Comments on Nebula 2 engine?
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Hello everyone. I recently stumbled upon an engine I had not heard of: the Nebula 2 engine. I haven't heard much about it. . .so, have any of you ever used it, and if so, how is it?
It was used for several commercial projects, and supports both PC and Xbox out of the box. I like its overall design much better than the horrid mess that is Ogre, or the catastrophically oversimplified Irrlicht. It also has a fairly nice game framework, though a few things are lacking (physics bindings are a thin layer over ODE, which sucks).
Its toolchain is also somewhat lacking, but so is OGRE unless you happen to own 3DS Max.
Its toolchain is also somewhat lacking, but so is OGRE unless you happen to own 3DS Max.
Quote:Original post by Promit
I like its overall design much better than the horrid mess that is Ogre,
I strongly disagree with this statement, IMO Ogre has a very good design, Nebula on the other hand is a mess (when constructing some classes you call a function taking a string of the class name!).
Quote:or the catastrophically oversimplified Irrlicht.
I got to admit that Irrlicht also have a very bad design, it seems like a beginner's first attempt at providing a wrapper over some APIs, while they read their Beginning DirectX Programming book.
Unfortunatly hobbyist programmers doesn't have many choices if they want a full game engine (and Nebula is even lacking a proper physics engine). Therefore Nebula is actually one of the better choices.
My experience with Nebula is limited, but it wasn't very pleasant. Also the support for XBox can be a huge advantage.
If you're making an FPS, you should definitely check out Nebula with the Mangalore framework.... currently it's a little bit unstable, but it's an interesting approach to data-driven development. If you aren't looking at Mangalore, though, Nebula might not be a good engine for you. It has a lot of old non-working stuff gathering dust and screwing up newer development, and lacks a lot of features one would expect in a modern game engine. (In particular, IIRC shadows don't work right now.)
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Quote:Original post by Sneftel
If you're making an FPS, you should definitely check out Nebula with the Mangalore framework.... currently it's a little bit unstable, but it's an interesting approach to data-driven development. If you aren't looking at Mangalore, though, Nebula might not be a good engine for you. It has a lot of old non-working stuff gathering dust and screwing up newer development, and lacks a lot of features one would expect in a modern game engine. (In particular, IIRC shadows don't work right now.)
Hmmm...I guess what I really want to know is. . .how does it stack up against OGRE or Crystal Space?
I just switched my game, currently weighing in at 15,000 LoC, from Nebula over to Ogre. It was an absolute pain in the ass because of the way Nebula's object management system gets its tendrils into your code, but it was worth it.
I'm not sure about Crystal Space. I haven't heard anything about it in the past year and a half. My guess would be that it has not managed to grow with the available technology.
I'm not sure about Crystal Space. I haven't heard anything about it in the past year and a half. My guess would be that it has not managed to grow with the available technology.
Quote:Original post by nintenduh
So my best bet is still OGRE?
All stories I have heard about transition from Nebula (or other engines) to Ogre have been positive, of course the coder had to re-write lots of stuff, but the coded ended up being better. The biggest problem is that Ogre is a graphics engine and Nebula is a full game engine (though the physics support is pretty much non-existant, as an add-on you get an ODE wrapper), so you will also have to find a physics engine, input engine and sound engine and some way to connect all of those (though with a good design that shouldn't be a problem). I say go for Ogre, with ODE or the PhysX SDK (previously known as NovodeX), I'm not sure what you should choose for sound and input engine though, input engine shouldn't be a big problem though.
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