   Best engine for particular problem
  Hello,I am having a particular situation that I want to solveand I need your input on this because it is slightly outside my area of expertise.It is about a 3D game demo with the following particularities:-revolves around a historic location accurately modelled (stone architecture)-involves a multitude of players fighting realtime-is fully 3D, preferably OpenGL basedThe challenge is that I have only a vague idea what the number of users must be,the minimum hardware requirements, or the project's finance.My assumptions are:-the buildings will need to be modeled/textured from photographs / architectural plans-the demo must allow for at least 20 users to fight realtime, but perhaps even 1000-DirectX 8 and up compliant hardware and at least Pentium 3 /800, 256 MB RAM-Somewhere in the 10K USD (US Dollars)-We may want to merge the content into a VRML world at a later stageThe question is: What would be the best game engine to suit this?I mean, it must have a good level editor, to be very performant as concernsthe concurent users, and to be relatively cheap.Please give me some insight on how to approach this issue.Thank you.Tudor Tihan   
Quote:Hello,I am having a particular situation that I want to solveand I need your input on this because it is slightly outside my area of expertise.Could you elaborate on the 'particular situation'? What are you solving? Why are you solving it if it is not your expertise?Quote:It is about a 3D game demo with the following particularities:-revolves around a historic location accurately modelled (stone architecture)-involves a multitude of players fighting realtime-is fully 3D, preferably OpenGL basedCould you elaborate? Why does it need to be OpenGL? How big is a multitude?Quote:The challenge is that I have only a vague idea what the number of users must be,the minimum hardware requirements, or the project's finance.My assumptions are:-the buildings will need to be modeled/textured from photographs / architectural plans-the demo must allow for at least 20 users to fight realtime, but perhaps even 1000-DirectX 8 and up compliant hardware and at least Pentium 3 /800, 256 MB RAM-Somewhere in the 10K USD (US Dollars)-We may want to merge the content into a VRML world at a later stageWhy modeling from photographs? Scaling from 20 to a thousand has a huge impact; could you narrow it down?Why DirectX8 if it has to be OpenGL? What's the 10K USD for? (Is that your budget?)Quote:The question is: What would be the best game engine to suit this?I mean, it must have a good level editor, to be very performant as concernsthe concurent users, and to be relatively cheap.Please give me some insight on how to approach this issue.Thank you.Tudor TihanAs you can see I can't answer these questions if you are not more specific. Besides: some info on the capabilities of the development team and a timeline are also needed.Cheers;Quote:Original post by ernowQuote:Hello,I am having a particular situation that I want to solveand I need your input on this because it is slightly outside my area of expertise.Could you elaborate on the 'particular situation'? What are you solving? Why are you solving it if it is not your expertise?Quote:It is about a 3D game demo with the following particularities:-revolves around a historic location accurately modelled (stone architecture)-involves a multitude of players fighting realtime-is fully 3D, preferably OpenGL basedCould you elaborate? Why does it need to be OpenGL? How big is a multitude?Quote:The challenge is that I have only a vague idea what the number of users must be,the minimum hardware requirements, or the project's finance.My assumptions are:-the buildings will need to be modeled/textured from photographs / architectural plans-the demo must allow for at least 20 users to fight realtime, but perhaps even 1000-DirectX 8 and up compliant hardware and at least Pentium 3 /800, 256 MB RAM-Somewhere in the 10K USD (US Dollars)-We may want to merge the content into a VRML world at a later stageWhy modeling from photographs? Scaling from 20 to a thousand has a huge impact; could you narrow it down?Why DirectX8 if it has to be OpenGL? What's the 10K USD for? (Is that your budget?)Quote:The question is: What would be the best game engine to suit this?I mean, it must have a good level editor, to be very performant as concernsthe concurent users, and to be relatively cheap.Please give me some insight on how to approach this issue.Thank you.Tudor TihanAs you can see I can't answer these questions if you are not more specific. Besides: some info on the capabilities of the development team and a timeline are also needed.CheersOki, so lets describe the problem a little more.I want to make this game demo for a (doh) undecided client which I cannot contact directly, hence the very vague details.The problem is that the engine needs to scale upwards well,and I realize that it just may be impossible to make such a game (no MMOFPS to date, as far as I can tell). The idea is that the engine should use OpenGL but work on hardware in the DirectX 8.0 class and up. The 10K usd is what I am guessing the client may want to spend on the game demo. Photographs and architectural 2d plans is all we have about that historical place and the historical place need to be accurately portraied. And the last important feature is that the engine needs to have an easy to use level editor.   ;  have u looked here http://cg.cs.tu-berlin.de/~ki/engines.html(seems old though, perhaps u can find a newer similar list by searching)   ;  I recommend OGRE. http://www.ogre3d.org/There is no real level editor. You would have to make that yourself. I use OGRE for my hobbie development and love it. A little tuff to set up the enviroment but once it's running, it's nice.Any engine would do though. Torque might also be a nice choice for you. http://www.garagegames.com/Good luck   ;  I have looked into some engines like Torque or Ogre,but because I haven't actually worked with any of themand I don't really trust the marketing bs on the sites.Thats why I need some "inside" opinion.I like Torque's landscape and supossedly easy to build a world(1 hour),and I like the complexity of A6 engine.But I'm not convinced they work on heavy load or that their networkcan be plugged into a MMO server type.Any ideas on this?   ;  Have you considered using the Crystal Space Engine. Haven't actually had a chance to do much with it myself, but it looks pretty solid from what I've seen.Advantages:-Open Source (Free to Use)-Uses OpenGL-One of the older engines out there (Well developed)-Extendable / CustomizableNote that this is Mainly a 3d engine. I don't know what it has in terms of support for multi-player / online capability, but I know there are (Open-source) MMORPG projects that use Crystal space (Notably Plane-Scape), so you can get your 1000 player support from that.;  And very important: what are the skills of the people that will do the programming/designing?   ;  I am looking for an engine that does not need further developmentin order to provide the features I need. So, I guess I will be looking for a MMO engine, if any exist, even ouside FPS range. Suggestions?Also, it becomes clearer and clearer that I need a chatwith the client to fix at least some requirements.   ;  aha, so it's one of those "I've got a really good idea for a mmorpg, where can I download a program to make one?" posts.   