A TOUGH QUESTION! ^_^ This issue is about the best engine for SINGLE PLAYER game development. There are lots of different engines for lots of different purposes. I have concerned about using the Quake 3 Arena, Unrealt Tournament or the Genesis 3D Engine. All have advantages and disadvantages. What are the requirements of a good single player game? 1. Actors (monsters,aliens,humans...) which behave like they should in single player (not like bots) -> let''s simply call it "monster AI" 2. In-game-cutscenes (rendered by the game engine) 3. Pre-rendered Cinematics (e.g. in 3D studio, Lightwave) 4. all the necessary engine features to create a realistic game environment and help to achieve a good atmosphere 5. commercial use Now the engines: Quake 3: 1. absolutely NO single player support 2. well, I can''t find any tools for that... AND ID does not want to release the dm3 source 3. this feature should be available in the near future 4. ...the engine has you, NEO... 9-) Probably the best engine currently available 5. no chance Unreal Tournament: 1. NO single player support (or is it possible to import the single player elements from Unreal?) 2. there is a tool: Unreal Movie Studio (it should is very useful and has many features) 3. ... I havn''t seen them in the game itself and in games created by using the Unreal Tournament engine. Is there a possibility to include cinematics? 4. ... the engine is not as good as the Quake 3 engine, but it isn''t out of date! 8) 5. ... perhaps EPIC? 8) Genesis 3D: 1. Not from the beginning, but there are Genesis games that have single player. 2. The Gdemo uses engine-cutscenes, but I can''t find a tool for it. And programming cutscenes is not the right way... 3. It supports avi cinematics 4. Good, but nothing in comparison to Quake 3 or UT 5. can be used commercially If you want to start to develop a game, then you probably have to deal with this issues. I do. I am looking foreward to any help or tips offered by repliers. Thank you very much for reading this article. ^_^ ___________ carpe diem, SoulmasteR WEBSITE: Beren.de - Design, Art & Animation

I REALLY wish I had an answer for you. I don''t. But I just wanted to offer a refinement to your list (#4):

I''ve been focusing exclusively on gameplay itself. I find this list in and of itself to be HUGE!!! Here''s what I have:

-General architecture (OOP, script, procedural)-
-UI Support (buttons, UI messaging, sound FX, drag & drop)-
-3D Model animation, lighting, texturing-
-Camera Manipulation-
-Collision Detection-
-Physics-
-Map / Levels loading, state saving-
-Scripting, waypoints, timed events-
-AI... ack! (pathing, tactics, strategy)-
-Senarios-

Lots of work... I''m not sure if you have a team or how much work you''re planning on doing yourself. Obviously, the higher your goals the uglier this is going to be.

Some refs:

Have you checked out Auran Jet? Looks good, but last I checked highly unrealistic for the would be indie unless you can develop your game and then get a publisher who''ll fork over the $30,000 for the license. But you can use it to release a game as freeware.

Setting sights (quite a bit) lower, you might want to check out this engine list" I''m looking at Photon Effect right now, but there are a ton of others out there.

Good luck!

--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

BTW, maybe of some note...

FWIW, I Just ran across engine prices in a discussion comparing them to AuranJet:

Lithtech 2.5: $250k (US)
Quake 2: $120k (US)
Quake 3: $350k (US)
Unreal: $300-350k (I think [US])


... makes a guy wish he were a trust fund child...




--------------------
Just waiting for the mothership...

First of all I want to thank you for your quick replies.
Kylotan, you are right, I know that you can build a whole
new game (whatever you like) with Unreal Script, but not
without a full-time programmer. WHICH I HAVE NOT. 8(

Wavinator, thank you very much for the information! ^_^
I have checked out Auran Jet, and most of the
other cheaper (or open source) engines around.
But there is always the problem with the necessary code.
We have a team which consists of 2 gamedesigners/modelers,
3 programmers, 3 artists/leveldesigners.
Unfortunately our programmers have little time and therefore
we have to use an engine that already has most of
the features which I mentioned above, so that the
programming work is kept very low. 8(

I know the "perfect" engine does not exist, but is there
an engine where you can do all of my "requirements"
without a full time programmer? That would be great. 8)


___________
carpe diem,
SoulmasteR
WEBSITE: Beren.de - Design, Art & Animation

I am utterly amazed you didnt even consider the HalfLife engine ! It based on Quake 2 sourcecode, improved quite a lot, the whole SDK is available online, the community is huge, the help from Valve (the developers) is renowned to be exceptional.

Also Quake I is now open under GNU, which means you could use it. You would have to open your source though, but it''s still a very viable solution to consider.

As well, you forget to mention what you are thinking of actually doing. You say you dont have a programmer ??? Then what do you want to do ? Just a single player MOD ? Go for Halflife man ! See the They Hunger MOD done by mister Neil Manke. Very very good, and very little programming (according to them)

Mmm, maybe if you develop a bit more ?

youpla :-P

Actually he said they have 3 programmers .Personally if I were you I''d consider using Half-Life.The one used for Nocturne and the Blair Witch games is pretty cool too but I don''t know if it''s available (but you could check).

Ok, ok, ok... I guess I have to tell you something about our
game (but my questions were ment general):

It is a singleplayer 3D action game like Unreal, Quake
but it has a story-depth comparable with Halflife.
It should have at least 14 levels and a Diabolo-like
inventory. It will use a first person view (more
game depth, less disorientating than a third person
view) and in-game (or engine) cutscenes (the camera
than shows the main character of the player).
There ought to be cinematics (because I love Lightwave,
hihi...) and of course a creature ai system.

I know that this is nearly impossible for a new
game development team on a free of charge basis.
At least our artists and modelers are very ambitious,
but our programmers are not. Unfortunately. 8(

We already have a story, designs, levels, skinned
and animated models... but nearly NO CODE. 8((

To AHW''s post:
I did not mention the Halflife engine because for a
larger project (this one could last maybe 2 years)
the engine is out of date. Take a look at gunman
they worked over a year on it and had luck and
a much bigger team. When we finish this project
on the halflife engine perhapes I am an old geezer
telling my granddaughters what a beautiful time I
had before trying to develop a "certain" game on
the halflife engine. 9-))

Hmmm... perhapes Halflife is the right engine. 8)
Does the Halflife engine still use low-res
textures and skins? o_O

Anyway in my opinion halflife was the best 3D
shoot-em-up ever! ^_^

They Hunger? I already played it, it''s cool,
although I prefere the science fiction genre.

To Kylotan''s post:

We have 3 programmers, but they have little time. 8(

I know that Unreal has its advantages like all the
other engines, and I know how powerful UnrealED
is. AND there is probably the possibility to move to
a newer "Unreal based" engine in the future (Duke
Nukem Forever, Unreal 2...).

Is it possible to change e.g. Monsters (even their
behaviors) without much programming knowledge?
I am an artist/modeler/webdesigner and can programm
a little bit in Delphi and Java, but that''s all. 8(

Our lead programmer has decided to use the Quake 3
engine, but I am not sure if he himself can afford
the time to code a whole single player structure.
What''s about Genesis 3D? Does anyone know this engine?
http://www.genesis3d.com
It''s free, commercially usable and almost up to date.

___________
carpe diem,
SoulmasteR
WEBSITE: Beren.de - Design, Art & Animation