Anyone use Game Engines Directly?

I was wondering about all the choices for game engines.

Learning DirectX and OpenGL is one option, but it can be tedious to learn especially since resources online are scarce (somewhat). There's no source of articles on how to make a certain game in DirectX or OpenGL etc, they are hard to find.

I was thinking instead, I might learn a free opensource engine like irrLicht or Ogre3D! What do you think about these engines.

I found that Ogre3D is harder to learn but works out nice. Irrlicht is extremely easy to learn but the graphics turn out bad and sometimes freezes.

Do you have another engine preference?

Do you prefer paid engines like Unreal Engine?

What kind of engines are good? Did I miss any other quality free engine for C++?

Irrlicht is ok, but it is bad in the fact that it tries to do everything.

Ogre3D is very good as it does not have any ties to games. It is designed to only be a graphic renderer for whatever purposes.

As I have found out though, if you are good enough then just work on your own engine, because there is a good chance you dont need 50% or more of what is in those engines.

OpenGL, DirectX, and the such are not engines per say. They are interfaces for using the graphics cards and rendering things in 3D space. Like raigne said though, depending on your game it is almost easier to make your own engine if you are starting out since you will only need a few things that pay-for engines have.

Also, you are not going to find tutorials on making a certain type of game in any specific language. The same thing can be accomplished many different ways in lots of different languages. If you want an opensource language close to opengl, look up Mesa 3D. It is basically the same as opengl, but open source, but it doesn't have the opengl license.

There are too many engines and too many purposes on the net, choose it carefully or try them one by one :D

If you think their engine's design is good, I mean the way you can paint objects on the screen, loading images or play something cool by using their style, well, you can stick to them.

I would prefer to begin from zero instead of using engines, especially for 3D. Because we can learn more cool things such as backbuffer, collision, physics, and AI. They are quite fun and time consuming to learn xD

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I was thinking instead, I might learn a free opensource engine like irrLicht or Ogre3D! What do you think about these engines.

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YACTL (Yet Another Complex Thing to Learn) xD You'll need templates to use their engine...

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I found that Ogre3D is harder to learn but works out nice. Irrlicht is extremely easy to learn but the graphics turn out bad and sometimes freezes.

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YACPLY (Yet Another Complex Problem by Learning YATCL) The side effect,... No, you'll get no side effect if you learn from the basic. Try to learn the way you'll render things.

Note:
Your questions sounds a bit like survey? :D

> Do you have another engine preference?
Quake3 :-). Or at least a few of the projects that improve it.

If you find you can't really use OpenGL or DirectX with just a manual after you've covered the basics (there are billions of tutorials ;)), then you shouldn't try and tackle a game engine at all.

HGE is a great 2D engine, it uses DirectX ;) search on google!
Source Engine, is a great engine, but I guess there are some restrictions, since you only get to make mods, but I dunno really :P
Those both are free, have a look ;) Use google! I'm too lazy to find links, sorry!

Everyone seems to be encouraging me to really look into DirectX itself.

The thing is, I was always assuming that a game engine that wraps itself for DirectX would simplify things, but when I look at Ogre3D I'm going "it seems like they overcomplicated it."

While Irrlicht is simple, I been looking for something like it (pseudo code below):
DisplayMesh("mesh.3ds", &pos);
Animate("animationfile");
Move(&pos);

But it seems many game engines don't make it so simple :P.

But anyway, I didn't think I'd have to really look into DirectX and learn all those hundreds of APIs, working with buffers and code that really should already be inside functions themselves.

How simple is it to display a certain 3D program created file?

I haven't found a good source of tutorials for DirectX, where can I find it? I looked at gamedev.net with little luck.

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Originally Posted by execute

How simple is it to display a certain 3D program created file?

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Never expect simple things in 3D.

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I haven't found a good source of tutorials for DirectX, where can I find it? I looked at gamedev.net with little luck.

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http://alt.pluralsight.com/wiki/defa...DTutorialIndex
http://www3.telus.net/alexander_russ...duction_dx.htm
http://www.cpp-home.com/tutorial.php?23_1
http://www.riemers.net/eng/Tutorials...++/series1.php
http://www.chadvernon.com/blog/tutorials/directx9/
http://www.flipcode.com/archives/

Still have a little luck? I've bookmarked them.

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Originally Posted by execute

While Irrlicht is simple, I been looking for something like it (pseudo code below):
DisplayMesh("mesh.3ds", &pos);
Animate("animationfile");
Move(&pos);

But it seems many game engines don't make it so simple :P.

...How simple is it to display a certain 3D program created file?

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Taken directly from my code that loads .md2 files...

Code:

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LOADMD2 mdl;
//in the WM_CREATE message
mdl.LoadMD2File("dwarf.md2");

//in the rendering message/function
mdl.RenderMD2Objects(frame);

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Now, since I made those functions they can look anyway I want. But the code that does the actual loading... well that's not as simple as two steps like above. There is not going to be a simple approach when loading pre-made 3D files/animations.

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There is not going to be a simple approach when loading pre-made 3D files/animations.

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D3DX actually has made this quite simple. However you are tied into their 'framework'. Thankfully it's quite easy to extend it.

Sorry if this is to old.
but directxtutorial.com tells you how to set up DirectX for rendering, and quite a few other things.
I have realized a lot of it is trial and error. ( of course you could buy a book )

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Originally Posted by execute

But it seems many game engines don't make it so simple :P.

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That's because Direct3D and OpenGL are interfaces to graphics device hardware, while OGRE and Irrlicht are graphics libraries that provide methods to interact with D3D or OGL easier. Irrlicht is also a networking, input, and UI library though, but it's just a 3D app engine - not a game engine.

Real game engines would be Unreal Engine, Quake Engine, Torque Engine, etc.

Those engines have game scripting so most of the code is simple. Those are heavy-duty engines though, and there's simpler ones.