   Need help picking a 3D game engine
  The short:I want a game engine that is free (as in freedom of speech). I want something simple, intuitive, yet powerful and diverse. I'm more interested in increasing my efficiency than in using something feature rich. Something that will decide for me the most efficient collision detection algorithm to use in a given circumstance. Something that won't let me accidentally multi-thread OpenGL. Stuff like that.The not so short:I'm an amateur hobbyist with an exceptional understanding of Java/C++ and a functional understanding of everything else. I taught myself OpenGL and collision detection about 3 years ago. I'm also a LINUX junkie.I mainly give myself simple goals to force myself to learn how to do new things. You could say that I have developed tools for simple mini-game implementations for relatively no purpose other than training. As my personal RGE (retarded game engine) evolves, I have finally come to terms with the fact that it is completely pointless for me to be reinventing the wheel. I can study game elements and programming techniques all I want, but it's all pointless when there are huge libraries out there that do it all already.I need advice on choosing a free (as in freedom of speech) 3D game library. I've been looking primarily at the following four:Ogre3D - Philosophy is wonderful and the community is huge, but I'd like to be forced to use a standardized approach to game logic and entity hierarchy. Ogre3D is only as much a game engine as all the libraries you bring into it. I'm having trouble just picking a starting point, so it seems a bit more complicated than I would like. I understand the value of using the right tools for the job, but I don't have a clue what my job is going to be, I want a toolbox that can handle just about everything a single programmer could feasible accomplish without too many hackjobs. I'm sure there are more tutorials/is more support for anything in Ogre3D though.JMonkeyEngine - I really like how content assistance works with Java and Eclipse is my IDE of choice. It also uses jBullet for physics, which is nice. I'm also already intimately familiar with LWJGL. jME is just a bit... mm... smallish community-wise and documentation isn't very good (then again, content assistance pretty much writes everything for you).Crystal Space - ??? CEL actually sounds pretty nice, but will probably require too much work for me to make something simple. I don't want to work.... I want it to be eeeaaasy. CELStart looks easy- but why the hell would I want to use XML to make a game? No way.Irrlicht - ??? It kind of looks nice.... kind of ghetto.What other options are there? What is easy to use? I don't need anything fancy... or too fancy rather. I want something simple, intuitive, yet powerful and diverse. Something that a nub could make asteroids with in a few hours but sexy enough for something Bushido Blade esque.   
  How about the Unreal engine?do a google search for UDK (Unreal Development Kit).It's free to use until you wish to commercialise your creation.At that point there are a variety of payment options.   ;  Panda3d   ;  Hmm... UDK isn't Freedom of Speech, so I won't use it. It's a matter of philosophical conviction. A righteous man can adhere both to his principles while pursuing great power and accomplishing great works.Panda3D doesn't look bad. Last I recalled ODE was inferior to Bullet, but that was like... 3 years ago (when I was studying detection...).How does Panda3D handle physics and is the community vivacious?As I'm looking through it I'm very satisfied, but I wonder if the appropriate combination of Ogre3D and packages designed for it might be just as good.   ;  You can replace ODE with Bullet in Panda3D. The community is quite small, the documentation so far is okay. I am making a small 2D-Shooter with it. Some things are straightforward and easy, others are not. This goes hand in hand with the documentation: The manual gives you a few basic steps. Then it is expected you go by yourself through all the examples and learn from them. Lots of information can (and should be) gathered from the forums.One more advantage of Panda3D: The web plugin allows you to play your games in a browser :)I still need to test and try out some things:- Frame Time for 3D scenes and games with physics and AI- Asset Pipeline- Level EditingThose things should work, as Panda3D was used to make several commercial games.So far I do not regret my choice, as I have basically the same requirements as you have ;-)The second engine on my list was python-ogre: The compilation on !Windows-system is okayish and you have access to all of Ogre's functionality. Oh, compilation time and space requirements is huuuuge. I have not used it much, as I have lots of different problems with running any of the python-ogre demos under Linux (or build problems or linker problems or ... problems). With Ogre you have some more mature tools and exporters, which might be an advantage (but see above).   ;Quote:Original post by spinsaneHmm... UDK isn't Freedom of Speechwhat? Do you mean open source?You are allowed to release any titles you create with UDK and only have to pay licensing if you start making a profit (I think it has to be over a couple thousand bucks too). It's as close as you can get to open without releasing a bunch of sensitive company information that could cause Epic irreparable financial harm.Are you looking for an IDE or source code?   ;  Not sure if this will fulfill your needs, I recently found an open source game engine,http://blendelf.comRight now it seems small, yet there is something... magical about it.Good luck with finding the right engine. Godspeed.ps. Let me know if there are any questions i might be able to answer them.   ;Quote:Original post by spinsaneThe short:I want a game engine that is free (as in freedom of speech). I want something simple, intuitive, yet powerful and diverse. I'm more interested in increasing my efficiency than in using something feature rich. Something that will decide for me the most efficient collision detection algorithm to use in a given circumstance. Something that won't let me accidentally multi-thread OpenGL. Stuff like that.The not so short:I'm an amateur hobbyist with an exceptional understanding of Java/C++ and a functional understanding of everything else. I taught myself OpenGL and collision detection about 3 years ago. I'm also a LINUX junkie.I mainly give myself simple goals to force myself to learn how to do new things. You could say that I have developed tools for simple mini-game implementations for relatively no purpose other than training. As my personal RGE (retarded game engine) evolves, I have finally come to terms with the fact that it is completely pointless for me to be reinventing the wheel. I can study game elements and programming techniques all I want, but it's all pointless when there are huge libraries out there that do it all already.I need advice on choosing a free (as in freedom of speech) 3D game library. I've been looking primarily at the following four:Ogre3D - Philosophy is wonderful and the community is huge, but I'd like to be forced to use a standardized approach to game logic and entity hierarchy. Ogre3D is only as much a game engine as all the libraries you bring into it. I'm having trouble just picking a starting point, so it seems a bit more complicated than I would like. I understand the value of using the right tools for the job, but I don't have a clue what my job is going to be, I want a toolbox that can handle just about everything a single programmer could feasible accomplish without too many hackjobs. I'm sure there are more tutorials/is more support for anything in Ogre3D though.JMonkeyEngine - I really like how content assistance works with Java and Eclipse is my IDE of choice. It also uses jBullet for physics, which is nice. I'm also already intimately familiar with LWJGL. jME is just a bit... mm... smallish community-wise and documentation isn't very good (then again, content assistance pretty much writes everything for you).Crystal Space - ??? CEL actually sounds pretty nice, but will probably require too much work for me to make something simple. I don't want to work.... I want it to be eeeaaasy. CELStart looks easy- but why the hell would I want to use XML to make a game? No way.Irrlicht - ??? It kind of looks nice.... kind of ghetto.What other options are there? What is easy to use? I don't need anything fancy... or too fancy rather. I want something simple, intuitive, yet powerful and diverse. Something that a nub could make asteroids with in a few hours but sexy enough for something Bushido Blade esque.In this neck of the woods ogre is the default recommendation. You might find others that have more integrated features you want but they all come with significant flaws, plus a few commercial games have been released on ogre which is imo a big plus in its favor. Crystal Space is seen as overly large and messy. The Unreal engine as I've heard it is geared toward FPS and is less intuitively structured than Ogre plus there is the matter of paying. Irrlicht might be more up your alley since it is not just a rendering engine and is simpler than Ogre but the community is smaller and the features not as mature. If you end up with Ogre keep in mind that a lot of the tutorials and pages are obsolete so you might have to spend some time in the forum or documentation especially when trying to get Ogre to interface with things like CEGUI.   ;  I would recommed Irrlicht. Its just like ogre only a 3dengine but it is way easier to extend and create the stuff you want with it. another big plus are the gui features that already come with irrlicht, its just simple and nice.For example i wanted to have a deferred renderer for irrlicht. i just wrote my own lightmanager and i was done pretty simple.   ;  I must say I had that feeling about Crystal.Quote:Original post by way2lazy2careQuote:Original post by spinsaneHmm... UDK isn't Freedom of Speechwhat? Do you mean open source?You are allowed to release any titles you create with UDK and only have to pay licensing if you start making a profit (I think it has to be over a couple thousand bucks too). It's as close as you can get to open without releasing a bunch of sensitive company information that could cause Epic irreparable financial harm.Are you looking for an IDE or source code?http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.htmlQuote:Not sure if this will fulfill your needs, I recently found an open source game engine,http://blendelf.comRight now it seems small, yet there is something... magical about it.Good luck with finding the right engine. Godspeed.ps. Let me know if there are any questions i might be able to answer them.Blendelf actually looks quite nice. My main caveat is that it seems to be structured more like an abstract game to be modded, rather than a set of developer tools. IE- the init.lua method is kind of a turn off. I understand that the integration of scripting languages is supposed to make things simpler, but I'm not interested in doing that at the moment. Sp py-ogre is also kind of NG for me.Quote:In this neck of the woods ogre is the default recommendation. You might find others that have more integrated features you want but they all come with significant flaws, plus a few commercial games have been released on ogre which is imo a big plus in its favor. Crystal Space is seen as overly large and messy. The Unreal engine as I've heard it is geared toward FPS and is less intuitively structured than Ogre plus there is the matter of paying. Irrlicht might be more up your alley since it is not just a rendering engine and is simpler than Ogre but the community is smaller and the features not as mature. If you end up with Ogre keep in mind that a lot of the tutorials and pages are obsolete so you might have to spend some time in the forum or documentation especially when trying to get Ogre to interface with things like CEGUI.That's my partial concern with ogre. By all means, it is totally unnecessary to have an engine that handles both game logic and rendering, but the idea of having all the elements in place for me is really what I'm looking for. A comprehensive package that is good to go out of the box with a short and easy method for getting started... now that I'm looking at ogre... I just don't want to deal with the extra work of getting it set up... which really makes me want to lean more toward JMonkeyEngine, since java does 90% of your work for you (I'm tired of inefficiency...). Irrlicht sounds nice, being easy- as you say... Ahh- Irrlicht has an up to date JNI binding called Bindenlicht. I will play with this.   