So after weeks of research I still cannot make up my mind as to which Game Engine to use, so here I am.
My question is which Game Engine will give me maximum productivity seeing that I:
Want to program in C++, Java, or a Scripting Language
Want to deploy the game first to the iPad, then other mobile devices if possible
Want to make a 2D game
Do not need physics
Don't have money [ Yes sad truth :'( ]
Want to make a game quickly and don't care much about the inner workings of the Engine
Want a Tile Based / Multiplayer / Turn Based Action Game
Don't have a Mac or XCode
Cross-Platform for Mobile Devices
I am not looking for a subjective answer I want to know which Game Engine allows me to do this or be closest to being able to do it.
Try Gideros Studio. It's free, has an IDE, runs on Windows, has tilemap support and cross-platform (iOS & Android). I've gone through your requirements and the only thing you might consider is that Gideros Studio uses Lua, a simple language which is powerful enough to be in thousands of mobile and desktop games today.
Disclaimer: I personally know the founder of Gideros Mobile.
You're overthinking this!
How do I know?
… after weeks of research ...
Want to make a game quickly ...
The only real requirements from your list are:
must be free
must run on Windows
(ideally) tilemap support
All the other points are mostly irrelevant. You want to develop an iPad game, then limit your search to the few available engines which allow development of iOS apps on Windows. Here's for hoping one of them is free, I would be surprised. Corona SDK might fit your bill besides not being free. So maybe use that (you can use it for free but not publish), then make a game quickly, and stop thinking about which engine is the best.
In other words, the time it took you to research all the engines was the time it took someone else to create and publish a game. You can always switch engines for your next project if you want to, but unless you have some experience picking an engine and knowing what's important even thinking about other engines is pretty much a waste of time.
Related
I'm quite confused.
I want to develop a 3D game app. I have Unreal engine or Unity to choose from.
Both of them are coded in C++.
Where I have to use objective c that is the main language for iOS?
Can I do the app totally in the game engine Unity/UDK, coded there and then send it to the app store without any programing in objective c and straight from the game engine without using Xcode?
I really hope that the 6 month of full immersion in objective C/xcode were a waist of time.
Sorry if this question is very low level
Thank you
Regards
CL
If you are looking into programming for iOS... Yes you will need to know Objective-C (as it is the main language) and Xcode.
If you are looking to develop a 3D game, start looking into OpenGL ES.
You can't just write a game for Unreal/Unity and send it to the app store... doesn't exactly work that way.
With Unity3D, it is not C++ it is C#
Both are great engines, but if you are new to this, suggest going with Unity3D. Its easier to learn, with tons of free or cheap, easily accessible scripts and art.
and yes you can create the whole game in-Unity-engine, submit to apple and have it Live to the world (without knowing or needing any objective C)
You can also upload it to the app store submission with only a few setup steps.
You will need to download and install XCODE, but you don't need to learn any XCODE programming or project setup as unity does it all for you.
You won't need to learn OGL, or shader language (Unity comes with a suite of free, optimized mobile shaders) though it is fun to learn how to make your own later on.
Any native (objective C) stuff you might need, you can all do just by buying cheap plugins for unity that others have written. (usually in the $20 -$50) range.
You will need.. an apple developer account $100 a year.
Unity for iOS... basic or pro version.
a Mac, or a Hackintosh on a PC (mac mini is the easiest / compromise price route to go)
an iOS device would also help. (suggest getting several different ones for testing, or asking friends)
You could also do Droid instead of iOS. You dont need a mac then. But iOS apps make most of the money. something like 70% iOS 30% droid.
have fun!
You will have to create an Objective-C wrapper.
This is a good start point.
TECH TALK: BRIDGING UNITY AND THE IOS SDK
I've been working in C++ in embedded environments for a number of years, developing navigation applications. There is a gaming company in my hometown that I like the look of, but I don't have game development experience. You could consider a navigation app as a type of game, depending on who you are running from.
My question is, what steps should I take to enter the industry? Is it a bad idea to enter the industry at this stage (I'm 30)?
Being 30 doesn't really matter, you can enter the games industry at any age assuming you have the drive and ability.
Start reading about gaming topics, and game development websites (gamedev, gamasutra etc.)
Start writing games. Clones of games you like, your own original ideas, tech demos, anything that you can point to and say "I wrote that, and along the way I learned these things, and solved these problems."
If there is a specific area of interest to you, AI, Rendering, Frontend, Tools & Pipelines, Audio, focus on building game/demo/sample projects that challenge you in that area. "Yeah, I've done that" sounds a lot better in an interview than "yeah I've heard of that".
Get to know people in the industry if you can, through online forums, friends of friends, etc... One good contact can do more for your chances than weeks of demo coding or months of sending resumes out. Game companies may have open houses or job fairs.
