quote:Original post by Anonymous Poster
true, but you need to have several programmers dedicated to such optimizations and they need to be familiar with the engine to make such customizations, plus all the support needed from either criterion or intrinsic to get things to fit in smoothly. when we first looked into renderware and intrinsic for our project, our in-house engine out performed both by a large margin.

Yes, of course the engineers would need to be familiar with the engine. Just like the engineers would need to be familiar with the internal engine to make customizations. And yes, they would have the same support needs as working with internal technology, but at Criterion you would have access to support engineers who have helped on nearly 200 RenderWare titles on next generation consoles and the PC.

I will admit there are definitely situations where an internal engine is going to out perform RenderWare (or Intrinsic) out-of-the-box. That''s not the point. No one can make an engine that''ll make everyone happy all of the time. But that''s not the point! The point is that RenderWare (and middleware in general) provide a jumping off point for your technology. It''s not an even match to compare RenderWare out-of-the-box to an internal engine that''s been in development for 3-6 months for a specific task. I would ask what type of performance tests you were making?

quote:
...i work at one of the companies that has licensed renderware for a few of our games. in-dire situations it is a life saver, but overall i dont think they are up to par.

It was definitely "up to par" for Grand Theft Auto 3/4 and hundreds of other titles.

quote:
you make me laugh. its a driving game, very little besides the car and the tires actaully animates..i know ive made a few of em''. i wonder what their numbers wouldve showed if they had a couple of 50+ boned skinned characters running around. i seriously doubt they would hold..to do so something else would have to give, be it texture reduction or that cool projected shadow!

You actually make me laugh... what are the limits of RenderWare? The same of the underlying hardware, be it the PS2, Xbox, GAMECUBE, or PC. Only a very uneducated use of RenderWare would be limiting. 50+ skin-and-bones characters? Is that stitched, 2-weight, 4-weight? How many bones? What''s the maximum number of vertices in the skin? How well is the geometry tri-stripped? How many different textures are being used and what are their sizes? Do the characters share bone hierarchies? Share animations? Share meshes?

I don''t want to confuse my point. No one should think I''m claiming that you license a graphics engine that you can simply drop artwork into it and get blinding speed. That''s not going to happen. There is no universally optimal engine, unless it has a dozen different implementations internally. The point is that RenderWare provides an excellent initial framework to hook your more custom technology onto. And while you focus on the parts that make your game unique (like 50+ characters running around) someone else in the world is working on improving the core components of the technology, all the while making your life easier (if you let them).

quote:Original post by BloodScourge
...

"Why reinvent the wheel ?" -> salesmen''s way of thinking
"Why don''t improve this ?" -> searchers'' way of thinking

I really hate one of those way...

Don''t forget people that makes it possible...

It''s not a salesman way of thinking (I''m an engineer). It''s called "reuse", if you don''t think it''s a useful concept in software development, you should read up on any good programming text.

"Why don''t improve this?" I guess you can have your cake and eat it to. With RenderWare you don''t have to reinvent the wheel, but you can improve on it if you want to (also referred to as a "flexible architecture", something else you should check out in any good programming text).

Sorry if that sounds rude, but seriously, licensed technology, if done well, doesn''t require you to choose between the two (they are *not* mutually exclusive!).

quote:Original post by SteinbergShlomi
www.RenderWare.com :
Latest News:
22nd March 2002
Electronic Arts, Infogrames And Capcom
All Choose Criterions RenderWare For Future Games

That''s right. But I think that it is better to build your own.

It''s good to know *how* to build your own, as the understanding will make other technology make more sense. But in the dozens and dozens of game teams I have spoken to, very few have given me any reason to think they''d be better off building their own.

BloodScourge,

Sorry for the RenderWare grand-standing... I''ve probably stepped a bit out-of-line (particularly for this forum). I was writing my previous posts on the floor of GDC, so I guess I was in definite cheerleader mode!

All in all, I think we can all agree that the end product is the most important aspect of a game, not the technology behind it (the technology should only be an enabler).

Thanks for everyone''s comments!

quote:It''s not an even match to compare RenderWare out-of-the-box to an internal engine that''s been in development for 3-6 months for a specific task. I would ask what type of performance tests you were making?

actaully our engine is not designed for a specific task, but is being used for 3 completely different genres (action-platformer, racing, fighting) and all the teams that are using it are getting good performance and are happy with it. after we elavulated these middleware packages it was determined that too much work would need to be done to get them to a point were we could do the things that we wanted to do.

as far as performace tests...

we ran the same models and same tests on all the engines we were evaluating. we ran em with realtime lighting, without lighting, with particle systems and without, with skinned characters and without, we covered all the bases. we also evaluated the respective tool chains, and how they would impact a given artist. how hard were the tools to use? how long did they take to process the geometry? what were the in-game load and setup times
like? there are a ton of things to consider..

side stepping a bit..

GTA3 is an incredible game..using a middleware package enabled them to spend a lot of time working on gameplay..and it shows. graphically, they couldve done a lot better job.

quote:But in the dozens and dozens of game teams I have spoken to, very few have given me any reason to think they''d be better off building their own.

the technology is in-house. the people who wrote the code are in the office across the hall.

using a middle-ware engine can save you a lot of time, but you need to know that choosing this route may back you into a corner graphically..

well back to writing character physics and animation handling routines..

good discussion!