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Geek Culture / Help Choosing Game Engine / Mod

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Nomad Soul
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Posted: 14th May 2010 16:12
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I've seen a lot of articles recently about high end commercial game engines being made available to the public.

Primarily I use FPSC as shooters are my favourite games and it allows me to make interesting games without a development team or specialist knowledge. The latest update (v1.17) which brings a lot of new features may not be out for sometime so I'd like to give something else a try whilst I'm waiting.

Basically I'd like to know if anyone can recommend a game engine which someone with limited programming skills can use to make first person shooter games with the following considerations:

- Good balance of features and learning curve
- Good support for importing custom media
- Some out of the box support for AI / scripting
- Good documentation and tutorials
- Good lighting / shadows and shader support

I purchased Doom 3 and Half Life 2 a while back and downloaded the free Unreal Engine 3 SDK but would appreciate any advice from the community for these or other engines they would recommend given the above requirements.

The type of game I am looking to make is action focused so I don't need to make huge outdoor environments or have RPG elements, just standard game logic and enemy AI with good graphics.

I would like to get some custom media into the game rather than just using media provided with the game / engine so the more support for this the better.

Thanks for any advice or help with this.

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Bugsy
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Posted: 14th May 2010 17:05
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UDK's nice, and not very much harder than FPSC.
Unity 3d's also fun and comes with some good stock out of the box AI scripts.
Source is cool too, but I don't know how to do any AI other than l4d AI director because I use L4d authoring tools
FPSC's excellent, but unreliable.
Leadwerks looks nice, never tried it though.

imageflock.com/img/1272671763.jpg[/img]
skype = isaacpreston. I want to talk to YOU
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Sid Sinister
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Posted: 14th May 2010 19:37
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With UDK, if you plan on doing anything other than a deathmatch type game, you'll need to dig into the language a bit.

Same thing with Source, but you can use many of Valves games as a platform for total conversion mods. Making a portal game? Use portal. Making a team based arena game? TF2. Making a single player FPS? Half Life 2.

I have no experience with Unity.

I'd say if your just waiting for the patch to come out, really try and master the version you have right now. If you have any weak areas, try polishing up on those!

"If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants" - Isaac Newton
Current Project: http://strewnfield.wordpress.com/ (Last updated 06/11/09)
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Shadowtroid
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Posted: 15th May 2010 20:56
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Well, I'd just look at your sig.

Bit of hypocrisy, don'tcha think?

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CoffeeGrunt
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Posted: 15th May 2010 23:07
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Or realisation of the truth?

http://dystopiawipb.blogspot.com/
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Nomad Soul
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Posted: 17th May 2010 18:29
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@Bugsy & Sin Sinister

Thanks for your feedback.

I'm tempted by UDK as its a popular engine and relatively new.

I've downloaded the free Unity engine and it looks promising although I was more impressed with the outdoor demo than the indoor demo. Also dynamic shadows are only supported in the pro version.
http://answers.unity3d.com/questions/559/how-to-get-dynamic-shadows-in-unity

I installed the Source engine dev tools and managed to make a couple of rooms with some enemies and weapons which all worked well but not convinced about the custom media support.
http://m-cub3d.com/creating-source-mod-characters/

I'm interested in getting Left 4 Dead 2 if that has better support for custom media but am assuming all Source games have to be modded in the same way?

I had an equal amount of success with Doom3. Made a small map with monsters and weapons but haven't managed to import custom media yet. There appears to be some good tutorials for Doom3 though.

Leadwerks looks great but I think it will be too programming heavy for me compared with some of the alternatives.

Quote: "Well, I'd just look at your sig. Bit of hypocrisy, don'tcha think?"


LOL. I'm not looking for a replacement to FPSC just interested in trying another engine if I can find something suitable before the new V1.17 FPSC update.

Quote: "Or realisation of the truth?"


I think FPSC is a superb engine and the bigger commercial engines could benefit a lot from the approach FPSC takes in allowing the developer to focus on desinging their game rather than trying to figure out how to import some media using their proprietary formats.

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The Slayer
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Posted: 17th May 2010 20:48
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@Nomad Soul:

There's also 'Silent Walk FPS Creator 2' where you need NO programming, there's the Coppercube engine by Ambierra where you can use a scripting language simular to C, Java or PHP, and there's also the GameCore engine which seems like an impressive package (Indie license : $199, Pro license: $1499). DXStudio looks to be a great engine too, but the standard version is already $400 (incl.VAT). Esenthel engine is very impressive too and has a free version that you can use (for non commercial games). There are lots of other engines, but that list would be too long.

