Ok, I'm a retired 50 yeat old with failing eyesight and mental capacity but fortunately a healthy bank balance. I want to develop a game I've had in my mind for many decades but i'm having problem finding a 4th generation engine that will do all I require. Quick development with minimal coding. These are the engines I've looked at;

(1) Visual3D - excellent terrain tools but has recently closed shop to indies! :(
(2) Torque3D - excellent overall package but now defunked! :(
(3) BigWorld - excellent MMO tool but terrain builder not up to my standard (must be able to load satellite heightmaps and associated color maps)
(4) Shiva - looks ok but again terrain builder isn't up to scratch.
(5) Cry - they won't even talk to me! :(

My game is a historical RPG / RTS cross for 5-8 players.

Are there any new DirectX 11 4th-Gen engines being developed that have excellent terrain tools (with river / road builder tools etc) and build in Motion captured animations etc etc

I realise i'm asking alot but apparently Dx11 will be taking alot of the work load off coding??? i'm willing to pay upto 10k.

padloack

Sorry for ignoring the DirectX11 requirement for now, but why would you want to pay for an engine?

There's plenty of freely available engines/game-kits available (Unity, Unreal) that will allow you to do anything you can think of, if you have the creativity in you (that you would need even if you pay for an engine).

I suggest you give it a try with one of those free engines first, before paying a lot of money and get disappointed soon.

Do you have experience in game making? (you say you're retired, but not what from..)

Sorry i've also looked at UDK and unity but wasn't happy with their complexity and terrain development tools.

I'll repeat, i'm old and don't have the patience to do alot of low level coding and debugging, I'm willing to pay for convenience, like most old people! :)

I want quick and easy development.

I'm a retired programmer (C, Pascal, SQLWindows .. not OOP) I partially developed my game in BlitzBasic but it was too low level and the work load became too much. I need a 4th gen tool.

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I think that you're requirements are unrealistic, based on what you've posted. Modern game development teams all have computer programmers. If there were really tools that replaced the need to do programming and made everything fast and simple, wouldn't the professionals be using them?

Everything is acquired at the price of effort. Money may buy you "better" tools or a "better" engine, but it won't do the work for you, especially if you have a complex project in mind. Even doing a simple 2D game in a program made for hobbyists like Game Maker requires at least some coding to do anything past a certain level. And what you seem to want to do is much more complex than a simple 2D game.

If making your game is really your dream, go for it! Contrary to what you have said, 50 isn't that old. I'm sure you do great things if you put your mind to it. :)

I'm not sure what you mean by "4th generation", but I would definitely give Unity a try. It has a decent terrain editor, but I don't know if it fits your requirements.

Quote:Original post by padlock
I realise i'm asking alot but apparently Dx11 will be taking alot of the work load off coding??? i'm willing to pay upto 10k.

Using a game engine will save you a significant amount of work compared to building one from scratch, regardless of the DirectX version it's build on.

Quote:Original post by padlock
Sorry i've also looked at UDK and unity but wasn't happy with their complexity and terrain development tools.

By 'not happy with their complexity', do you mean they seem too complex? If so, you might be asking too much (as has been suggested), as those engines are pretty easy to use (well, Unity is at least - I'm not as familiar with UDK).

Quote:I'll repeat, i'm old and don't have the patience to do alot of low level coding and debugging, I'm willing to pay for convenience, like most old people! :)

You have a rather odd definition of 'old'.

Quote:I want quick and easy development.

Something like Unity, Shiva, etc. is probably about as quick and easy as it gets. That said, there really is no shortcut to creating a game like what you have in mind. (As has also been said, if there were such a shortcut, then everybody would already be using it.)