Quote:Original post by Foamhead
I am designing a game where I would like a big city, with destructible environments and no load times/ seamless transitions. Think along the lines of Grand Theft Auto IV, (in size of game world, not game play).

I am looking at several engines including Unreal 3.

I would really appreciate some experienced coders to tell me if Unreal is a good choice for this, or recommend a more suitable engine.

Also what are the pro's and con's of Unreal 3 and other popular engines, (3d game Studio, Ogre, Torque...)

If anything is unclear please ask me to clarify.

All info is deeply appreciated. :)


P.S. Please no comments about how much such a game will cost me to make, how much time, etc...I am fully aware.

Unreal kind of falls on its face when you start talking about destructible anything. It has destructible actors that you can tweak and spend a bunch of time on and get them to look decent. But if you're talking about wholesale destruction or terrain deformation Unreal isn't going to fit the bill.

As far as comparing Unreal to the other options you listed. It's frankly in a different class.

Ogre is a rendering engine, and gluing together the other parts required to make a game is a project in itself. Once you've accomplished that the toolchain is nearly non-existant. I have high hopes for Ogitor and it may eventually provide Ogre with the foundation it needs to develop a decent toolchain but don't underestimate the investment required to put together a decent work-flow.

That said, people have hacked out a few quality commercial games using the base Ogre library.

Torque3D is still a work in progress and has a decent toolchain but nothing compared to UE3. It has some features that are really nice, especially the deferred lighting implementation. This is probably your best option if you need heavy destructible maps. Be prepared to code that feature yourself though.

UE3 is the industry standard and the UDK comes with several other licenses wrapped in as well. The big shortcoming of UE3 is the light system is a bit old and it shines with content that is pre-processed. The lighting is great as long as it's pre-rendered etc.. The toolchain sets the standard. The engine is crazy stable.(The engine, not the editor), and if you hit a big time winner you can port over to consoles pretty easily.