The "entry level" jobs in game development are likely to be Frontend or Tools. If you've done navigation apps, sounds like that might be a decent fit for you. If that has included more low level work and optimization on embedded platforms, you might also look at Systems roles.
I'd suggest you start trying to write some games in your spare time. Having some demos is always a good start when you go to an interview and it'll give you some insights into what your job is going to be.
Gamedev.net has an excellent set of tutorials to work through to get a grip of a lot of game-coding concepts.
Do they have any job offerings? If so, look at what they ask for in the CV and start educating yourself in those concepts / technologies.
Contacting them and asking if they have any jobs for an excellent software engineer can't hurt either :)
I see you already accepted an answer, but I'll throw in my two cents:
If the company does console (e.g. Xbox360, PS3) or handheld (e.g. DS, iPhone) games, you should definitely emphasize the embedded aspect of your resume. A few anecdotes about how you optimized the memory layout of a class, or sped up some code by taking advantage of an obscure feature of the chipset will show that you can think like a console programmer. Also, if you did any sort of AI for the navigation apps (e.g. A*, Djikstra), it's good to mention that.
A few people recommended writing games - that's not a bad long term plan if you know you want to get into the industry, but I don't think you should let that stop you from applying to this particular company in the meantime. However you should definitely pick up a copy of one of their recent games, play it for a few hours over the weekend, and be able to say what you liked about it.
As for websites, I second the Gamasutra recommendation, along with Kotaku.
Good luck!
"game industry" is a broad question. There are:
AI programming
Graphic programming.
Sound programming.
Tool programming.
Scripting.
Physics programming.
Network programming.
You probably already can deal with #7, #5 and #4.
As for the rest - mostly it is a dealing with some kind of API, plus you need a very good understanding of 3D math (unless you make 2D game, that is).
For 3d math I cannot help you. I picked info in various non-english sources, and most of them aren't available anymore. However, I think this resource might contain info of interest.
For general 3d graphic info you need to study DirectX SDK and NVidia SDKs (both DirectX and OpenGL), plus there are OpenGL books you HAVE to read:
1. Francis s Hill, "Computer Graphics using OpenGL".
2. OpenGL programming guide aka "Red Book"
3. OpenGL shading language (aka "Orange Book")
4. And you might want to take a look at OpenGL reference manucal ("Blue Book")
I'm talking about OpenGL because while it doesn't offer same level of control for hardware resources, it is easier to get started with than DirectX, and available on larger selection of platforms and have a same power as DirectX. Plus GLSL isn't that different from HLSL (except that GLSL doesn't have remnants of assembly shader programming like HLSL), close enough to C++, so it is relatively easy to get started.
One important thing - if you seriously want to deal with 3D, you have to be able to easily imagine 3d operations in your mind. I.e. how to rotate object, scale object, move object, what matrix means, what is reflection vectors, how to cut polygon with planes, how to find intersection of two meshes, etc, and you should have at least basic understanding of more complex thing like boolean operations on polygonal meshes. I have no idea how to develop this skill (it is very close to "mechanical drawing"), but you'll get a lot of difficulties without it.
Just putting "experienced C++ dev" on your CV will probably get you in the door. The (UK at least) games industry is dominated by graduates and inexperienced programmers - the older ones either burn out or get promoted into management.
A lot of games programming is just programming - the skills are entirely transferable. And your navigation software experience probably puts you in for an AI-related role.
If someone with your background applied to me, I'd certainly give them an interview.
Well I started at 16 with (paid) game development. Search for jobs on websites. Make your own low-budget games and then publish them in a way or another.
If you are good people will search for you, otherwise you have to struggle a bit.
So I've been learning C++ and SDL to make some basic 2d games. I want to create a game sort of like World of Warcraft but a 2D version. I want it to be on-line and use a database or something to start data like amount of Gold, HP, etc. I was wondering though, if I do this in SDL, would it still work on-line or would the user have to download SDL themselves to play?
I just want a game like this but be able to play it with some friends, just for learning purposes you know. I was also looking at DirectX because everyone has that on windows pretty much. Anyways much help is appreciated, thanks!
No offense, but an RPG is definately the last thing a new programmer should attempt to create. They are the most time, resource, and skill intensive style of game one could possibly try to create. I speak from experience here and can say that RPGs are huge time sinks, even for experienced game studios. At best, you might get a basic map working before you run out of time and patience.
If you want a game you can play with your friends, why not multiplayer tic-tac-toe or even artillery or something similiar. You'll have more success and may actually have something to show your friends when you are done.
You'll probably need to include SDL's runtime library for the game to run on other computers. This will apply no matter what library you use.
For the game itself some libraries are installed in Windows, but in order to achieve other functionality (online gameplay, gampad, etc)you must tell the user to install the other libraries.
