Game Engines!

[Vivi Hill]

I've been spending the last few weeks throwing around code for my own game engine. It was doing well, but eventually I realized that it's ultimately futile--by the time I implement enough features to make a good-looking game, it'll have been a year or so.

So I stopped work on my "jam" engine and checked out OGRE. It's quite neat--open source, lots of features, and it's in pure C++ (except resource loading and particle effects of course, but that's good) so I don't have to worry about clunky binaries slowing a game down.

Anyway my friend and I have been working towards perhaps developing a good fretsonfire-type game, in C++ (so it's not slowed down by python like FoF is) and supporting multiple instruments besides the guitar. We also might go the Performous route and add in a DDR-type thing but I think Stepmania has that genre covered, so probably not.

In any case the main idea is to go beyond the crappy '3d', 20FPS, jerky look of fretsonfire and develop a (open source, of course) polished guitar/rhythm game. Since I've just begun working with OGRE I don't have anything to show for it but I do have lots of exciting designs in my head (and I had a working prototype built on my Jam engine before I scrapped that).

[VoltySquirrel]

Keep at it brother, because this seems cool.

[Vivi Hill]

Yeah, obviously when I have *something* I'll post it. I suppose I can show some shots of what I had accomplished before moving to OGRE.

This one had a moving board, sound, basic collision detection for scoring, font support AND input (the midi part wasn't done at that point, it's just random colors). Ultimately I scrapped it as the engine was very sloppily built and would not be able to be used for anything else.


This version is very similar to the old one, but the core is rewritten a bit to be a little more flexible. Still quite tied down though.


These last two images are actually from the same binary file, using my Jam engine. It's actually a neat system in my opinion--you can load and unload 'contexts' as you wish. This first context is a 'cave game' my friend and I used that was supposed to be a randomly generated exploration game (for a game jam that we had only 6 hrs to complete). We didn't really get much done though. The guy just walks around and jumps around the map. Uses the Box2D physics engine.


This is my attempt to get the rock game into the Jam engine. It's at a similar state to the second picture--randomly generated blocks but no sound or input. Brand new thing it does is use display lists for the model rendering--really improved performance a whole lot.

Anyway I'm still quite proud of the Jam engine, unlike the two first ones, because it remains very flexible (as evidenced by the two completely different games it can run). I may integrate some core elements with my OGRE-based engine (OGRE mainly does graphics anyway), and even if I don't I had a lot of fun and learned a whole bunch.

As for progress with OGRE, I've managed to spawn a peg and animate it, also fiddle with lighting and particle effects (which look awesome). Other than that, still learning.

[Vivi Hill]

I'd like to point out that I consider the above pictures to be ugly and totally not up to my standards. One of the main reasons I'm moving to OGRE is because of the lack of antialiasing, cross-platformism, shadows, lighting, particles or other advanced topics my implementations have had. Ogre comes with some awesome samples that are quite inspiring (I've just snapped these):




Oh and don't mind my FPS, this is my crappy laptop, running on Linux no less.

[Nikki Wolf]

I like the look the Frets on Fire-esque game/engine/whatever. It has a retro look to it, and it seems like it's using voxels in the Build engine.

[Termz]

Me and a few dudes of mine decided to make a game of our own, we wanted to start off with the ogre engine til we realised we are utter crap at making 3d models. atm we're making a 2d game from scrap :>

[Vivi Hill]

I like the look the Frets on Fire-esque game/engine/whatever. It has a retro look to it, and it seems like it's using voxels in the Build engine.

You mean my engine? It's all done with OpenGL (very basic OpenGL, of course).

[Nikki Wolf]

Speaking of game engines (of course), has anyone seen the new additions to Unreal Engine 3? Tessellation looks amazing, thanks to DirectX 11.

[rawkies]

Speaking of game engines (of course), has anyone seen the new additions to Unreal Engine 3? Tessellation looks amazing, thanks to DirectX 11.

I have seen it. Simply superb. CryEngine 3 looks really great too, but the content of the game...not so much