Engine

[Brother None]

Hardly matters if it was. The people who know how to work with it are spread out, and I doubt it is a well-documented engine. People don't realize enough how big proper documentation and ease of us is for these engines. Is Obsidian's Onyx engine really a good candidate? That depends on whether or not they kept licensing it out in mind, made it usable for people not intimately familiar with it, and well-documented. I don't know if that's the case.

[Gizmo]

Is Obsidian's Onyx engine really a good candidate? That depends on whether or not they kept licensing it out in mind, made it usable for people not intimately familiar with it, and well-documented. I don't know if that's the case.

If Troika did actually complete the engine (does anyone know?), and if they did have documentation for it, and if any of them still had ownership of it. *That's an awful lot of "ifs".

That'd be a cool Kickstarter donation wouldn't it... a suitable engine with a heritage like no other; that would finally see the light of day as a commercial sequel to the game that inspired the series that the developers were (seemingly) designing it for in the first place ~a potential Fallout 3.

Pipe dream perhaps.

[rogerdv]

An OpenGL based engine supporting Linux and Mac would be nice... but usually hard to achieve unless the development is explicitly focused on that since the beginning. Writing for windows now and porting later tends to be a mess (and I have experienced the inverse process with my own project). After watching the Troika engine video, I think it is exactly the look and feel I have been expecting to have in an RPG, but we still keep getting TPS and FPS.

[infestor]

There are id Tech 3 and id Tech 4 which are GPL! can they not be adapted for an isometric cRPG? they use openGL thus can run on linux, as well.

[Tuco]

I honestly think the engine is a non-issue. Considering how simple this game is supposed to be, as tech goes, and how the people working on this game are professional developers and not a bunch of amateurs, I'm guessing that they can easily squeeze what they are aiming for pretty much from any 3D engine.

Given that, they should probably aim for something that is both cheap to license and simple enough to develop at a fast pacing keeping costs low.
In short, I don't think they need our suggestions about this topic, as no one knows better than them with what tools they are more comfortable.

[mbpopolano24]

Thank you for the video on the Troika’s engine. It looks OK and it would be a good way to go.

Also, did you guys see the new video trailer for X-Com?

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/03/12/xcom-enemy-unknown-video-preview

I believe they used the Unreal engine. Think about this engine applied to Wasteland 2, how many wonderful dynamics/ settings could be implemented (like destructible environment and original way to take out enemies).

[Lucius]

Thank you for the video on the Troika’s engine. It looks OK and it would be a good way to go.

Also, did you guys see the new video trailer for X-Com?

http://www.ign.com/videos/2012/03/12/xcom-enemy-unknown-video-preview

I believe they used the Unreal engine. Think about this engine applied to Wasteland 2, how many wonderful dynamics/ settings could be implemented (like destructible environment and original way to take out enemies).

I think Unreal is going to be waaaaaay out of their budget or at least a huge waste of budget. Almost every AAA game uses the Unreal Engine. I doubt it's cheap enough for a low budget project.

[Bonecrusher]

I think Unreal Engine had 1 million dollar cost or something like that.
But Unity3D and UDK have more reasonable prices for smaller budgets.

[TheSpiceMustFlow]

I'm really starting to wonder what sort of look this game is going to have. The budget is to be 1 million. I just watched Tim Cains talk at GDC on Fallout 1 and he said it cost 3 million. Brian Fargo said in an interview that he wants to do a '90 style RPG so I imagine he means it should resemble fallout and the infinity engine games. Do you guys think it's possible now to make cheaper a game of similar quality?

[rogerdv]

I honestly think the engine is a non-issue. Considering how simple this game is supposed to be, as tech goes, and how the people working on this game are professional developers and not a bunch of amateurs, I'm guessing that they can easily squeeze what they are aiming for pretty much from any 3D engine.

When we talk about engine development nothing is simple. You dont develop just a game engine, you need exporters for modelling tools (yeah, you can export to collada and load it, but there goes the fast loading times to the trash can, because collada is pure xml), you need an scene editor, you need some model preview tool...
Commercial engines includes a hughe amount of tools that speed up development, I have used Ogre3d and then Unigine, believe me, Unigine is worth the $30k, despite the crappy world editor.

[Quarex]

I'm really starting to wonder what sort of look this game is going to have. The budget is to be 1 million. I just watched Tim Cains talk at GDC on Fallout 1 and he said it cost 3 million. Brian Fargo said in an interview that he wants to do a '90 style RPG so I imagine he means it should resemble fallout and the infinity engine games. Do you guys think it's possible now to make cheaper a game of similar quality?

You never know where that money went, though--the Fallout "talking heads" were extremely nicely done for the time, and used some semi-"name" voice actors, so there is a decent chance that was a pretty big chunk of the budget by itself.

Between that and the fact that computers are infinitely more amazing in their abilities now than back then, I think there is a decent chance that a million will go a long way.

[TylerAW]

FOR GODS SAKE DO NOT USE GAMEBRYO! It is the most unstable engine in existence and I have no clue why Bethesda used it for so long.

[Tuco]

When we talk about engine development nothing is simple...

...Which is completely irrelevant to my point.

[Gizmo]

FOR GODS SAKE DO NOT USE GAMEBRYO! It is the most unstable engine in existence and I have no clue why Bethesda used it for so long.

While I agree... I can't say that I have any problem with it.

** As I understand it though... Gamebryo is just the renderer; their in-house custom engine that incorporates Gamebryo is (perhaps) more likely what you mean. It's got its temperamental quirks, but I really don't have many issues with it, and didn't mind its use with Fallout 3 ~I only minded their choice of how it was used.

[geezer]

Forget UDK. Epic would want a 25% cut of everything. Presumably that means 250k for every million that kickstarter raises and then another 25% of the game sales. Even Crytek's engine might be cheaper than that. GemRB, Unity, Torque, and Leadwerks are all possibilities though. Not sure if any of them can be adapted to true turn based though. Unfortunately it appears that Electronic Arts owns the rights to the Infinity Engine. They're never going to do anything with it of course, but I doubt they would license it for a reasonable cost. I also think Troika's unfinished engine might be an interesting possibility.

[SXX]

Unfortunately it appears that Electronic Arts owns the rights to the Infinity Engine.

I think any BioWare Engine's still can be licensed by any company.

The Witcher (first one) was based on modified Aurora Engine.
But might be its was licensed before EA bought them, i don't sure.

[cdoublejj]

I think the game engine should on open gl and be 32 bit that way it could run on nay windows os from 98 to windows 8 and mac and linux and just about any console the xbox 360 is the only console that doesn't rn any form of open gl.

Why is anyone still running windows 98? And why would scarce development dollars be spent so that 117 people who still insist on running this system can play the game?

the idea is not to go out of the way to support an odd plat form. The idea is to make wide support format that is optimized to run on damn near any thing with no specializing

[Alaseur]

I think it's a wonderful idea to have the game playable on as many computer operating systems as possible. I know I still fire up DOOM 95 from time to time on my old 98. Never could get it working on 7 though

[cdoublejj]

OFF TOPICwhat most people don't know about windows 98 is that it IS a modern operating system Microsoft made a lot of improvements/upgrades towards the end of it's life like direct x 9 then after support ended windows 98 communities gave it windows xp compatibility libraries and unofficial service packs to install all updates and upgrades and 3rd party upgrades and improvements

ON TOPIC tying in to what was said above is reason why pre rendered 2d animation could be plus it reald could be run on anything.

[neki]

I would love the graphics to be like blizzard used in SC2, it's 3d but looks and plays very 2d.