@\NightandtheShape/@

It depends upon skill, some people could, some couldn't. It may require alot of time and patience. What engine is it may I ask?

This is a tricky subject... Naturally, I assume that you have a small coding team. Although my I add a small coding team is certainly capible of producing a damn fine game engines, but it requires alot of time. It would help if you'd stated exactly what you require from the engine. (platform surpport, specific features etc...) I've had some experience with Torque and I had an interesting conversation with one of the garage games guys at gamefest 2007, where I basically made my disdain for the engine known, although that isn't to say that the engine itself is completely cack. It's a buggy engine from my experience, and a bitch to use, I hated the scripting language with a passion. So I certainly understand any aprehension in regards to its use. I'd say it's a no go for me personally, but as far as completeness goes it's actually fairly powerful, and certainly more useable than some of the other engines you've stated. As the licence allows for direct source code access then I wouldn't really count it out, a modified Torque engine may be infact exactly what you're looking for but it depends entirely upon your coding team, and your needs. So don't count it out as far as it goes it's a fairly complete product with alot of support. Ogre is widely known as a render engine, and other than the fact that it provides the basic gubbins it could be quickly considered to be fairly useless, that said! It should be an attractive concept as it leaves the rest of the systems open to be designed and integrated as needed, you'd certainly have to work on it alot before you saw any results but it's likely that you'd end up yielding some very good results with it. Never heard of Nebula2, or Unity... And I'd certainly say that Source is likely to be a no go for you guys, as you're not intending to make a mod, so the issues you've stated soon crop up. I've taken a look at C4's capibilities, it's okay, there isn't anything outstanding about it, but it seems to have a decent enough tool chain, that said I have no direct experience with it. I wouldn't use it, but that's me... I'd just write my own. That said it does indeed seem to be what you're looking for, in regards to completeness, I don't know how stable the engine is, but it certainly seems friendly enough, and the animation/model format is acceptable, I've come across collada before it's not a complex format, but certainly a capible format. The sound engine appears to be robust, and you have some typical and commonplace shader features in there. Comprehensive bump mapping support. (Which you'd want) Enhanced parallax mapping. (Nice) Horizon mapping. (This is basically a type self shadowing) Ambient lighting volumes. (DUH!) Gloss-mapped specular reflections. (heh some phong based stuff which works off a texture most likely) Cube environment mapping. (Claps hands, been around since the dark ages) Cook-Torrance microfacet surface reflection. (That sounds more impressive than it is, I wrote such a shader a few weeks ago, except I integrated it directly with bump mapping, which gave an awesome result, but cook torrance lighting is fairly good) Bumpy reflection and refraction. (Nothing astounding about that) Realistic water shading. (A day's work) ^ That's an average bunch. It just about fulfills the list of requirements from my own perspective. That said the material system in my own engine is more advanced. The lighting and shadowing engine looks decent enough... I wish i could say what your results would be like... But unless you have coders who wanna get your hands dirty it may be a little less than what you need. Have you looked at Irrlicht? Its also supposed to be good, but again it'll require getting your hands dirty.

BG along with Diablo revived a die'in genre, there hadn't been a noteable release of an CRPG for years until that point, well some people may say M&M was, but meh, it didn't reinvent the genre. CRPG's were well established before this dying off period (see Ultima's, bards tales etc...) but between around 93-97 it was a bleak peroid, where RPG's almost died completely at one point, and what was released was generally extremely poor, BG and Diablo breathed a breath of fresh air into the genre and pushed the bounderies of what found be expected. But it didn't really estalbish the genre, just gave it a jolt. It's like saying WoW was the first established MMO... Everquest and Ultima Online would be better responses and more accurate, WoW is certainly the first widely popular MMO, but it didn't establish them. Ok, so Fallout 1 & 2 never existed? Oh they did and they made a huge impact!

OOO Didn't know you could bang it in with the exe... :D learn something new everyday.

BG along with Diablo revived a die'in genre, there hadn't been a noteable release of an CRPG for years until that point, well some people may say M&M was, but meh, it didn't reinvent the genre. CRPG's were well established before this dying off period (see Ultima's, bards tales etc...) but between around 93-97 it was a bleak peroid, where RPG's almost died completely at one point, and what was released was generally extremely poor, BG and Diablo breathed a breath of fresh air into the genre and pushed the bounderies of what found be expected. But it didn't really estalbish the genre, just gave it a jolt. It's like saying WoW was the first established MMO... Everquest and Ultima Online would be better responses and more accurate, WoW is certainly the first widely popular MMO, but it didn't establish them.