Cheers

Slayer rules!!! Yeaaah, man!
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nackidno
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Posted: 17th May 2010 21:16
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The HPL engine, which powered Penumbra, has gone open source. Maybe you can check that one out?

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Rampage
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Posted: 19th May 2010 09:13
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Quote: "UDK's nice, and not very much harder than FPSC. "

WUT?

If I were you I would go with UDK. I've been developing in Unreal tools for quite a while now. I have (had) FPSC and UDK and I can tell you, the ease of FPSC is something that has to be gotten over when going to UDK. Though, in the first couple of tutorials you do for it you will find yourself able to recreate everything FPSC can do and much better. And remember. UDK is the COMPLETE Unreal Engine 3 development framework used to make games such as, Unreal Tournament 3, Gears of War 1&2, Mirrors Edge, Bioshock 1&2 etc. etc.
There are a lot of great tutorials for it out there that go along with the massive community. And you will find the learning curve goes up gradually and is not a very hard climb as the basics are easy to learn. Although. If you want to be on the road to create games like Gears then you will need to put your head into scripting quite alot unless you got a team going. Which a lot of UDK developers do by the way. I think I learn't UnrealScript around 2-3 years ago with the older mod kits they released with there game. So If you have any experience with that then its a plus! The scripting language is not hard to learn, lots of tutorials out there, and a good number of helpful people on the UDK forums.

Overall, UDK is great. And the learning process is extremely fun, you'll find yourself coming back to it everyday to learn something different and how to do this and that. Thumbs up to the Unreal Development Kit in my book


Eidos!
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WWIV Studios
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Posted: 20th May 2010 02:14
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Quote: "Rampage's Post"


Too Lazy to quote the entire thing, but UDK confuses simple minds like me.
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TechLord
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Posted: 20th May 2010 12:50 Edited at: 20th May 2010 12:53
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Quote: "I would like to get some custom media into the game rather than just using media provided with the game / engine so the more support for this the better."
IMO, Content Creation is the dream killer for most would-be indie developers. There are plenty of high powered engines out there, but, without custom media to give your game distinct look and feel, they are virtually useless.

A game engine needs game content to run and no one wants the same media everyone else is using. Which is why I would encourage someone who hasnt started with a engine to pick up a modelling/animation program and start learning to create content first.

Super 3D Game Engine (S3GE) - The Ultimate All-in-1 3D Game Engine in development with Dark GDK.
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Asteric
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Posted: 22nd May 2010 05:21 Edited at: 23rd May 2010 14:13
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UDK is the best engine i have ever used, like Rampage said, its extremely fun to learn, and once you get into using the tools, you will discover quickly just how amazing a workflow you have in your hands.

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Travis Gatlin
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Posted: 22nd May 2010 19:19
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WWIV, dont be so hard on yourself, its really confusing to me too

Google.com. Nuff Said
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CoffeeGrunt
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Posted: 23rd May 2010 14:01
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Quote: "than trying to figure out how to import some media using their proprietary formats."


Well, I sorted that out for you...

http://forum.moltenbytedesign.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=118&title=fpsc-to-udk-the-tutorial

http://dystopiawipb.blogspot.com/
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AbdulAhad
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2010 09:26
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CoffeeGrunt could you please upload the file again? The download limit has been reached.

Abdul Ahad
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Rampage
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Posted: 2nd Jun 2010 11:23
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CoffeeGrunt I'm impressed! That is some mighty fine work I fail to download because of above post.
Looking forward to looking at it.
Nice work.


Eidos!
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Nomad Soul
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Posted: 5th Jun 2010 23:50 Edited at: 5th Jun 2010 23:51
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Thanks for all the advice,

I'm now using UDK as my alternative game engine to FPSC. I've found a lot of useful tutorials and the engine appears to be very flexible.

I've attached the FPSC-UDK tutorial CoffeeGrunt made which is excellent and perfect for people looking to use FPSC with another engine like myself.

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CoffeeGrunt
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Posted: 5th Jun 2010 23:57
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Thanks for the positive feedback guys, I wanted it to help more people pluck up the courage to jump to UDK. Trust me, when you get used to how it works, it's leagues above FPSC...

Granted that's probably only because it has huge funding behind it, and FPSC is better for small, simple levels, but I'm loving UDK so much right now...

Good luck, and enjoy the UDK...


Also, when did Rapidshare add a download limit?

http://forum.moltenbytedesign.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=121&title=quick-scifi-level
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AbdulAhad
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Posted: 6th Jun 2010 12:41
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A long time back as far as i know.

Abdul Ahad
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