13 replies to this topic

[daedalus316]

Me and some friends are aiming to make a game. All we have right now is a basic idea and some experience in modelling and a little in python and Visual basic. The whole game idea idea revolves around a room. Every surface in this room is covered in a grid. Using a “hook” a player can pull out, or extrude, these squares in the gird. The new surfaces will also be covered in a grid allowing further extrusions. The game will also have guns like the ones in the game UT3. this is a fairly ambitious project for me because i have almost no experience. We are looking for a good FREE game engine to use the only thing is it has to support the whole extruding idea.

[fanaticlatic]

well epic will allow you to use the Unreal engine for free for non-commercial use. I think you can then upgrade for commercial use at a later date for less than $100 if memory serves check epic udk terms on there site. There are various rendering engines like Ogre and Irrlicht that are open source (free) as well.

[Hinch]

Another vote for UDK, and also Unity3d is good. Both have great toolsets, which is very useful for beginners. Ogre3d is only a rendering engine so you would have to implement other parts (input, networking, audio etc) yourself, Irrlicht I *think* does more but I'm not familiar with it myself.

[daedalus316]

would unity be able to extrude new surfaces in game? UDK seems a bit too complex.

[Hinch]

I don't think UnrealScript gives you access to the raw vertex data of meshes, but you could maybe just build the wall out of 1m cubes and change their x/y/z scales to stretch them out. You could do it the same way in unity, and I think unity also lets you build objects from raw vertex data, but if you ask me that's more complicated than just having some base blocks and stretching them about.

[daedalus316]

but then how would I extrude further from the new wall? mabye i could have an entire pillar/extrusion hidden and just move it around on a fixed axis

[Hinch]

Well yeah to do that you would probably need to be able to create your own geometry on the fly, which rules out UDK. Or you could bodge it by spawning another cube inside your already-extruded cube and stretch out the new one along a different axis, if that would work for your design. Basically it's something you'd have to figure out yourself, because I don't know any game engine that has a feature like this built-in. (Think about what tech is needed to build a typical shooter or platformer and that's pretty much what you'll get in most game engines, anything beyond that you'll need to make yourself).

[daedalus316]

so i would need to do some scripting, right? so what language does unity use? and how powerful would you say it is. also could you recommend some beginner tutorials for unity

[Hinch]

Unity's own docs have some of the best tutorials - http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/ They have a few different languages you can choose between for writing your scripts - Javascript, c# or Boo (their own thing), they all provide the same functionality so you can just write scripts in the one you find most comfortable. And yes you will almost certainly need to do some scripting or programming no matter which engine you choose.

[daedalus316]

I checked out the documentation and i was looking for something that gave specific product. like a tutorial that showed you the basics through some kind of project. tutorials that just tell you how to do individual things kind of are harder for me to use.

[scgames]

I checked out the documentation and i was looking for something that gave specific product. like a tutorial that showed you the basics through some kind of project. tutorials that just tell you how to do individual things kind of are harder for me to use.

I haven't looked at the tutorials in a while, but at one point at least there were a couple of tutorials that guided you through the process of creating a complete (if somewhat limited in scope) product (specifically a platform game and a first-person game).

I think the platformer tutorial is called 'Lerpz', so you might start by looking for that one.

[daedalus316]

I already saw those tutorials. they look good the only thing is they require scripting knowledge which i don't have.

[scgames]

they look good the only thing is they require scripting knowledge which i don't have.

That's how games are made in Unity - by programming them^* (just as with most other engines). But, you could always start working on developing those skills (there are plenty of resources available, especially for UnityScript).

^*The only exception to this I can think of would be to use a visual scripting editor, of which there are a couple available for Unity. I haven't tried them, but I'm somewhat doubtful that they'd be suitable for the type of game you describe.

[daedalus316]

So can anyone recommend some good Boo scripting tutorials (since it is based of python which i am familiar with. as i said before can they have some kind of finished product that uses all the skills it teaches you.