Best 3D SDK for C++ newbie?

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Have you tried Dark Basic Pro?

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ogre won't be so simple for a newb...

i'd suggest starting out with straight c... just to get a feel for what's going on... plus the compiler can be a pain getting used to... the different settings and configurations depending on what you are building...

dark game sdk should be asy enough to follow...

one that you missed would be 3Impact... another simple to follow 3d game engine which can be coded in c..


after becoming comfortable with the environment, and after gaining some insight to classes and OOP, then you'll be ready to jump into Ogre...

Torque is a lil more than the others, it's not just a language or an api... it's a fully developed game... if you intend to mod the engine code in c++ you're gonna first need to go into it and be able to follow the logic to find out what is going on... only then you'll be able to change anything that you need if it doesn't fit the current Torque way of doing things...

... not the path i'd recommend for a newb.

good luck...

--Mike

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About DBP....
when a bug fixed, a new bug introduced, the U59 beta3 have more troubles with my Win2000, really can't make good use of it...

Ogre + Newton is recommended for C++ and Multi-Platform support....

Why not just make a 2D game with bmax until 3D comes out?

ColdSteel should be released during this month.

yes... i also seem to be in a holding pattern of sorts, waiting for this 3D module to appear...

i have high hopes for it... i'm sure it won't dissapoint...

that said... i'd like to caution you as to using BlitzMax with any of the 3D engines that interfaces for it have appeared for...

some here will disagree, if you plan to go the BlitzMax 3D route, take a look at some of the features of the current Blitz3D environment... the entity system, the Blitz3D file format, and how well it integrates with the language...

these associations don't exist in the Irrlicht, 3Impact world.

getting too familiar with 'Max and these apis might lead to a lil confusion when you try to 'reconnect' and port your project over...

... so i would do exactly what you are doing... code against em in c or c++, and not use BMax with them.

all this may seem a lil silly, but in order for me to keep things halfway making sense... i keep Blitz in it's own area of the 3D programming spectrum... and the others in theirs... and i don't mix em...

for me, coding in BMax against Irrlicht or 3Impact just wouldn't seem right...

... but that's just me mind you :)


--Mike

Alternative Game SDK's
http://www.gamedev.net/community/forums/forum.asp?forum_id=61

FREE Game Developer Libraries
http://abattoir.wolfpaw.net/personal/gamelibs.php

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Irrlicht is the simplest if you're new to C++.

Why not the nVidia & DX9 SDK and make your own engine.
Atleast you will learn all the basics before jumping in to the other "engines" it was the way i started when i relized there probaly will not be any Max3d engine in the nearest future.:(

/Alienforce

3Impact (www.3impact.com)

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Torque Engines is also a very good choice..
And lots of resources, tutorials and a really nice forum to :)

That probably would be the best over all thing to do, you will learn a lot about 3D, about how 3D engines work,etc, but its also the hardest.

OOP isnt that hard to grasp at all, in fact, once you click its quite simple. When using the "->", "::", or "." operators the IDE will automatically bring up the functions at the memory space in an intuitive list, so theres no need to remember every command. If you use OOP in Blitzmax then you should already be partially comfortable with how C++ does it.

Irrlicht isnt really that much different from Ogre. You have to use OOP in both, and Irrlicht has some odd things you have to grasp, its not as feature full as Ogre, it lacks heaps of stuff and rather than use whats known to work, its more re-invent the wheel style. Irrlicht is worked on by one author which means bug updates are far between, whereas Ogre has a CVS and heaps of active coders contributing fixes and improvements. Ogre is much more consistent, the way it handles shaders, materials, particles, and overlays are all in external files (using C'ish syntax) so you can tweak them without recompiling the entire game. The Ogre forums are way more active, and there are tons more addons / community projects to expand Ogre. Overall Ogre seems like a better way to go, thats my recomendation.

If you dont like Classes you can use Ogre without em, Ogre uses a class for handling a frameListener. You can skip all that and use a conventional C++ loop such as while(1). In my opinion Ogre would be the best choice ;)

Oh and 3Impact, its good and kind of simple to use, but having only support for .x files and the main loop locked at 75fps I dont think its cut out to be used in Commercial Game Projects of sufficient size. Its good for the indie though.

