Engine for 3D platform game

[Array]

well...you can allways use an FPS engine and tweak the character/camera physics to suit your needs. i really havent seen any engines specifically designed for platformers though.

[pensart]

Any tips on those fps engines?
I would like to use lw btw, could use max but i love lw's modeler...
Anyway would be great i own and know them both.

[PNelson]

All three of the major FPS engines now have LightWave support. Some have better support than others..

1. Serious Sam - Model/Animation Support
2. Unreal - Model/Animation Support
3. Doom3 - Model Support (ID is doing all modeling in LW)

Good luck!

Philip Nelson
NewTek
Director of Worldwide Sales

[pensart]

I already found some extra folks who will help me out in realising the project

already have
- Concept artist ( very good one )
- level designer
- and myself at the moment for the main models and props

If anyone is interested in programming the game on freelance basis it would be appreciated. please dont hasitade to contact me. please keep in mind that it has to be a platform game type game. since the market is overflow by first person shoot em ups.

ASAP when we have a storyboard and some nice character sketches etc... we will contact some possible investors.

It's looking good, so far.

[pensart]

Hi philip,

What engine would u prefer to use ?
- unreal
- serious sam ?
If u dont like to post it on the forum you could always send me a private mail

Greetz

[smrdasmrad]

you gonna by engine just for making platform games ? and considering quake3 or unreal ? isn't that wasting money ? if you buy quake3 engine or unreal you'll have to spend a lots of time to examine whole engine (you have to count on at least 3-4 months to be completely familiar with the code) just to make something that is much simpler than quake game - i suggest you to find an opengl or d3d programmer which will do the job. making classic 'mario' engine will take 3-4 months of work, exactly as much time as you'll need to examine quake or unreal or whichever engine you'll purchase. if it's so hard to find a programmer - cool - i'll make a specific engine for 'mario' game type. contact me over the mail to discuss this privately if you are interested.

[pensart]

Hi there smrdasmrad,

pfiew, dificult name ;)
No i would not even think on using the engine for a platform game, but when i >dont< find a good programmer >then< i would settle for a first person shoot em up.
I would be glad to contact u by mail smr.. you here from me in the upcoming week.

Greetz and thanks for the reply

[smrdasmrad]

ok.

[beaker]

>>you gonna by engine just for making platform games ? and considering quake3 or unreal ? isn't that wasting money ?

Remember that with the purchase of those engines you also get all the the engine for every single platform. So theoretically you could make a version for Windows, Mac, Dreamcast, PS2, Gamecube, etc... much easier than programming all of them yourselves. Also you get the huge community of editing tools/plugins for all the popular 3d apps that allready exist out there. Alot of the bug hunting has allready been done for you too. When you program from scratch, you are going to have alot more fixing of bugs than an allready existing product.

[smrdasmrad]

it depends on what you want do develop. if your plans are budget games (mario clones etc.) you don't need quake3 or unreal engine to do that. i doubt that all those budget games are made with some of popular engines.

[pensart]

Beaker has a point, its cool to have those versions in one go but those engines are still not usefull for making (3d) platform games. Have u ever seen Maximo on playstation II. Well that's the kind of game i want to work on.

smrdasmrad, Ive tested the 2 games at cgssoftware, NICE work !!
very nice. We are making progress in essembling a good team for the development. Ones we have some concept art on paper i will contact u to see if u are still interested.

ps smrdasmrad, the games are they programmed in c++ or some basic or other? just currious.

[smrdasmrad]

ok - i'm interested.

[Tinny_McFinny]

I use 3d Gamestudio A5 and have found it to be really easy to use. You can check it out at www.conitec.com. It uses the C programming language which is pretty easy to learn and it can be used to make any kind of game you want.

If you want the professional package, you can get a pirate on Kazaa. That way it won't cost you a thing.



P.S. This is my first post so, Hello Everyone!
:beer:

[PNelson]

Originally posted by pensart
Hi philip,

What engine would u prefer to use ?
- unreal
- serious sam ?
If u dont like to post it on the forum you could always send me a private mail

Greetz

Pensart,

All of the major game engines have their pros and cons.

