Why are we wasting our time learning openGL and writing in native code,when these two companies have solved it all for us ( synical overtone to voice )
www.conitec.com
www3drad.com
Can these things really do all that they claim? comments please…
dd
I’m not writing games/engines because I want to make a game/engine. I want to learn how different LOD algorithms, culling, optimization and everything involved in games works. I want to learn to code efficiently.
Learning OpenGL is no big deal. I learned the basics of OpenGL in a month or two. But it have taken me about four years to get to the point where I am now in general 3D graphics/algorithms/techniques and so on. These kind of stuff is not something you read in a “Learn 3D grahics in 21 days”-book. You learn it by using it.
I want to be able to say, “Hey, look what I have done”, not “Hey, look what someone did for me”.
Go Bob!!! You now understand my cynicism…
I am suspicious of anything that claims to be able to deliver performant 3d graphics and also claims to be flexible.
The lazy mans approach never taught anyone anything…
Anyway,I’m waiting for the speech recognition game engine, where you describe to it, what you want your game to do and it comes back 3 hours later with the code!
dd
Dodgyposse are you sure that this is what you want?
“Anyway,I’m waiting for the speech recognition …, where you describe to it, what you want your game to do and it comes back 3 hours later with the code!”
Every programmer around the world would then be out of jobs, since it would not take a rocket scientist to master speaking to a computer in an every day vocal language.
[This message has been edited by Thug (edited 05-31-2001).]
As a programmer of 21 years experience, and working in the computer industry ( telecomms ), this is NOT what I want…it will never happen in my lifetime anyway.
Not as long as Microsoft rules the earth anyway 
I was simply begin sarcastic…the english are famous for it you know!
Hm…GameCreator *lol =), I’ve one time been on a Gameprogrammer’s conference in Stuttgart, Southgermany, and there were really tons of people using this Acknex stuff…and what can I say…I am software-developer for 3D-games and…I don’t know, I also programmed as child already, but never to earn money, more because I want to know everything…at least as much as possible. These GameCreator-things…is for me similar as if someone put a can into the microwave and would say “You see, I cooked chinese”. First of all it’s surely tasting worser, but mainly it wasn’t him who did this, but any machines and in the case of GamesCreator, it were the programmers of Acknex who really made the game and not the people who made some scripts for it.
I’ve really been surprised, how much you can do with these Acknex-stuff, but I also saw the problems the people who are using this stuff had. No possibility to extend it, no possibility to fix any bugs.
I think the most of us here don’t want to write down anything like a script, at least me not, it’s the experimenting I love, to get experience to get a bigger knowledge and of course also the matter that the people here in firm are sometimes saying to me “Wow, does the new landscapeengine look great, wow is that a cool effect.”
The problem is that the sames things are surely also often said to the people who are using this microwave-ready-Acknex-stuff and I think this is also the reason, why some people are wasting so much time with them.
Michaeli think its nice… for designers… to play around with ideas fast and simple without knowing how to render a landscape fast and how to do the collisiondetection but how to create the labyrinth that it is difficult but not boring and this stuff… meaning at the very beginning if the game could be funny or not… i had one time gamesfactory at beginning and it whas really funny cause you fast get some nice ( ok, 2d at the time… ) results and i got a nice little space shooter and now all i do is trying to get it into 3d with opengl 
i mean, at the end… every programer tries to set something up with nice level editors for the leveldesigners, and such… and this is now such a set, made by programmers… the guys who want to code can code, and the one that wants to create some levels can do that… but with what utilies is not important…
oh, and unreal2 is simply a gamestudio… just for the ones that can pay it… ( ok i think they will release a game, too… but in fact a really good engine is the same a good gamestudio, isn’t it? )
You are all aware that Epic (Unreal Warfare engine), Id (Quake 3, Doom 3 engine), Monolith (LithTech engine) and a bunch of other companies also license 3D engines, right?
Personally, I’d trust any of the three I mentioned to provide a fast and flexible game engine for current/near-future FPS and RPG type games. If what I want to do is designe a game, not build technology, it’s a lot faster and cheaper to pick one of these up than to roll my own from scratch.
Hello,
I can understand your comments, but you guys really are the wrong target audience =) I can’t see john carmack saying “WHOO HOO! game creator, here we come!!” and release doom 3 with the cute A4 watermark in the top corner =)
its for little kids! i guess. Or ppl who want ot make a game but can’t code. I know tonnes of ppl like that. I guess its in the same vein as lego is for people who want to build, but not architects?
Anyway… I remember having tonnes of fun playing with Shoot ‘em Up Construction Kit on my commodore64 when i was 12 =) It was just fun drawing the graphics and scripting the game without worry about codin’.
you guys are not the right audience for it, but that isn’t to say that there IS a market for it, even if it IS rapid prototyping so the designers can take it to some REAL developers.
cheers
John