I learned quite a bit of how OOP works by just using the BlitzMax demo for a week. Its kinda difficult at first, but its great once you understand how it works.

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I've been looking for material about writing game engines for a while now and havn't come up with much, apart from a good book called "3D Game Engine Design - A practical approach to real time computer graphics". I'd have to buy it from amazon though, and since I'm in New Zealand and lack a credit card I think that might be a problem. I heard the book is a good one though ;)

There exists much of sites, in here are two very well:

http://www.codesampler.com/dx9src.htm
http://www.gametutorials.com/gtstore/c-5-direct3d.aspx

good luck...

Thnx thierry-myke! :)

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Are there any users of the following,

http://www.unigine.com/
http://www.unigine.com/products/unigine_v0.4/roadmap/

who can comment on potential.

i looked at Unigine and was very impressed...but i didn't look too far... my current setup was stresssed to run the physics demo 0.33 and i couldn't see the water with my super duper GeForceFX5200 video...

i'm looking at the site and cave demos now...

--Mike

Thanks. I'm waiting for the release of 0.4. Apparently their Evaluation Kit license will be changed to hopefully something a little more liberal with respect to upgrades.

Unfortunately, I don't have a 'super duper' video card on my home machine.

Uni-Engine looks pretty cool, I only had time to run the examples and take a look at the tutorial for creating a level, I like how it handles collisions with materials, so you can have friction for different texture types. Which is cool. The prices are pretty high, you have to pay $95 just for the evaluation which you can only program by a script interpreter. Good engine, but prices are too high for the Indie.

the uniengine demo is buggy on tons of machines.

nother vote for irrlicht as far as noob-ease goes.

Its aimed more at next-gen machines aparently, and its not yet as mature as some of the other engines availiable.

i just ran all the demos... they all work... and now i can see the water too...

ehy... i'm partial to any code that gives really decent looking water... no matter how fake it looks :)

the cans floating on the surface... the gears and other physics stuff... HDR that worked in ps/vs 2 and didn't slow down my video to a crawl...

all in all... this looks kinda good... i did however, need to bring down the video to 8x6 to run it right... but even at 640x480 it still looked pretty good...

irrlicht is noowhere near this... not putting it down or anything... it's just not in the same league as the work here...

now, lemme look at the fine print... the money aspects of licensing this...

ya know... the graphics sorta remind me of C4... lemme stop by their site also and take a look at their progress...

--Mike

Torque Game Engine is the most easy and complete way to go...and Torque Shader Engine is something what you will like to use..

WOW!!! Holy Shock And Awe Batman!!!!

$2000 per title!!!!

i could see $2000 for unlimited number of titles... but, unless i'm planning on making a decent amount of change per game, this looks kinda rough...

seriuously... i guess this aint that bad considering what you get in comparison to some other tools in the same class...

i guess the jury is still out... looking through the api now...

[added]
oh my god... what a pleasure to go through the short tut and api docs... this thing is the height of simplicity for what you get... if i can understand it, anyone should be able to...

still looking at it... but so far, this looks easier than BlitzBasic :)


--Mike

hey NA... without violating your nda... can you tell us a bit about how far TSE has come... if i've just licensed it, can i download it, compile it , and start making shader games with it... or is there still a lot that needs to be done...

last time i looked at it, there was a lot that was still unfinished... and i'm not talking about the shadows and advance graphics stuff... there were many bugs and a lot of really unoptimized code that was still being worked on...

what can you tell us...

thx

--Mike

Personally I would say that a good beginning if you want to dabble in 3D using C++ is to do the tutorials at http://nehe.gamedev.net

You're not gonna do anything complex this way, but it sounds like you're just looking for something to keep you busy for the time being. It is a really easy beginning and you'll learn a lot.

Why not the nVidia & DX9 SDK and make your own engine.

Too hard in my opinion
However if you want to learn direct x 9.0 you may purchase the book "Programming rpg games with direct x" by jim Adams
The best game programming book I have ever read
Jim teaches you direct x while building a rather sophisticated game engine

Dark Game SDK is Dark Basic Pro - for use with C++. I wish the 3D part of Blitz3D was available this way...

