Hello, I’m trying to graduate with a a Rpg game as my finalproject. I and my partner have established a team which consist out of storywriters, concept artist, 3d people etc. for developing a demo of our rpg. The only missing group is a programming team. We are looking into options for finding them in our surroundings BUT if we fail we need a backup plan. Therefore I was looking into some standard game engines (unreal, Game Studio etc.) I was wondering if any of you have a suggestion which engine to choose. We need an 3d engine for walking indoor and we need a turnbased battle engine. The graphics level has to be high because we plan to send the demo to publishers along with a design document for convincing them "buying" the full game, If we succeed the game will be released for a next-gen console (psx 3 etc.). I hope any of you can help us out. PS I know coding your own engine is the best option, but time and experience aren''t working along… PPS I know rpg''s are one of the hardest things to create...

Did you search this forum and/or Gamedev in general for 3d engines? This question has been asked over and over again.

Anyways, here the names of few that get mentioned here quite often:

Crystal Space
Ogre 3D
Irrlicht

If this is some kind of volunteer project, I wouldn''t select an engine until I had a couple of programmers and get their input.

I don''t think any of the open source engines out there at the moment work on any consoles, so at some point you''re going to have to write your own engine (or license someone elses).

However, a lot of those engines *would* be good for writing a prototype to show to potential publishers to raise interest in your project. In that case, it probably doesn''t really matter which engine you use as long as you''re confortable with it, as none of this would be the final code anyway, it''d just be a proof of concept.

I haven''t really tried most of the engines out there, so I can''t really recommend much (especially given that I don''t know your programming experience). I''d mostly just stay away from anything with a restrictive license on how you can use it and what you can use it for.

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ok thanks for your input.

I did search the forums, but i couldn''t find a engine which can handle turnbased gameplay and realtime gameplay. Or can most of the recent engines handle this?

We will only use this engine as a backup plan. We would much rather program it ourselves. But we don''t have any experience programming... I know are chances decrease for finding a publisher if we build it up on engine.
But on the other hand, we can''t program the demo for a console either, because we don''t have a development kit for those (yet =). So a "relative" good option would be to use an engine. (if I’m thinking wrong, please correct me) After we convince the producers, we may get some money to really invest.

To be honest I don''t know of any game engines like that. Most of the engines available are for the most part just a 3D interface, and don''t concern themselves with turn-based games, battle engines, etc.

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quote:it was certainly better looking then say a PSX game

Really?

quote:Original post by sjaak
ok thanks for your input.

I did search the forums, but i couldn''t find a engine which can handle turnbased gameplay and realtime gameplay. Or can most of the recent engines handle this?

We will only use this engine as a backup plan. We would much rather program it ourselves. But we don''t have any experience programming... I know are chances decrease for finding a publisher if we build it up on engine.
But on the other hand, we can''t program the demo for a console either, because we don''t have a development kit for those (yet =). So a "relative" good option would be to use an engine. (if I’m thinking wrong, please correct me) After we convince the producers, we may get some money to really invest.

As was previously stated, most of these engines claiming to be GAME engines are in fact GRAPHICS engines. Any additional functionality will need to be added: collision, physics, etc.

I have heard good things about Game Studio (I don''t however, actually have any experience with it myself) It''s a package that includes a game engine, (Renderer, collision detection, UI libraries, shaders, etc.) as well as it''s own easy to use C based scripting language, C++ libraries, level and world editors, importers for a few 3d formats, and some other stuff.

Someone I know tried the demo, and said that after mucking around for a couple of hours to learn it, he was able to build a simple engine in less than an hour.

There''s a demo version, and a professional version (I think it''s around $100)

Oh yeah, here''s the website:
http://conitec.net/a4info.htm

If you do try it out, would you mind posting what you think of it?