If you use SDL, you would be using it for a local graphical client that the user would either download or install. For that, you don't need to have the user download the SDL library separateoly – you can simply put the SDL runtime DLL in the same directory as your executable and package both into the client installer. Of course, you must abide by the GNU LGPL requirements if you do this; the SDL website has details.
As far as the online piece, I'm not sure what you have in mind. I'm guessing either you'll have clients talking directly to each other in some sort of peer-to-peer fashion, or you'll have an back-end server run by you that handles the common game mechanics. I don't think you'll find SDL of much help in either case. But if you go with the back-end server, you can use whatever libraries you like for that server without impact on the user, since the user will only ever deal with the client.
For flat 2D, probably the easiest approach is to use a web interface not SDL. Web browsers are common on Macs and Linux, too, and you might even be able to support smartphones.
Still, you would have to learn how to split work between the clients and the central server. This is not always trivial. Obviously, stuff like # of gold coins would be on the server. Keyboard input is accepted first on the client. But the direction in which your toon is looking? Should the server know that?
I'm thinking of developing a game-like piece of software. It will probably require a bit of OpenGL, MIDI input, and math. I'd like to eventually sell the software, so it needs to be installable on PCs with different OSes. And I don't want to have to spend a lot of time on memory management and other low-level details.
My question is this: what language/framework would you use for such software?
You have got a lot of options my friend, here are just a few which allow you to use a high level language to develop.
Torque 3D http://www.garagegames.com/
I've used this a bit and can tell you its a pretty good solution. You can build you game logic in their TorqueScript. Using it also gets you the option to release on pretty much every major platform including consoles and the browser. The only snag is it does cost money, but is very affordable for indies.
Panda3d http://www.panda3d.org/
This a completely free open source engine. I provides a lot of functionality and also allows you to program your game logic in python. The platforms it supports is Linux/Mac/PC.
Mono http://mono-project.com/Main_Page
I have not played around with this too much, and am not sure how good their 3d is (it isn't known for it anyway). It does allow you to program in a number of high level languages (C# and python to name a few). It also allows you to deploy to a number of platforms including embeded devices and the iphone (MonoTouch).
I would check these out and see if any are a fit for your situation. If none are then there are a large number of other options out there.
I think the closest thing to what you're after is Java. It has decent support for OpenGL(JOGL) and a good standard library that works on most systems.
Despite what some people will tell you, Java isn't as fast as C, and this can rear it's head doubly so in a game. It is cross platform though, and you don't have to bother with all that tiresome memory-management.
I would use C# for scripting & the Unity 3D Engine. http://unity3d.com/
Unity has a reasonable licensing fee but it's also free to download and get started. Check the details for when a licensing fee is payable.
Anyways, Unity3D takes care of:
3D rendering
Memory management
Input
Audio & Video
Networking
Asset pipelines
Scripting through the Mono CLR (ie, you can use C#)
And has a great level/world editor
If you are willing to trade raw speed for ease of use then this is for you. We started a project intending to use Unity. Our project needed greater customization than we could get from the engine. We wanted source code and to run at 60fps so we upgraded. But I would still recommend it as a solid multi-platform multi-OS solution.
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I want to start this as a hobby in developing a desktop game. I have found several engines, but I am not sure whether it does the initial job I am looking at.
Initially I want to do the following:
Create a figure (avatar), and let the user dress the avatar
Load the avatar in the game
In later stages, I want to develop this as a multi-player game.
What should I do?
I also recommend Ogre. Ogre can do this, it provides everything needed in regards of mesh and animation support, but not as a drop-in solution. You have to write lots of code for this to be done.
For our project we implemented something like you do. The main character and any other character can be dressed with different weapons and armor and the visuals of the character avatar change accordingly.
As a start hint for how to go about this: In your modeling tool (Blender, Maya, 3ds max, etc.) you model your avatar and all its clothes you need and rig them to the same skeleton. Then export everything individually to Ogre's mesh format.
At runtime you can then attach the clothing meshes the user chooses to the skeleton instance so that they together form the avatar. This is not hard to do via Ogre-API, but for even easier access to this you can use MeshMagick Ogre extension's meshmerge tool. It has been developed for exactly this purpose.
If you want to change other characteristics like facial features, this is possible too, as Ogre supports vertex pose animations out of the box, so you can prepare pathes for certain characteristics of the face and let the user change the face by sliders or somthing like this. (e.g like in Oblivion)
One thing to be aware regarding Ogre: It is a 3d graphics engine, not a game engine. So you can draw stuff to the screen with it and animate and light and in any way change the visuals, but it doesn't do input or physics or sound. For this you have to use other libs and integrate them. Several pre-bundled game engines based on Ogre are available though.
