Hello all,

Hopefully I can ask this question here and not get yelled at. I am genuinely interested in the answer, not posting flame bait.

Just been looking at the 3dRad site and was wondering what peoples thoughts were of the engine. Is it as flexible as GS? Some of the engine features (poly collisions and network play,deformable models) look a bit more advanced than GS...but thats just from looking at the homepage.

Also the network play is given to people who payed the same as us commercial users of GS. The reason I'm asking is that there's no way I can afford what ammounts to $1200 Aus to buy an upgrade to the prof A5 version (from commercial) to get multiplayer, but I could probably stretch to another $400 and switch camps to 3drad. Of course I lose all that time already invested in GS. Anyone have any experience with 3drad and offer an unbiased, non emotional comparison?

So I've poured flame retardent over myself and await your responses hehe.

cheers

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Dale Drechsler
dale@dalesmatrix.com
http://www.dalesmatrix.com

I have both systems and have to say that the RAD system is harder to work with to build environments and texture, and it is harder to make things animate since they are dependent on x-model animation.

The lighting is very bald in RAD. It's kind of like running on fullbright all the time.

Dale,

Do a search on this forum. This is obviously not the first time that we have had discussions here on 3DRAD. You will find posts by both 3DGS users and 3DRAD users. 3

All I can say is my money's on 3DGS.

MBEE,

Do you have the most recent version of 3DRAD? I've heard there have been a lot of improvements over the last few versions.

I have both and Gamestudio is better by far in my opinion.
3DRad has no shadows and a terrible world editor. Although you can easily import 3DS landscapes and objects, it's a pain to position everything and to set lights.

I have both systems (3DRAD and A5)

and truely, 3DRAD has made a major improvement recently with its 4.1 version.

polygon collision, and much more. BUT, A5 still have some advantages over Rad. I talking many graphical features. Its not true that its a pain to set up a world in RAD, since you will use your modeller to do this feat. A5 is still the superior product, but i have seen many nice things come out of rad. But i still love A5. My only complant is the multiplayer ability for A5 commerical. I would love to see the commerical version get some sort of multiplayer addon added (like at least 4 player). And this is the reason i still use RAD to today for some of my projects. Just cause I can add multiplayer to a project easily.

Anywhoo, i don't know what to say in this regard cause i don't know what type of project you want to do. But RAD is now a pretty nice system to use. I have both so i will continue to use both

Cedric

Yeah, I've got both systems too... I switched from RAD to GameStudio a couple of months ago. Some reasons I moved to GS:

RAD does not have deformable models - the only way to have animated human models is to create a hierarchically animated multipart model and convert it to .x format. If you want a single mesh, you have to use frame-by-frame animation which will mean as many .x files as you have frames (and there's no interpolation, so it's jerky).

Polygon collision has just been introduced - but as I understand it, in the 'brain' (script) you have to declare every combination of possible polygon parts that can collide. I might be wrong on that, but that's how the new brain reference reads.

RAD does have 'dynamic' shadows... but you have to declare in the brain every possible plain and angle at which they can occur. ie. Unless you're on flat floor, forget it. Oh, there's no shadow mapping either.

No particle system, no strings.

RAD does have cheap multiplayer, but you have to create every player at game-start - and given the 256 element limit (although there's now a workaround for that), this is very limiting.

Oh, and the creators recently had to threaten to revoke future upgrades just to stop the childish behaviour on the forum.

That said, it's good for racing games - Someone's Wraiths is a great Wipeout style game that was made with RAD. And I just put some animation script into a very small multiplayer Tribes/Quake style game made in RAD by Someone and a 3D artist which was looking pretty damn good last time I tested it...

Pros and cons, but for human-based games I'd choose 3dgs everytime.
Whew, that was along post. Not at all obvious I'm putting off uni work, then...
-Keith

One thing I find interesting is that mny users of 3D Game Studio will give an honest response concerning 3DRAD without blasting anyone. It is difficult to find many 3DRAD users that will do the same when it comes to comparing any other 3D system.

Dan, unless you are a diehard RADDER you won't notice any significant differences in recent versions. The relative ease of setting up worlds in Gamestudio is still its saving grace for me. In RAD you have to position Ground, Volume and your model to make everything work right. This may be well and good for everyone that is fluent in 3DMAX but for me its simpler to make levels in the editor in A5 (even with its flaws). The introduction of direct import of Worldcraft levels is a plus for 3DGS. Some RAD users have managed that but they still have to retexture once its in their levels.

Models are also a pain in RAD. Eagle and her friends are all hot to get MD2 format supported in RAD just because x-animation (at least the way RAD does it) is so tedious.

I don't like the standard movement in RAD at all. I sort of feel like I'm suspended on wires or something and keep bumping off of walls. This is true of their "driving" resource too. There's no ground friction physics applied it seems.

I tried RAD earlier this year in an attempt to get things working but ended up running back to A4 real quick because the workflow was sooooooo slow in RAD.

I say try before you buy. You have 30 days on the demo for 3DGS and only 15 for RAD so check it out.

[This message has been edited by mbee (edited 15 May 2001).]

Thanks for the replys, much appreciated, looks like I'll stay with GS. I guess my post came out of some financial frustration of not being able to afford the Pro version to get multiplayer.

I have my fingers crossed that at some point Conitech see the light and give us commercial users at least 4 player.

I dont underate GS, I think its the best! I just wanted to hear others thoughts on 3DRAD. I'm also glad to see that folk are friendly enough to have level headed discussion like this without flaming. Thanks for that.

Cheers all.

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Dale Drechsler
dale@dalesmatrix.com
http://www.dalesmatrix.com

Just my thoughts...

I think 3DRAD is a great program, I used it quite heavily a while back, however it couldnt do what I wanted to do so I quite the scene all together (until I found A4 of course).

From what Ive seen its looking a lot better and has more freatures than when I was using it.

If you are trying to decide between the two I would certainly advise downloading both demo and testing them to see which one fits your needs best.

"The end is important in all things."

Don't sacrifice something you want for something you need. If you really need multiplayer to do the game you want, but cant afford A5 Pro and can afford 3DRAD I would suggest 3DRAD. If you cant make the games you want to make, you will probably give up making them all together...this is bad.

Brandon

[This message has been edited by AcidCrow (edited 16 May 2001).]