I defintly agree.
Blitz commands, with c++ or c# is my dream.
By the way , is someone using Dark Game ?
I quit with DarkBasic Pro, about one year ago, because of the ugly programming interface and because it was full of bugs at the time.
Now we can get rid of the interface, using C++, what about the bugs ?

I tried my hand at writing a C++ game engine using functions to wrap the class's with a Blitz3D like syntax. If I had a little more experience with C++ and DirectX9 I'm entirely sure doing something similar to Blitz3D in terms of code / compatibility / performance would be possible. Being DX9 once the foundation is complete more advanced things could be added, such as the ability to use shaders, load more texture formats, more model formats etc.

..well..in order to use TSE you have to own TGE license..anyway, yes, you can compile and use TSE, but as you can see from garagegames web site, its EA version and there is also milestone what things have to be done, but once you license it, future upgrades according to milestone is free for you...anyway, TSE working just fine and about 200 procedural shaders, dependable on type of the material you wanna use, is very flexible to use..anyway, it is possible to come out with some nice smaller projects with TSE, techdemos, walktroughs, but its still not ready for serious game development since its not yet completed, but its absolutely next generation game creation platform..for guys whos having problem how to go and where to go, depending on type of the game thay wanna make, there is starter packs with all necessary setting for that type of the game (FPS starter pack comming free with TGE)...and of course, all this things as a multiplatform system, with plenty of prooven tools for 150US$ with very nice community..I think deal is more than good.. anyway, Red, your water thingy will look perfect with TSE :))

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yeah... i think it will :)

seriously... i've been playing around with it already... the demo and a lil script, not the engine code... i've not licensed TSE yet...

i am impressed with the water... and the atlas scenery seems to have mucho potential...

--Mike

..hehehe...I know it.. :))

EarthAngel,

I too am considering Torque for developing some of my games. I am already sold on Blitz3D for my Asian Pounder series of games, and will be using that for the rest of game-programming career.

As for Torque, I will use that for some of the more elaborate RPG, and maybe online adventures.

Another 3d engine that may be worthwhile is 3D GameStudio from Conetic. I have looked into that, and turned it down in favor of Torque.

hi amanda

oh no the 3D GameStudio .....

ok vers.6 is out but before .......

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I made the mistake to get started with direct x.
I wasted a couple of years
Happy days of all in one game programers are over, in my opinion.
A 3d game engine is so sophisticated nowadays that it is a matter of specialists.
Not to mention that , whatever has been told, a game programmer must know very little of Direct x (or Opengl)
The key questions in my opinion are :

- C++ ( C# ..) or basic , c like script languages ?
- 3d engine + external editors or authoring systems ( Torque , 3dgs ) ?

Yes, it does not matter the API one (openGL or DirectX), it is the capacity of the engine and the language which one uses to implement it which counts.
To write its own engine 3d became very difficult and the increasingly high level.

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directx isn't that bad... i had more trouble grasping the concept behind OpenGL...

... but you really gotta always think in DirectX and Windows terms in order to be an effective DX developer... if you are comfortable with things like windows messages and invalidating rectangles :), and stuff like that... then DirectX is not really that bad...

actually... i found DX7 to be a lot of fun... although, being the lazy sort that i am... not having to do every step of every thing, and using a pre written DX tool appeals greatly to me...

plus the fact that i'm very poor at the math theory that is gonna be require for some advanced features of 3D engine development...

--Mike

Go to http://www.devmaster.net/engines/ for a comprehensive list of 3D engines.

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you can still try out Torque Angel... adding objects, creating scenes in the editors, and scripting your own stuff... just download the demo, everything you need is there...

... with the exception of the engine source, which you need if you plan on modding the engine... so there'll be no c coding and compiling, but you can play with it...

3Impact will be fun and you'll really be using the compiler to make a real Win exe...

--Mike

I think its 3Impact and Torque game Engine cant be even in the same category for comparison...Torque Game engine is complete system with tools, and I'm not sure about 3Impact..appart from few AAA titles on the Torque back and upcoming fully featured Torque Shader Engine, engine source, all tools source, excellent community...I'm not sure you can do serious comparison between 3Impact and Torque...maybe I'm wrong...but..