I was completely upset with my old engine, and, well, being who I am destroyed it. Now I am in the need of a game engine. So, I start digging in the direct 9.0b and 9.0c frameworks, and started to churn out some ideas: -Having the framework call defined virtual functions -Setting up graphics, input, and sound(duh?) -Creation of a log file -Using a graphics based dialog to setup graphics, input, and sound -Built in timing/profiling using QueryPerformanceTimer instead of timeGetTime -Takes care of destroying and reseting the device Do you need to rebuild DirectInput and DirectSound if you lose focus, like you do using D3D, or do you just need to Acquire()? What with all this Thread security stuff that I found in the DXUT source code? What kind of stuff should I put into my engine? Any ideas will be apreciated. All I want are some low level stuff, like what I have above; I would build all my other on top of this(particle engine, terrain engine, etc.), Just anything that I would include in any app that I would make. Thanks for any ideas, ProgrammingNerd

You should probably use Ogre3D. :)

Since it kicks as over everything free on the internet. That i if you want some decent graphics and have results within the next year.

You will also learn from the experience as well... to go tword your own engine. It has EVERYTHING!!!! you need to do a good game on the graphics end. However sound and such are another issue, which you may want look around a bit more. The advantage of ogre is you are not stuck to a platform so you may want to choose other platform independent APIs as well.

I wanted to make my own engine for educational purposes. I will take a look at this Ogre3D. I'm not worried about cross-platform, though. I'm just stubborn, I don't want to learn how to do something totally different. This way, I can customize it to my liking, not stuck with someone elses work. I'm in no rush, and time isn't an issue(i'm 16). I like having the ability to say that I did it all by myself, and not have ot say I used a 3rd party graphics library.

Thanks a lot for the support,
ProgrammingNerd

Hi there ProgrammingNerd,
How are you doing?

The Problem
Designing your own engine.
The Solution
I would say for a beginner the best practise would be the following,
Get something up and running asap. Then refactor it as you go along... let's take an example.

You want a simple top down shooter.
1) You need a player.
2) You need some keyboard input.
3) You need enemies to shoot.
4) You need a map.

Now with that said.. what I would do is get the input running, then get your player to render and get him to walk around... after that work on a way to let your system know that you have fired a shot using simple messageboxes or something like an ouput console. Then work on placing an enemy on the screen and get your player to shoot some bullets and get a simple bounding sphere collision detection working to detect if the player has shot the enemy.

Now get your player to walk around...etc, etc...

you get the idea. this way you can prototype your system with minimal effects and should give you an idea of what you are lacking in regards to the design of your system.


I hope this helps a bit, and I hope you come right with it. Take care buddy.

Thats basically what I wan't. I am just structuring the underlying api. I want to make this plugin-based, like your top-down shooter: a level plugin, a camera plugin, and a ai plugin. With this, I can design games a lot faster than otherwise. I think this is a good idea, although I wanted to find out if it is.

Thanks for all your replies, this is all great
ProgrammingNerd