The idea that PC gaming will die is an absolute myth, time and time again I've explained the patterns of the gaming industry and its very unlikely to change. The PC market itself vastly outnumbers the console market, so even contemplating that developers will simply cease to develop for the platform is out there in the realms of ignorance, or perhaps better put as misunderstanding. It's very simple matter of the fact stuff really, PC gaming has been in such a position before, back when the playstation was released and 3D graphics were all the rage, the PC's of the time we're not capible of producing the same results as the playstation without the aid of what was then extremely expensive 3D accelerators. Windows 95 and Direct X eventually changed this, along with some noteable titles, Quake, Half-life, Diablo, Fallout, and Baldurs Gate spring to mind. What does exist belongs to technological leaps, when the XBox was released it was based upon Direct X 8 API and the windows 2000 kernal, albiet it modified and optermized for the specific hardware. This in laymans terms basically states that you can do more with less so to speak, yet the PC soon entered the direct X 9 era, which is frankly a far more capible API, HLSL and programmable graphical hardware placed the PC technologically well above the Xbox, all noteable sellers made there way ontop the PC, Halo and KOTOR, albiet that they were originally exclusive to the XBOX, the same can be said of Paystation 2 titles (which has a insane number of crap - good game ratio, and awfully weak hardware). We also found that developers would always jump at cross platform development, this isn't a new thing at all, heck I remember the days when crossplatform releases consisted of totally different versions of the same game! Now we've seen the release of the next generation of consoles, the XBOX 360 is, to be blunt, Direct X 9.0c in a box with three dual threaded processors. The PC is looking at an entirely new API Direct X 10, and entirely new operating system Vista, and quad cores becoming common place, all that is happening is the same as what happend when PC's moved from DOS to windows 95, the next few years will see more reliable games made on the PC, this can be attributed to this latest step forwards. There will always be developers working on the edge creating cutting edge games. Direct X 10 really does make it easier for the developer, and the PC has something now that no other gaming platform has, geometry shaders. It is always finacially viable to make games for a console and or the PC platform, the problem comes from publishers who will pay more to developers to develop for consoles when they're first released, the same game may get double the budget on a console than on the PC in regards to development. Developers want to reach as many people on as many platforms as possible, so why would they cut out the platform which is more capible (hardware wise)than others? It just doesn't make sense. Developers aren't just going to stop developing games for the PC, but they may very well stop developing games for only the PC, when other options exist, but there will always be PC only titles as there are console only titles. To be blunt, the PC market can't die, because that's where the next generation of consoles will come from, its where the hardware is researched, where the API's are developed, where the cutting edge technology is released, the console is the technology of yesturdays PC's, just optermised.

GTA in a nutshell is basically the virtual glorification of gangsta violence, something which is popular in both movies and music especially within youth culture. That's why it's popular. Admitantly I enjoy the freedom GTA allows because, frankly beating virtual grannies with a virtual baseball bat gives me kick, well not quite as much as a virtual granny beating gang bangers with a baseball bat but meh... You get the point, and its certainly a pointless and sadistic exercise. This is also not the focus of any of the GTA games, and not all that much different to running about in fallout killing all the children you can find, or villagers or whatever... No difference at all. It's popular because the game allows you to do many things which appeal to gamers (other than but as well as killing), you say it's gross and horrific, but I don't see all that much difference between Fallout, and GTA from the perspective of the things which you can do in those virtual worlds. By the way the point of the GTA series isn't to run about killing as many people as you can, nor can you rape anyone in these games, you just take part in a kinda mundane gangsta movie.

Hmmmm Hopefully they will DIE! Scum that they are.

*Points & Laughs*

Not that I can see why you'd want a manifest file ahem... You need to have it in your bin folder... Also depends upon your build type, but you can just force the file to copy by adding it to the solution and modifying the properties of the object. That's if my memory serve me correctly!

I must admit dungeon siege I certainly enjoied dungeon siege co-op, pick up and play co-op is always good no?

Man that is old school...

What can be said honestly about NWN2... To be honest I rarely find myself being annoied by the game itself, it's more other small gripes. Such as the engine performance upon release... The UI is fairly glitchy, well to be honest it's totally bugged, but it's not game breaking in any manner, more an annoyance. The camera is slightly annoying for me, but that has more to do with the fact that I had to spend so long setting it up, its a double edged sword, on one hand you've alot of power when it comes to the camera, but that in a way is counter productive as the user has to invest a certain amount of time finding an optimal camera solution... The particle and effects system is impressive, infact I've not seen many systems that are as functional, it's a major improvement over NWN's and better than alot of FPS's. I'm not 100% sure how the mesh heads are shaded(I'm assuming a texture, but there seems to be some vertex colouring and normal mapping), but the results certainly better than NWN 1, but I'm still not a huge fan, I suppose I've been spoilt by games such as DM:M&M... But then again, a cheap yet good looking method in regards to processing has been achieved so I can't really knock it, as there is certainly a requirement for alot of meshes on screen along with the fact that they're fairly high polygonal there certainly seems to be some good technology under the hood. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the lighting and shadowing engine is some extremely good work, the down side of it is the expense in regards to processing, though naturally it's fully scalable. I'm shocked about the lack of HDR, and the somewhat poor result that is achieved from the bloom. Now that I've come back to it after giving the dev's chance to fix it's badgerness I'm rather pleased from a technology stand-point. Sadly I have to admit, The Witcher looks alot better, and runs better on my machine. As the core underlaying technology is the same it certainly gives me pause for thought in regards to the negative effects of all the added extra's nwn2 provides.