If you are good with C++ you should use Ogre, it's the best open-source engine, continuously been updated by it's creators, with a lot of tutorials and a very helpful community.
http://www.ogre3d.org/
It's more of a GFX engine, but it has all the prerequisites you desire.
Good luck!
No engine is likely to do this for you. What they do is generally allow you to load and render 3d models. But combining them, the way you'd need to do to "dress them" is up to you. And creating them, or letting the user do so, is ultimately up to you. The engine might offer a number of tools to make the task easier (for example, rendering the model while the user is designing it), but a game engine is not a magic "make a game" box where you just have to press a button, and your custom game comes out.
A couple of people have said Ogre3D, I'll offer up Irrlicht as an alternative.
You might want to take a look at http://www.crystalspace3d.org/ - I have to admit it was more of an exploratory matter for me, but it seemed like a pretty nice engine - with physics and scripting included. They have an project which shows the avatar walking in the spacestation-like building with very smooth camera effects.
OTOH: depending on how far you want to push this, you might find yourself recreating the SecondLife(tm)-like kind of environment. If that's a fair assumption, then you might take a look at OpenSimulator and the associated opensource viewer projects and see if this may be of interest to you - and work there with the existing team to develop the code further, rather than working on your own.
If you good with C++, I suggest the C4 Engine. From my experiences, existing game engines are either too rigid or just nothing more than a collection of libraries.
Ogre is a good way to go if you are just interested in getting something to show. As some have already stated here, Ogre is a rendering engine. There are lots of add-ons and functions to complete common tasks like Audio, Input and whatnot. This is perfectly fine if your just aiming at playing around or creating a prototype.
Should you want to start a long-term project that will be developed over a longer period of time (which would be pretty likely considering you probably being the only developer and games being complex applications), you should really start thinking about what it is that you want to do. Then, based on you're goals, look for several engines that can tackle your needs (there's always some API to accomplish XYZ). Then it's up to you how you manage your game and where you use existing libraries - you'd basically tie up your own engine according to your needs.
It get's a bit more difficult if you start looking for a real game engine in terms of "engine for all my game-dev needs". Check out the nice list of 3d game engines at devmasters (http://www.devmaster.net/engines/), you'll find lots of alpha status game engines trying to accomplish this, although you should keep in mind that support and documentation usually isn't first class in those cases.
I personally never used it, but I evaluated the open source engine Delta3D (delta3d.org) for my project and was impressed by it's cool architecture. It encapsulates a whole bunch of other quality open source frameworks for stuff like graphics (OpenSceneGraph: openscenegraph.org) or physics (ODE: ode.org). That's probably as close as you'll get to a free and flexible game engine as far as I know. It was developed at an air force university, and due to it's academic background comes with lots of detailed documentation.
If you're good with C++ you can write your own engine :P
Ogre is the best of Irrlicht and Crystalspace, and the reasoning behind that is simple - Ogre has actually been used in a production pipeline by the game industry. It actually has a lot of weight behind it, whereas Irrlicht and Crystalspace are more or less applications that don't do a lot out of the box. Crystalspace however has a branch project that implements a game engine right into Blender 3d allowing the artist to play the role of programmer without leaving the actual software.
I'm not very big on Irrlicht - there is a lot of sneakiness behind its motives. For an open source project it branches out into many different derivatives that are either complete game engines or WYSWYG editors and they find ways to lock you into paying somehow.
Ogre excels at being a graphics engine rather than a library, and it has to be compiled to individual needs. The tradeoff is you can implement Ogre into any design work flow or even create a new one. Where it takes the load off your shoulders is having to write graphics code of any kind thus making it a very slick rapid prototyping engine in its basic form.
One engine that you could try is the Torque 3D game engine www.garagegames.com which, although not being freeware, allows for out of the box usability. While the functionality that you seek in terms of being able to fully customise the character is not instantly available within the engine, if you are willing to create the models yourself it should not be too hard to add them into the game and the utilise the game engine to change the 'skins' of the avatar. One thing that I feel will set this apart from the other engines is the fact that it comes with networking functionality pre-installed (from what you have described in your question I am guessing that you are attempting to either make an RTS or MMO, and if so I wish you good luck).
While it may seem strange that the engine is based around a shooting game, there are guides witin the Torque forums that allow you to add the coding for sword based combat and other things associated with a fantasy based game (if, that is, what you are planing on making).
But anyway... good luck with your project. If you are attempting what I think you are attempting it is no easy feat. But I'm sure you know what you are doing =)
Hope this helped
If you are interested in using the Irrlicht 3D engine, you can find a number of tutorials that step you through the process of creating simple 3D applications here.
I also suggest Irrlicht. It's easier to begin with, but it does not have half of the Ogre3D support though.