If you have high budgets go for Unreal or Quake3

But you won't find a better value than the Serious Sam Engine.. Has a ton of bells a whistles, directly supports LightWave Models/Animation (as well as other popular file formats) and won't break the bank...

Plus the guys at Croteam (creators of Serious Sam) are AWESOME to work with. They usually bend over backwards to help game companies that license their engine..

Hope this helps..

see ya,
Philip Nelson

[pensart]

thanks for the reply philip

[scribble]

If you are asking for freelance artists, and programmers, does that mean you are thinking of releasing this game for free?
If you are, couldn't you just release it as a mod for UT2k3 or something? Im not sure if you can alter the physics and such without changing the code, but you can change game speed and gravity ... so I guess that is the basic physics of it. I also saw a mod for UT2k3 where you could play from a side view.
Anyway.. Maybe you can just make a mod, who knows.
Have fun anyway! :D

Oh htere is also www.auran.com/jet/ You can buy a non commercial release if you don't plan to sell it for $200 AUD (Australian Dollars) But if you plan to sell it, maybe it is better to write your own engine. :)

[pensart]

We are working on the concept and some animation test.
Then we wil look for a investor.
And i think i go with the proposal from smrdasmrad.
If he's still interested at that time.

Greetz,
Pensart

[Boone]

Re: Pensart.

Well, I've been making a few 2D engines of my own for a while using Visual C++ & DirectX7.

Personnally I think you should jump on board the Dark BASIC PRO bandwagon...

www.darkbasic.com

...its got a great community and is easy to program. Will suit you just nice!:thumbsup:

[pensart]

thanks for the reply boone,

But i have no interests in programming.
I'm just looking for some co workers.
U mentioned making some 2d engines do u have some eyecandy?

Greetz,

[Boone]

Re: Pensart.

I've made my own 2D-engine, but most 2D games are made using a 3D-engine. Strange but true.

DirectX once had a 2D component called "DirectDraw", but its been merged with "Direct3D"...so I now have to learn that!

[Yoshua]

I highly recomend using Macromedia Director (shockwave). Anyways the language is fairly easy to learn.

Ive made my own Level Editor in it and Mario Side Scroller test demo, check it out here.

Also check out http://www.nonoche.com he has a great article on Side Scroller games.

http://members.coolcats.net.au/genesis/Temp/Mario02.htm

This is just a test to show my Side Scroller Engine, Im actually making my own game :).

Also use the Left & Right Keys to move, Up to jump and hold Shift to fast run and do bigger jumps.

Thanks

[Vahl]

I'm also currently trying to develop my own platform game, I already did an adventur game in real-time 3d using shockwave3d, tis good, easy to gode, but really looking awful

I'd go for the unreal engine, ut2003 /u2 have some really awesome features and a very easy to use shipped level/code editor (all in one).

[peanuckle]

The Torque Engine is really cheap to license and is really good. Goto Garagegames.com and look it up.

pea~

[ewerybody]

Heard of the NebulaDevice so far?!? Its an open source 3D engine developed in Berlin by RadonLabs (http://www.radonlabs.de). Its available on sourceforge.net (http://nebuladevice.sourceforge.net). Its completely free and now (Nebula2) capable of DirectX9 (u know.. all the new shader stuff, specular highlights, hardware shadows, normalmaps...):thumbsup:

Only Problem: You got to be a programmer to deal with it. There is no RadonLabs-release of Nebula2 out yet. Only the code is downloadable and compilable form sourceforge. But Nebula1 (dx7) has gat a installable tekdemo-version. For that style like eXtinction it whould be enough.

But smrdasmrad ... hmm maybe you should contact him and his pal. He already did just what you planed to do....

[bantza]

If you don't need new technology and product is not going to be commercial, then you could use quake2 or alien vs predator engines.
Also crystalspace (crystalspace.sourceforge.net) could be a choice, you can make commercial product with this engine with some restrictions, see faq for more info.

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