hi

I mentioned this game engine earlier, and did some little tests. looks fine, performance is not superb (better than Neoaxis, worse than Unity), and definitely has some good features (cross platform, unlimited streaming terrain system, free and indie version, simplified C++ and own script too, Recast navmesh pathfinding without crowd):
http://www.esenthel.com/?id=overview

it seems to be developed for mainly MMO games by one person, and you can access source codes - apparently licensing mainly differs only in source code access. there are some online videos, a free example game, and how to start tutorials, but no reference manual (!), only a well commented header browser of engine header files.

not the best, not the worst engine, can be good for some tasks, mainly if you do not want to pay a lot of money for a game engine (indie license is 150usd but only for one product). I think 3DGS Commercial is better.

Just wanted to post some demo videos:
Esenthel Engine - Spaceship Hangar
Esenthel Engine - Sci-Fi Benchmark
Esenthel Engine - Rendering Quality
Esenthel RPG 2

I like A8, but you can say A8 is better;
Esenthel have lot of power for outdoor environments, i'm not sure why Unity would do better ?
I don't have seen some big PC mmo or RPG with Unity in the market ? There are some Mmo with Unity like Galactica or others but they are not incredibble !

Juts watch the video to see some good complex 3d Outdoor with town :
Esenthel mmo

I doubt A8 would run same environment, graphic effects, Hud etc ... at same rate.

I have been on some french forum where some guys easily adde some cloth simulation for cloth for a character.
The code is not so hard and it has automatic navigation caculation for AI, so no need to worry about monster to have to find your charcater

And for power you can see a mobile running a very good 3D scene with characters :
Multi platform demo

So i don't agree, it's not really under Unity and Esenthel already have DX11 support, like tesselation also.
And not all engines have streaming also !

Im' sure someone would create big things with it

Why i don't buy Esenthel :
- I don't like C++ or similar script/code , even if Esenthel runs Visual C++ on background !
- A8 script is perfect in easyness , and fast to understand and code
- With A8 you can produce games such as Supercan if you have 3D Art skills
- You can make your own super tools (Supercan editor)
- Communty and tutorials, magazine is the best you can find with a 3D Engine (even is Unity is not that bad in some areas)
- For zone based games , casual, platform , or any little game genre A8 is simply perfect


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Now what A8 really need :
- Complete terrain editor
- Vegetation management
- why not someone porting raycast to it
- Visual shader library like Unity, one click to apply a shader and a panel to choose textures
- UI editor
- Complete particle editor and optimised particle system
- Decal tool (you choose the texture and place the decal where you want in the level : trees precalculated shadows, any decals on walls or floor or anywhere to make some variation )
- Some as good materials base to start a game as Esenthel or Unity :

I target casual and cartoon style so i really don't need big engine features, A8 fits perfectly for me and projects i have in mind

In fact like i said a lot, target some game , begin it, than choose the engine depênding on tools and features you really need !

I said performance of Unity is better because an Esenthel user, a former Unity user did engine comparisons with exactly the same level designs in this year. But in spite of the slower fps he moved to Esenthel, because had a lot of trouble with Unity (unsolved engine bugs etc.)

And Esenthel seems to be faster than Neoaxis due to my experiences - but did not make exact measurements...

For making lot of small (commercial) projects 3DGS A8 is much better because in Lite-C scripting can be done very effectively.

But Esenthel offers a lot of good things: no limited graphics features if you use free or cheaper editions (only no access to some source codes what you maybe don't need at all), the all-in-one editor, and its good terrain handling, which is important for me. By the way I don't really need an editor because I'm having my own one but no time to complete it...

So I'm testing it beside using 3DGS as a possible alternative tool, but its usage is really different of 3dgs.

...and one more thing: there are the same building models in Esenthel demos what I use in my editor, from turbosquid

Cool !
Do you have used your own animated models or some baught in some site to use with Esenthel ?

What i really like is the all in one editor :



(A8 should really take example sometimes)

I'm mainly just playing with tutorials, and world editor (height-map import etc.).

But the modelling workflow seems to be fine too:
-support bvh motion capture skeletal animations directly! (lot of such a files are freely available, via Fragmotion they can be used in MED too)
-support dae, fbx, ms3d and x for animated characters directly!

as a proof, one minute ago I drag&drop a milkshape model with skeletal animation (converted from Medieval Total War 2, so not a simple one), and works perfectly. (The same I use in 3dgs for testing.) Vertical bones appears wrongly, but works fine (the developer said in the forum in similar cases that it can happen but always must work.)

This morning i came back to A8 engine : deception on workflow !
Well i just wanted to have a model with normal map on a model.
I had to read and loose ten minutes searching for the right piece of code on the manual and forum to simply apply a shader.Even by chossing the materail normal map shader on Wed Menu didn't work ??

Esenthel is lot more ahead with it's model editor where you can just choose your shader (normal map, specular, glow etc ...) and apply it to a model without coding !
And at any time you can switch the world editor
A8 is broken in that side.

So i'll go for a test on Esenthel now for that special game i plan now; less arcade, more old RPG style !

Playing with terrain editor :


What is great is that you can paint multitextures directly and also paint colors or lightmap above them, this is great to make lot more variations on terrain.
Decals on terrain are great also.

The bad point is that i tried to import some FBX model on Esenthem, opened world editor than used the mesh panel but no way, i didn't understood how to do ?
It is really possible to import our own models ?

in world editor you must be in object mode. maybe the world editor supports directly only .dae? but if you import it first to model editor it saves automatically in own format .mesh