying template scripts. 3DGS should opt for such easy non-programming methods. I think THIS LE3 Flowgraph video shows how nice such a node base system works and gives extremely easy access to gameplay logic without a single line of script. I also think 3DGS especially needs this as counterpart to the lite-C scripting which as this proprietary C-like language really isn't all that appealing to programming newcomers...

EDIT:
Maybe as small addendum: Once 3DGS would reach a state where it has those nice editors, nice node based non-programming system and extensive templates together with some tunes to the featureset going for the mobile platforms might make sense as people would be able to create not too complex games in no time. "One step after another" is what counts here though and so the basis for this high attractiveness for creating simple games should exist before the relevant export options. Having them now means that all engine changes already have to be double checked if things still work for the mobile platforms (eating up development time 3DGS doesn't have in abundance) thus slowing the development plus the platforms we get now might not exist in that shape when all those nice engine / editor features are done (which again means precious development time taken away in order to update the exporters to the latest iOS, Android or whatever version)...

So this is not about me hating mobile platforms but I think that there are so many competitors in this market that a newcomer needs a good concept / good reasons in order to somehow stand out and I don't see such a potential for the current 3DGS...