Irrlicht any good?
You could take a look at Urho3D. It's a bit newer and less mature, but it still seems pretty solid and includes rendering, physics, sound and networking.
I am looking to use a free cross platform engine that has everything for the most part all ready done.
"everything" is a pretty generic word there.
What is it that you want to do? Tell someone your idea for a game and have it made for you - zero code? I was going pretty far in that interpretation but you get the idea. You must have some pretty specific requirements for your game that only you can define so please do.
So far I have:
- C/C++ is your language type of choice - or at least C# (.Net in general?) is not an option
- Sounds like your game is 3d oriented vs a 2d sidescroller...(elaborate please to the genre)
- Is it multiplayer?
- Does "everything" include physics, audio, networking?
Anyway - I think people have answered the original question which was "Irlicht any good?" as best they can with the limited parameters. It has proven to work for many different people in many different genres. The specifics of whether or not it is a good choice for your particular game will require some more specifics especially if you are looking for alternate libraries. I would be inclined to suggest SFML at this point since it potentially could offer everything you want.
My experience with Irrlicht was from quite some time ago (over a year, maybe almost two), so be cautious with what I say.
To make the HUD of the game I was trying to make I had to resort to custom nodes and reposition them in 3D space every frame so they were always in front of the camera. For something that uses the GPU to do all the important rendering such as a 3D engine does, I'd have expected more than basic blit functionality for 2D, but nope, so I resorted to custom nodes to render the HUD using my own polygons.
I suppose I could go into more detail but my memory regarding Irrlicht is fuzzy right now so I may as well not badmouth for no reason. I had Allegro already installed so I just used it to take care of sound.
To make the HUD of the game I was trying to make I had to resort to custom nodes and reposition them in 3D space every frame so they were always in front of the camera. For something that uses the GPU to do all the important rendering such as a 3D engine does, I'd have expected more than basic blit functionality for 2D, but nope, so I resorted to custom nodes to render the HUD using my own polygons.
I suppose I could go into more detail but my memory regarding Irrlicht is fuzzy right now so I may as well not badmouth for no reason. I had Allegro already installed so I just used it to take care of sound.
Irrlicht has had built in user interface and 2d rendering functions for quite some time, so that experience is probably out-dated. 
//EDIT: Unless this functionality was already present and you're suggesting that you were expecting something more sophisticated? Just realised I read your post incorrectly the first time through...
//EDIT: Unless this functionality was already present and you're suggesting that you were expecting something more sophisticated? Just realised I read your post incorrectly the first time through...
I've used them both quite extensively, and they are both capable tools. I would say that for a true 3D game, wanting to use the most modern rendering techniques, Ogre is probably a better choice. It has a much more flexible material system, and supports deferred rendering out of the box (as of Ogre 1.8). Some people dislike the use of singletons or it's reliance on a scene graph, but those are minor quibbles when you're trying to make a game. It's not a religion, it's an engine.
Irrlicht is a slightly different beast. It's much less feature rich, but it's very tight, and it provides some higher level functionality that Ogre does not (though Ogre CAN provide that functionality, it just requires coding from the developer). This is mostly in the 2D space, where Irrlicht comes out of the box with an entire orthographic drawing library.
I am currently using Irrlicht (via the IrrlichtLime .NET wrapper) in my project, because it's 2D and I like the easy to use built in 2D functions of Irrlicht. That said, they are rendering engines, not game engines. If you want a game engine, you're better off going the Unity or UDK route (I'm not sure why you don't want to learn C#, if you know C++ you basically already know C#...I sense some bias there).
Irrlicht is a slightly different beast. It's much less feature rich, but it's very tight, and it provides some higher level functionality that Ogre does not (though Ogre CAN provide that functionality, it just requires coding from the developer). This is mostly in the 2D space, where Irrlicht comes out of the box with an entire orthographic drawing library.
I am currently using Irrlicht (via the IrrlichtLime .NET wrapper) in my project, because it's 2D and I like the easy to use built in 2D functions of Irrlicht. That said, they are rendering engines, not game engines. If you want a game engine, you're better off going the Unity or UDK route (I'm not sure why you don't want to learn C#, if you know C++ you basically already know C#...I sense some bias there).
//EDIT: Unless this functionality was already present and you're suggesting that you were expecting something more sophisticated? Just realised I read your post incorrectly the first time through...
Yeah, I meant that. I had to resort to custom nodes to work around its limitations. At least it led to the funny event of there being a giant "PAUSE" banner in the middle of the field when I was first testing my code =P
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As of now I am going to use Irrlicht, I looked at Orge3D, and it looks ok also, but for now going to try Irrlicht, and if I find it to be a PITA, I will try Orge3D after that.
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