Engine

[Ech]

I also pitched the Unigine option in the Linux thread and voting for it here.

I'm not sure how easy it is to work with but the pro's understandable to me put it on top at least of all the popular contemporary ones. If not that my (distant) second choice would be Aurora from NWN1. It already runs on Win/Linux (the big one for me) though its quite dated compared to Unigine and supports alot less platforms. Only thing good about that is that its now relatively low requirements will enable even people running on IGP's to play.

Personally I wouldn't mind the graphics as the reason I support these guys is their writing first and foremost and gameplay second. Graphics is a distant third for me. Given the choice, I'd rather they allocate their budget making the game huge in scope like BG2/FO2 rather than making it look pretty.

[geezer]

I agree that graphics should be a relatively low priority. Having nice graphics is definitely squarely in the 'nice, but optional' category. But graphics quality is relative. I don't want worse graphics than Baldur's Gate 1 or Age of Decadence either. After a certain low point they start to become more and more important to me in a nonlinear fashion.

I know some people wouldn't mind having graphics the same as the original Wasteland or maybe even down to the early 80s Castle Wolfenstein level, but I don't have the stomach for that. I loved playing those games in the early 80s but I just can't do it now. If it came to that I would strongly prefer an all text game with some hand-drawn stylized illustrations like you used to get in early D&D modules like Tomb of Horrors. That would be the cheapest possible option. You could even use regular artists instead of game artists and just scan in their drawings or paintings. If you're going to render a scene at all it should be above some minimum level. I doubt we could get any agreement on what that level should be unfortunately.

[rogerdv]

As I mentioned before, I have used both Unigine and Ogre (I completed a playable tech preview of my game project in Ogre). Ogre is just a rendering engine, no more, and language is C++. It is relatively easy, powerful, and if you have a good team you can do wonders. And no, you dont need to release the game source code. Please check the licensing, or if you dont waste your time reading it, consider that Ankh, Venetica, APOX and Torchlight were made using Ogre and Im still waiting for them to release the code.
Unigine is a game engine: physics, sounds, network support. You develop using its own scripting language, which is much like C++ and it is not slow at all. As far as I know, all commercial engines tend to favour its own scripting language over C++. Cant say if it is easy, for me was a big shock, for some people it is easy. Documentation is scarce, you depend on the forum (lot of experts and friendly people there) and samples. But Im sure that any good developer can master it in a couple of months, after some effort studying the samples I made a small third person prototype in just an hour (and 80% of that time was spent creating the scene).
If the 1.5 million limit is reach, definitely Unigine is the only choice. I consider the price fair and the engine is good. If developers think that a more simple, free engine would do, then Ogre is the choice. A curious detail: BlueGiant developed APOX using Ogre3d, but they licensed Unigine for its second RTS game.

[PiPboy]

Just out of couriousity. What is the most expensive engine in the market. Since the whole trend is the most least expensive \ cost cutting.

[Alaseur]

To license a game engine to produce an AAA title I believe was in the hundreds of thousands last I found it mentioned on Gamedev.net.

As for the most expensive... I don't know.

[sadisti]

I still stand by my post that it should be similar to UWE's Spark engine in terms of structure. A core engine that handles the heavy lifting and the rest is run in LUA for example.

Takes care of being modding friendly as well as makes it easier to change things and experiment in development.

[rogerdv]

Forgot to mention that making a turn based game is totally unrelated to the game engine used. It depends on programming, not engine.

[geezer]

Forgot to mention that making a turn based game is totally unrelated to the game engine used. It depends on programming, not engine.

Well, well. That's huge. In that case I think I'd vote for Unigine. Of course the quality of the graphics ultimately depends on the artists, but that engine would allow for all possibilities up to photorealism. And it would make Linux and OS X support a lot easier. Since Fargo has firmly committed to both if we reach 1.5 mil that may be a major factor in deciding on an engine. The only uncertainty is whether the SDK would be enough or whether they would have to modify the source code. If they need the source code then the price of the engine is probably going to be a lot higher than 30k.

