Hello,

I am assuming pro developers all now use VC++.NET ver 10 ..?

I was a bit confused as to the role of the .NET framework in a commerocal game, i thought for some reason it would slow it down overheads etc.

Also how far would you get developing a game in the express version. Also would most of these free open source engines like OGRE complle in VC++.NET as i think most would be written in VC++ 6.0 etc..

Ah ok that's clear now. So i see you can write native win32 C++ or use the .NET framework/libraries (CLR) in 'Visual C++'.

But by writing in CLR you are going to no doubt lose some functionality and performance as compared to writing in native winn32 C++ but then CLR could be a lot faster and less complex to write as it's so simplified.

Are there any AAA games just now for the PC that would be written in CLR ?

So it's a mammoth task writing a game engine let along the rendering engine. Where do you start could a hobbyist developer realistically write say a AA game engine over a number of years, how many tricks of the trade do current commercial devs have that the public doesn't get to see. I think also all the tools, for example mapping tools, would be such a major part of the game. But if you did manage to write rendering engine and the tools i think you'd be as well licensing the rest such as sound, networking, physics, AI, then they would still need your artists, mappers, and a ton of other people before you had a working game.

Well the people before me gave you advice on programming languages, now, I'm going to try to give you advice on rendering engines.

I was searching for a way to make a game a few years ago and found out that the best way to develop one was through learning C++ and either using an already established game/rendering engine, or to write one on your own, I chose the former, and thus started trying out different game and rendering engines, among the ones I tried were Panda, OGRE, Irrlicht, Crystalspace and a dozen more.

From testing them out I discarded Crystalspace, Panda and the other engines, as they were either not well-documented, or the examples were too buggy for me to put 2 and 2 together at the time, OGRE and Irrlicht stood out, Irrlicht for the speed and simplicity, and OGRE for that + the beautiful demos, the huge friendly community, and the awesome wiki, among other things. I stuck with it, and learnt C++, a bit of linear algebra, the fun (sometimes hard), 3D/Graphical way.

So that about sums up my experience with OGRE and other engines, and that concludes my opinion/answer to your question.

Also, wrappers for OGRE are available for .NET/C# - MOGRE (Managed OGRE), there are a bunch of other wrappers under active development for a lot of languages, including Lua, Python and Java (there might be more).

I hate .NET, and anything above 20 MB that needs to be installed with my application, so I advise you to write native C++ rather than using .NET.
Whatever it offers, an open-source library offers it too, probably faster, all that without any big downloads for your users.

BTW - The lowest compiler version I've seen professional developers use is VC++ 8 (2005), I think even the latest 2011 games use it.

Well the people before me gave you advice on programming languages, now, I'm going to try to give you advice on rendering engines.

I was searching for a way to make a game a few years ago and found out that the best way to develop one was through learning C++ and either using an already established game/rendering engine, or to write one on your own, I chose the former, and thus started trying out different game and rendering engines, among the ones I tried were Panda, OGRE, Irrlicht, Crystalspace and a dozen more.

From testing them out I discarded Crystalspace, Panda and the other engines, as they were either not well-documented, or the examples were too buggy for me to put 2 and 2 together at the time, OGRE and Irrlicht stood out, Irrlicht for the speed and simplicity, and OGRE for that + the beautiful demos, the huge friendly community, and the awesome wiki, among other things. I stuck with it, and learnt C++, a bit of linear algebra, the fun (sometimes hard), 3D/Graphical way.

So that about sums up my experience with OGRE and other engines, and that concludes my opinion/answer to your question.

Also, wrappers for OGRE are available for .NET/C# - MOGRE (Managed OGRE), there are a bunch of other wrappers under active development for a lot of languages, including Lua, Python and Java (there might be more).

I hate .NET, and anything above 20 MB that needs to be installed with my application, so I advise you to write native C++ rather than using .NET.
Whatever it offers, an open-source library offers it too, probably faster, all that without any big downloads for your users.

BTW - The lowest compiler version I've seen professional developers use is VC++ 8 (2005), I think even the latest 2011 games use it.

Thanks for that, so you've learned DirectX i assume, what version are you up to and have you implemented any into OGRE. I am not up with DX but it seems there are ever increasing additions to it for example (and i am just reading this from the docs) , tessellation, multithreading for multi cpus, shaders etc..

How much of this is copyable from sorces or do you have to start from scratch and read the DX SDK docs, somebody must already have examples online etc...

How much of the OGRE engine do you think you know, it's a lot of code, are you able to have it run like say the crysis engine..

Thanks for that, so you've learned DirectX i assume, what version are you up to and have you implemented any into OGRE. I am not up with DX but it seems there are ever increasing additions to it for example (and i am just reading this from the docs) , tessellation, multithreading for multi cpus, shaders etc..

How much of this is copyable from sorces or do you have to start from scratch and read the DX SDK docs, somebody must already have examples online etc...

How much of the OGRE engine do you think you know, it's a lot of code, are you able to have it run like say the crysis engine..

No, I haven't used Direct3D, or OpenGL directly, but through OGRE.

If you want to just make a game that looks good, and don't want to spend years developing your own game engine/framework that will meet the graphical standards that Crysis and it's engine have set, then I suggest you either use Unreal Engine through UDK, or Cry Engine which is free for non-commercial use as of late.

As for how much I know OGRE, well I can't really say, as you can't really know a library 100% unless you are the sole developer, and as tons of people contribute code to OGRE every day, it always has more to offer, and more and more people are making libraries specifically for it, so if you ask me how much of OGRE I can utilize in an application for the moment is probably around 10-15 %, and that's pretty much a lot.

I don't see a reason why you'd need to learn DirectX if you're going to be using an already-established rendering engine such as OGRE, or even a complete game engine, you won't ever need to know anything about the DirectX or OpenGL APIs, as that's handled by OGRE's Render Systems, and on the forums you can also find that you can utilize native OpenGL/DirectX code to work inside an OGRE application, but I don't see any specific reason you'd need to do that, unless you're migrating from native code to a rendering engine.

As for your question about tessellation, and shaders - OGRE supports Cg, HLSL (DirectX), GLSL (OpenGL), and ASM shaders (I think), also a DirectX 11 render system is under development, it's usable but not fully complete.


There's a lot of cool stuff done with OGRE, and even more that are currently under development, check this forum, and this thread for a glance of what it can do, download the SDK, or source and compile the samples to get a hands-on experience of what OGRE is like.