I haven't really looked at the keyboard in years.... I certainly ain't touch typing, I have a very gimped style...I cover qweasdzxc with my leff and Usually shift, the rest I do with my right hand... so it jumps around alot.... but heck I taught myself from the age of 4 or 5 so it's no surprise to me that it's an odd inefficient style.

What a relief it is to know sand doesn't have a driving licence...

Dungeon Siege 1 and 2 was many things but I wouldn't say it could ever be considered to be a leader in regards to gameplay innovation. That said! While a hardend RPG fan may indeed scowl and look at DS as being perhaps exactly what RPG's should not be, that of an endless uninvolving hack and slash with little to no story, no role playing, and well no anything other than loot and killing and perhaps the odd seemingly pointless and dull quest with innately dull and unchallenging gameplay. I believe it is fair to say that it fills a rather nice gap in the market, its a very nice entry level game. The gameplay itself is simple, the mechanics easy enough for a newbie gamer to grasp on their first outing, and what story there is is perhaps enough to communicate the general idea of an CRPG. While I am fairly impartial to DS, I've played both, and enjoied what little worth exists in both single and multiplayer(which is infact alot of fun over LAN). I can note that as an entry level game, for new gamers (and I'm talking total n00bs here, folk who've never been near a game, not just never been near an CRPG) it does a very very good job as a simple introduction, a game such as those based upon TES or D&D can be overwhelming for this kind of n00b, all the rules, the classes, the general combat... etc... Are more than enough to put a person off playing said games all togeather. So while DS should be slated for its weak points, I don't think it ever pretended to be on a level with the kind of CRPG's we all love to play. Now what can be said about DS is mostly technical, the engine was upon release innovative, it was certainly the first game I am aware of to have an engine that streamed the level via clever cache'in techniques. Also the GFX engine was certainly good considering the comparitive releases at the time, the game looked more natural than NWN's and the effects engine was certainly better than both NWN's and Morrowind.

Aye, that'd be the one thing you got me owned on

*shudders* Bloody hate firefox, don't know what it is perhaps I've been using IE way too long but I just can't abide by it.

W00t, I'm so playing the british \m/.

Its true to some extent. I know that women have been bothered with my lack of attention to my surroundings, but thats just because I walk around like a proper man with my head in the clouds, pondering scientific theories or why Spiderman married Mary Jane and not Felicia Hardy. So true, Answering those important questions brings such revelation to a man....

Hey I had, I've always thought they were a shower of... Damnit, swear filter.

Look at that! It's been a matter of days and Kaft is now a bonified console tard, with bells whistles and a paper hat! With a rapidly falling IQ Kaft, I'm surprise you can still type! Jokes aside, JE 2 would certainly be a good thing, and I enjoied it more than most of biowares offerings.

Now now, don't start with insults. You pressed "[...]HL2 to me has one of the worst implementations I've seen." Then I simply asked "Have you actually coding experience with the Source engine?" You: "Pretty certain I already said I hadn't, to clarify I'm not speaking of the code implementation (The code is probably fairly slick)[...]" You're saying it has the worst implementation, yet you claim you never actually worked with it. Uh-huh. I tried to for clarity. What I am trying to get across and indeed may have made a bad job of it is, that the result of the implementation isn't very good, the implementation itself may be very slick as a piece of code but the result looks rather avaerage at the best of times, at the worst it seems like a total hack. It may be fast clever intuitive in its implementation, but the result of the implementation is still fairly poor. That was my point, I'm sorry for any confusion on that.

And how exactly do you think I have done that? By basically saying I find source to be a second rate engine at the side of UE 3.0 and Id Tech? Even going so far to acknowledge that people may infact LIKE the engines visual results even though I don't, by saying that a good or bad engine doesn't particularly dictate that a game made with it is good or bad? Morgoth, were you born arguementative? or is it just that you're unable to accept opinions outside of your own realm of existence?

Have you actually coding experience with the Source engine? Pretty certain I already said I hadn't, to clarify I'm not speaking of the code implementation (The code is probably fairly slick), just the end result doesn't appeal to me, that and the fact occasionally the shadows are cast on surfaces that they shouldn't be. I am speaking in regards to the generic HL2 source implementation, Ep1 + 2 use a different version of the engine, don't they? Source engine is ike marmite, you love it or hate it. I don't like it.