[Alaseur]

The Unity game engine supports Windows and Mac operating systems now. It also has near seamless integration for various file formats put out by programs like 3ds Max, Maya, and Blender. It's not my favorite engine though. It is cheap enough though that they could have bought it if they had just accumulated only 100,000 dollars by the time the Kickstarter ended.

I'm eager to see what they go with.

[Anarkopsykotik]

Forgot to mention that making a turn based game is totally unrelated to the game engine used. It depends on programming, not engine.

Hey, why not going for CryEngine 3 then?

[PiPboy]

Psh cry Engine.
Their shouldn't be any bars. Go for Fox Engine
http://www.geekosystem.com/fox-engine-c ... real-life/

[Alaseur]

Psh cry Engine.
Their shouldn't be any bars. Go for Fox Engine
http://www.geekosystem.com/fox-engine-c ... real-life/

Win the lottery, license that engine, hire a crack pot team of the most expensive well trained programmers and other game developers, make epic online photo-realistic interactive sex game.

Is the first damn thing that came my mind.

[geezer]

Forgot to mention that making a turn based game is totally unrelated to the game engine used. It depends on programming, not engine.

Hey, why not going for CryEngine 3 then?

Cryengine 2 was better. I realize you were joking. But I just had to get that in. Of course you never know. Maybe the guys at Crytek were huge fans of Wasteland and wouldn't mind cutting their fee down to size for the good of the Wasteland. The chances are fat and slim but who knows.

[PiPboy]

Psh cry Engine.
Their shouldn't be any bars. Go for Fox Engine
http://www.geekosystem.com/fox-engine-c ... real-life/

Win the lottery, license that engine, hire a crack pot team of the most expensive well trained programmers and other game developers, make epic online photo-realistic interactive sex game.

Is the first damn thing that came my mind.

LoL
Ow my dying of breathlessness with this comment and eternality wrote about,

Whole party stopping to jack off for some stat boosts before attacking that huge enemy base.

[DerRidda]

Remember guys, the way the funding is going atm there's no point in recommending any engine that doesn't support OSX and Linux as well. So no CryEngine, no Unreal engine, no Source engine. That being said I wouldn't be surprised if inXile haven't already requested the Unigine evaluation kit or are fooling around with LWJGL already.

[Alaseur]

Unigine.
http://unigine.com/

Now that's something. So much to read over now. Thank you for mentioning it.

If I remember correctly that dragon model was used to demonstrate LOD in Unigine (or another engine) that used displacement maps instead of low poly, mid poly, and high poly to load distant and near object details.

[mvbarracuda]

Heya lads, as I get ready to pledge my 50$, I decided to sign up here as well.

Just to be upfront about it: I was involved in FIFE for a couple of years so I'm clearly biased in this regard. While I agree that FIFE lacks substantial functionality in some regards (pathfinding, license, UI, shaders), I don't fully agree with the criticism in general.

Concerning audio support: what kind of audio support would you need besides ogg vorbis? Even AAA titles rely on vorbis nowadays as it provides better sound quality at the same filesize or smaller filesize at the same quality level compared to MP3 (using the latest lame version and ogg vorbis aotuv). Even more important ogg vorbis is royalty free! So you can ship your game with high quality audio and don't have to worry about paying a single cent of royalties, compared to the MP3 format.

Concerning FIFE and graphics: Unknown Horizons is actually a quite well looking FIFE-based game in development.

Check out their recent screenshots here:
http://www.unknown-horizons.org/index.p ... 53&page=53

E.g.:


Recent gameplay video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ikg7Wyil3k

Just for the record: I don't think that FIFE would be the best engine for a Wasteland 2 game, but some arguments against it that have been brought up here are pure nonsense.

[PiPboy]

Maybe its me but I think fallout 2 looks better then that

I think this is a better screen shot from fife.

[mvbarracuda]

The engine doesn't prevent you putting nice graphics into a game

These are Fallout (2) maps rendered with FIFE:


And another one:


For the other Fallout map shots (scroll down to the earlier releases):
http://wiki.fifengine.net/Screenshots

FIFE initially started as a Fallout engine reimplementation project. The initial name was Free Isometric Fallout-like Engine

[PiPboy]

I know, i was just saying the screenshot that was given previously was a bad example