   Game Engine.
  Hi all. I've been programming for some years and developing games for some years. My team and I have receantly decided that we would like to start in on a full time stand alone "game". We were looking at game engines and besides being really costly and hevaly license restricted as far as "Mod teams" we were limited to the new Epic UDK. My question is were do I start? As far as programming goes the UDK has it's own programming language.  Anoter problem I face is that it says you can create stand alone programs but from what I make of it all I seem to be able to do is make UT3. How hard would it be possible to create your own game engine? Also Were would I start to go about this task?Thanks for the help!   
Quote:My question is were do I start?Gathering information and making decisions.Quote:How hard would it be possible to create your own game engine?These commercial game engines are made by large experienced teams of programmers working full time for years. Replicating one requires comparable investments and risk undertaking. Do you consider that "hard"?Quote:Also Were would I start to go about this task?Acquiring technical competence (hiring).Your post has contradictory elements. You indicate that you have been programming for years and developing games for years, yet your questions are elementary. You ask about the difficulty in creating a game engine, yet with some years of experience, you should be able to gauge the complexity of a commercial game engine (better than in this question).You have a team, yet you need to post on a beginners forum. We might be able to give you better advice, but what really is your level of experience? What really is your situation?   ;  I'm sorry it's late and I have had 3 hours of sleep in two days. I have been programming in C++ now for 10 years. I have a team all with about the same experince as me in there dedicated fields. As a team we have made mods, maps, guns you name it foe a few leading games such as Half Life and Half Life 2. We have decided we would like a bigger peice of the action being an actual working stand alone game. From what I have seen you need to have a game engine as a foundation. After looking at may game engines (Cryengine, Unreal Engine, etc) we have found that all of these companys offer there full engines with ehough money. We don't have this moenry at hand so the only comapny that would offer us a "full" copy of there engine is Epic. Normally when you pay for a develolper lincese of epic you get all of the engines source files in there native code being C++. Because we are using the lower level license we have to use the UDk which has it's own language called unreal Script which I have found to suck. What my question was ment to be was: Can an engine this size be built by one person given enough time? If so how would one go about this?   ;  There are plenty of free engines out there.http://www.devmaster.net/engines/ has a list of free and commercial engines. Look at them first.UDK (and I'm guessing here, but it seems that way) defaults the camera where your character is so all you can make is "UT3" in that sense, but if you look up tutorials you should be able to move the camera to behind your character and so forth... Same with probably all the other 3d pre-built engines too.   ;Quote:From what I have seen you need to have a game engine as a foundation.You don't, but using a game engine reduces the work you have to do. It's undesirable as engineers to rework and reinvent. Using an existing game engine allows you to focus your resources on actually building the game.Quote:We don't have this moenry at hand so the only comapny that would offer us a "full" copy of there engine is Epic.Understand that these engines are targetted at serious game development outfits, with large full time teams and huge many million dollar budgets making a AAA game.Quote:Can an engine this size be built by one person given enough time?Given enough time? The amount of time is much longer than your lifetime. In other words, no. Unless you have a full time development outfit with large talented programmer team working for years, with business plan and continuous funding, you are not making a competitive AAA game engine.That said, your sights seem to be a bit high. Having 10 years of experience, including that of making mods, you certainly grasp the level of effort it takes to do what you do now. Before investing money, have you tried using what is freely available, to make something of smaller quality? Take OGRE, the 3D rendering engine, and create a game with that. There have been commercial games done with that. Or another engine. Or use SDL and create a game with that. Or SFML. Have you considered this route?If you don't have experience making more than mods, making a large, complex game with significant upfront investments is a big gamble. Instead, settle for making a smaller game that competes on the same technical level as indies.   ;  I have looked into ogre but I have not checked out the rest. I will do that thanks!   