Hi all,

I just bring up this question because I have been working with 3DGS for many years and I have been working on a major release using 3DGS for like 3 years now.

I look at the current projects and they are all cartoonish, very simple games. It seemed there was a time when there was some more serious games being created with 3DGS.

I have been with 3DGS for, I dunno 6 or 7 plus years now. At one point of time we decided to use 3DGS as our engine, which in hindsight might not have been best choice, but too far along to change now.

The problem is we have ended up doing like 45% of our game in dll's we wrote to make stuff work, look nice, and run at a decent fps.

I won't go into everything, but things like multiplayer, 3d sound that really works, SpeedTree, etc. The list goes on and on.

Now we are on A8, we was hoping maybe the game would run faster with better bone functions, better shadow frame rates, etc, but the fps is still all the same.

I would like to, but not going to mess with trying to improve bone animation speeds in a dll, but obviously going to have to write some shadow code that doesn't drop the fps by 1/2.

Notably, this game was always pushing 3DGS to the max, but we hoped that as 3DGS improved it would improve our performance, but every update hasn't improved performance at all, performance only happens when we write new dll's unfortunately.

Anyhow, just venting tonight, but in about 6 months 3DGS will have a nice title under it's belt, but we probably won't be using 3DGS again. For a big game, it just takes too much dll programming, etc, to keep it running at a decent fps.

I thought I read stuff about new instancing and all with 3DGS, but SpeedTree instancing actually works, 3DGS not so much, I just don't get it.

I was really hoping to see some fps improvements changing from A7 to A8, but there was absolutely no change with our large game.

Later,
Loco

What are engine are you going to use in the future? I have looked at C4, and Unity as possible options for myself.
I wouldn't say 3dgs is dying, but I do think things could be going better. Just a couple of things:
- Basic GIF format support that could remove the need for code
- New Shaders such as realistic 3d water, etc (the Shaders that 3dgs supports are truly horrible with only a couple of exceptions that usually increase memory usage a lot)
- Skyboxes (I wont even go there), there is so little choices
- Basic weather scripts that don't kill your FPS
(the new 8.10 snow script looks pretty good but kills ur FPS)
- Numerous FLAG issues already mentioned
- Most games look cartoonish like you said and the range of games possible to be made with 3dgs is very small, it's like only RPG games are really supported
- Basic features that are needed for some games are missing
- Multiplayer functions could be improved
- Many other features could be implemented to make 3dgs a whole lot better than it already is

- Basic GIF format support that could remove the need for code
not needed

- New Shaders such as realistic 3d water, etc (the Shaders that 3dgs supports are truly horrible with only a couple of exceptions that usually increase memory usage a lot)

3dgs doesnt create shaders, it give sthe possibillity to create and use them. So supporting is here the wrong word.

-Skyboxes (I wont even go there), there is so little choices
maybe

-Basic weather scripts that don't kill your FPS
not needed

- Numerous FLAG issues already mentioned
ok

-Most games look cartoonish like you said and the range of games possible to be made with 3dgs is very small, it's like only RPG games are really supported

WHAT do you expect? Its a community with people new to programming. Cartoonish games require less "photo realistic omfg" most users cant produce when they start. And by the way: Shooter/Rts etc are possible too o.O(as example)

- Basic features that are needed for some games are missing
agree some things like a tracelist from a c_trace could be usefull

- Multiplayer functions could be improved
maybe

things i marked as not needed are not needed cause
a)useless (gif for example)
b)can be produced by youself without much effort(weather script)

Keep in mine before asking for things like weather script, i agree to Locoweed that engine nees to be improoved. So script and gif things are completely at the end of ToDo

Ps: I wish integration for Classes for real OOP(Lite-C).
PSS: I Bet Sid would go nuts with an improoved compiler^^
PSSS: Never understood why rangechecking for arrays in debugmode should not be possible. Delphi for example can handle that o.O

Greets
Rackscha

I would have to disagree, the engine should have the option to create better games not just mostly cartoonish ones. I mean if you pay so much, especially for the PRO version the engine should be capable of doing some big, high quality games too. And new Shaders could be really useful for simulator type games even though you could make them yourself, some easy add-on already made shaders would be nice. I mean look at Unity's shaders and how many more, and better ones there are compared with 3dgs. Also GIF support should be an easy feature to add and would remove the need for old fashion track based sprites and unneccesary code. The weather script part, I'd have agree with you, but still the FPS shouldnt drop so drastically when you use them.
Otherwise the engine is pretty good, I liked it from the beginning, since it teaches you lite-c and then the transition to c++ is much easier. Great community and support also.

The interesting part is what exactly needed to be replaced by DLL... and the question is what does the DLL differently to the engine core.

