Hello! I just want to ask some few questions. I would create a game based on Tomb Raider 3D engine... But what is this engine? How can I get it? Can RenderWare handle such a game? IS there anything that I have to know before beginning coding such a game? Is there any tutorial about Tomb Raider programming? I think I just asked all my few questions!! Thanks in advance! DEV

Why Tomb Raider engine? Wasn't that game made in 96 or so? There are newer engines that are open source which can do the same and much more, e.g. Ogre, Irrlicht, Quake 2.

In fact, it is not th Tomb Raider Engine that I am interest in. I just want to create a Tomb Raider like.
So I want to know how to realize it.
SO I am going to look at your engines.

But if you have any ohter ideas.

In the Website, it seems to show that Ogre supports TR 1/2/3/4 levels. But I really want to create a game from scratch.
So I really search best way to make game such Tomb Raider!

Thanks for all your answers.

Another question: as Ogre supports TR levels : how can I create level for Tomb Raider 1/2/3/4?

How experienced are you? Coding a game engine is a VERY big and pretty difficult project.

If you are a beginner i suggest you first make sure you understand the tutorials at nehe.gamedev.net and also you know OOP or at least good C programming.
This will probably take you a year or two :).

I have already done nehe tutorials. I have some experience in OOP.
In fact, I have never realised an entire video game.

I worked on some 3d engines. I do some project about bump mapping or landscape visualisation (all in OpenGL, C++ and Qt).
I know a few RenderWare.

I know coding a game is such a big thing. But I am not alone. We are up to 4 programmer and 1 one really brilliant guy on modeling. From now on, we are just creating one demo and one scenarist (I don't know if it is the right English word)

So I want to know what is for you, best engine to use for coding a Tomb Raider like : Unreal Engine, RenderWare, NeL, Ogre3D, other?

I think C++ is the best language. OpenGL vs DirectX?

I will have to know how to lead a project...

First time I want to know which 3D engine to use.

Is my way to create game is the good one?

You write English a lot better than I write French.

By Tomb-Raider style game, are you meaning an engine that supports climbing? Things like hoisting over/down walls are pretty easy compared to most game programming problems. I used animation events to impliment hoisting with my engine. The events fired off when a certain time passed by in an animation. The events were capable of disabling gravity, boosting the character with fake velocities, or making character's hands stick to surfaces. It wasn't easy to get working perfectly, but I've had much bigger headaches.

I'm just saying you probably don't need to be too aimed at Tomb Raider to get started. Most engines will give you enough control to get this working. I haven't tried any, though, so I can't recommend something.

Quote:Original post by Jiia
You write English a lot better than I write French.

By Tomb-Raider style game, are you meaning an engine that supports climbing? Things like hoisting over/down walls are pretty easy compared to most game programming problems. I used animation events to impliment hoisting with my engine. The events fired off when a certain time passed by in an animation. The events were capable of disabling gravity, boosting the character with fake velocities, or making character's hands stick to surfaces. It wasn't easy to get working perfectly, but I've had much bigger headaches.

First thank for my English...
Second can you explain me better what do you mean by animation events?
Third where do you have biggest headaches?

Umm, let's see, biggest headache. Definitely collision physics. Programming moving sphere (capsule) against triangle, collisions and responses. It's probably the most difficult thing I've had to learn since I started 3D programming. But if you use a pre-built game engine, that will most likely already be done. It's much less game-specific than something like hoisting over walls. I did use the sphere collision to make the hoisting work, though.

Animation events would just be a list of actions specific for each character animation. Each action in the list has a time value, an action value, and generic float or int values. Each time you update the character animation with time, you check the next node in that list to see if the animation's running time has passed the event's time value. If it has, you run the event. To run the event, you could just use a switch statement with the action value, using the event's float/int attributes differently for each type of action.

In my engine, each event only has one value. But that limits the things I can do with it. For example, to add velocity in all directions, I have to use three seperate events for x, y, and z.

There may be easier ways to do this. But events can be used for many different things, like attacking (start and end of attack motion), defending, pulling out or puting away weapons (linking to different bones), or even making a gun fire.

edit: I didn't realize "engine" probably translates to "motor". So engine == inner workings of my game.

[Edited by - Jiia on May 27, 2005 10:37:38 AM]