can anyone show me some real games made with it or even good looking demos/screenshots? the demo at their site did not impress me at all.
all it was, where 3 very tiny levels, with some shader effects - but this is not the environment for a complete game. i would say with optimized shaders the exact same demo could run with gs too.

i think if you are an artist you don't need to buy it. the level editor can be used for free.

some parts of c4 (like animation and collision detection) still were a bit rough when i last checked (a year or so ago).

i thought about buying it but i didn't like its license. $200 for life long free updates is nice but there is some IP stuff in it which i found scary.

Ulf: You probably did not test the demo. It looks okay, not impressive but it has outdoor, some sci-fi indoors including a room with rotating and shadow-casting ventilator, swinging lamps (casting light and shadows dynamically) and a fantasy dungeon. There are alot of rooms, stairs even a portal leading to the terrain again. It heavily showcases the good scene management with portals and zones. It even has interactive panels where you can switch on / off ventilator or lights.
Better check it more deeply next time!

You said that you can do the same in A7. I am interested to see it. Really. We try it ourself and current scene-management is not suited for indoors. We have to write our own. The same counts for interactive panels, dynamic shadows and much more.
I am looking forward to your approach!

You want to see links to real games? Here they come:
http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Games

And here is a Galery:
http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Gallery
Check the video of "The Unknown". You will be amazed how good it looks, much much better than the official Demo.

The license is ok. I get updates for a lifetime. I can use standard license but I need commercial license if I publish through a big publisher. If I publish through small publishers or myself then there is no restriction at all.
Very simple and clear and very fair as well.

And yes, you are right. You can create levels with the demo. You dont need a license if you just use it without changing the source code. But nevertheless I bought it. So I get updates for a lifetime and I own a license. And I am sure it will become more expensive in the future when new improved versions come up.

Just look what amounts of features come up with every release in very short times:
http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/notes.php

the current outdoor area isn't very big. it's like just another room. is the terrain and vegetation system done already?

the lighting system is very nice though.

the problem i have with the license is the stuff with the formulas and algorithms and so on. if you look at the c4 source code you probably can't avoid to get some ideas from it. you better shouldn't get c4 if you plan to do your own graphics programming projects sometime afterwards (the life long license isn't that great in this case ).

The next version will get completely new terrain system with streaming (they call it "background zone loading") like Oblivion, Unity3d, QuakeWars and so on. This is the future of game engines. Because of this you have no RAM restrictions and you can port to Consoles more easily.

Here are more forecast features:
http://www.terathon.com/wiki/index.php?title=Official_Roadmap

Father_Frank: oh i did run the demo, thats why i said it did not impress me so much. as ventilator said, the current outdoor area there is not very big! and i have seen much better looking terrain in gamestudio already.
...and the 'dungeon' is also pretty small, the same with the multiplayer map.
really that demo can be reproduced with optimized shaders.

it might not look as good because of the lightning - wich is really looking good in c4. and maybe the speed is not so fast, because c4's renderer seems to be built for/around this one level/shooter type of gameplay, but it should be possible... i dont know where the problems would be? what problems did you have when you tried something similar?

the demos are also not very impressive(you could say the same about gamestudio ) i liked that persia thing most. the "unknown video" is just a very little parking zone with some details/car models? why is this exciting? okay i have to admit the lightning is good - but thats all. its the same limited space like in the engine demo, some highres models thrown in + shaders...

besides i dont know why they need those movement blur shader, this is just ugly. i mean if you look at moving stuff on your monitor, your eyes automatically blur the stuff on the sides because they focus on the middle. why does everyone think this forced motion blur is good looking? but thats just my personal opinion i think this is way overused and not necessary.

you probably have not much experience with detailed indoor scenery and scene-management. If you make it with A7 and ABT scene manager then all the rooms in camera view will be rendered even if they are behind a wall. The amount of models and polygons is huge then.

ABT is good for outdoor but useless for indoor. The A7 pro BSP does not run smooth with shaders.

In C4 the system renders only the zone you are visiting. Many engines use such zone / portal system like Lawmaker, Torque, Unreal. Sometimes it is combined with a BSP (but still with user defined portals).

But if you really can do that then dont talk, just do it and make a contribution of that level. We all would be happy to see it with shaders applied.

i did not say i can do this, all i said was, that the c4 demo uses very simple geometry with shaders applied - and that you can do this with gamestudio too(simple rooms with a normalmap shader, terrain...).
no model like a tree has animation, there is no grass, the movement in this demo is more than bad, you get stuck pretty often in some wall or stairs, weapons stick in the wall, particle effects look very bad and so on...and that is imho nothing to be excited about. in fact i even find the overuse of motion blur disturbing in such a showcase demo.
and i think its my right to express my opinion about this here, even if i can't show you a gamestudio demo similar to this.

btw, i would say the exact same about the gamestudio showcase demo, wich is in fact even worse, than the c4 one...

Ulf, we did talk about the technology and we all agreed that demo ist not exciting. So there is no need to get upset because of that and no need to bash a programmers art demo made for a one-man engine (eric is the only one behind this company).

The engine is exciting, the amount of updates in short times is exciting and the technology is.

Hiya.

The 'demo' of C4 is primarily a "See what tech this engine has right now" kinda thing. It is *not* meant to 'show off a new kick-ass game'. It isn't a game; there is no unifying theme, color scheme, intelligent layout, etc....it's just a simple couple rooms that show off some of the tech.

Just wait until we get the terrain and vegetation stuff going!