At that point it gets interesting to share detailed information, but I guess this is a question of how much money Conitec is willing to spend at that point.

Yes, thats right...
Hadn´t thought of it at all.
Why don´t you give the Speedimprovements to the GS-Community as some sort of "Good Bye Game Studio"-gift?
That way, we could all take advantage of it.

gif is not necessary since png is supported i think. or do you mean because of the animation support? i don't think gif animation is easier to handle than putting the frames next to each other. rather the opposite.

you can't just create cartoonish games with gamestudio but for small developers it makes a lot more sense to keep the graphics simple no matter what engine they use. take a look at the most successful indie games like for example the ones in the recent humble indie bundle #2.

about gamestudio dying:
http://tinyurl.com/2fah7h7


i don't think it is dying though. but since marco and doug left, jcl is the only engine developer and he said that he only works on it part time. ok, george works on new templates and every few weeks wlad seems to spend a few hours on wed. compare this to that: http://unity3d.com/company/people/team

this still wouldn't be that bad. gamestudio gets advertised as "lightweight authoring system". i like lightweight stuff. but i think with such a small team they should concentrate on being even more lightweight. do less but do it right instead of halfheartedly. i would prefer if they got rid of some of the old ballast. an opengl ES renderer would be really important too since there are so many more interesting platforms now than windows.

I have to disagree, windows, although annoying and crappy as it is, has a strong foothold on the world. This makes it the most viable platform for the casual PC gamer.

this is more USEFUL than NEEDED, noone NEEDS this Totally agree, this holds some truth though i dont have a problem in the shader department thanks to ShadeC
honestly, this is VERY easy to code
NEEDED, this needs to be addressed
Sorry, i STRONGLY disagree, be careful not to mix your personal potential with the engines potential, theres no type of game in my mind that i cant realize with 3dgs, only thing i wouldnt touch is an MMO and that maintains difficulty over any engine you choose
I agree with this SOMEWHAT but i think those features arent big things like sound and physics, but some little things such as the flags that need to be addressed.
Improved, yes i agree, though i have been seeing more and more MP projects though most of them suffer from some minor annoying MP flaws but theres also Anet if you want stability.
This is true


This is also annoying, we atleast expect better visuals IF we dont get a performance boost but to be honest i think there might be a few useful performance boosters, personally i see the new sprites and the portal regions to be helpful in gaining performance.

WHAT i HATE about this engine's development is, the simplest things are what causes problems, such as flags and we always get some excuse about doing workarounds, we all know theres ALWAYS a way to find a workaround but the time it takes is what kills development, for example, i coded my TPS using c_ignore and it took about 5 minutes to write what SEEMED like functioning code, then i ran it and it failed, which resulted in an hour of me checking if i made mistakes, soon a day was wasted then i learnt it was a engine problem, i then had to code the workarond and several methods couldnt work because they were already used as workarounds for other things and thus made the code VERY messy. So, that entire system took about a week to address when it couldve been done in 5minutes if you guys had lived up to your OWN word with the c_ignore

The main annoyance with me and this engine is its lighting system, lets be honest here, its alot of work to make a sexy level using GSonly elements and then theres the little minute annoyance bugs, i wont switch to A8 because i dont see it offering anything that i cant do in A7

We might say things like gif support, weather isnt 'needed' and alot of little features but truth is, i think alot of us would use them, we dont because its not there and we cant be bothered coding it, even though its simple, coding all of these simple things is why alot of our games dont get finished, sure one might say, hey youre a hobbyist so time isnt a factor but i believe it is especially when finishing a game relies on your motivation, coding workarounds for everything significantly kills that I have a weather system to code for example, i know its easy but havent started due to tasks with more priority, so in a case like this, a nice working template script would be nice so i dont have to pause important tasks but i guess as said, project wont be cancelled because of this.

My team and i do have a huge project comming soon also, ofcourse it hasnt been showcased yet for several reasons, just know you'll be quite impressed ;), i think there also alot more projects being developed but kept behind closed doors LocoWeeds project sounds promising also, theres also CSiS and i think Zapan's zpmbie game is still under development, so i do believe theres some work going on.

Yes i really really hope for those games by Locoweed and Darkinferno to push it^^.

Less people are searching for Gamestudio, cause there is no marketing and less mouth to mouth propaganda. With some games that could represent the engine, it might rise again...might.

Serious question: If JCL is the only engine Dev atm, isnt it possible to (maybe) find another guy to help out? I mean its the same with writing text: You write it and think: OK
Someone else reads it: "eehh".
at lesat 2 people means different point of views for constructing etc. Could be alot more helpfull.

Maybe focusing on Team rebuilding?


Greets
Rackscha