Seriously thinking of doing this...

[lonewolff]

Hi Guys,

I have been using GameMaker for the past few months (blasphemy I know LOL ). But, I am finding the renderer very slow and overall missing functionality like ability to load video files etc...

So... I am seriously thinking of writing a piece of game development software similar to GameMaker / Unity and use Ogre as the renderer.

I have been playing around the past few days and have allready gotten excellent results. My render engine is allready benchmarking at ~300% faster than GameMakers one (even if using the $300 additional YYC compiler).

I am now 38 years old and have years under my belt with programming in Assembly & C++, audio, networking, video, etc... and think it is time to do something useful to help budding programmers.

What are your thoughts? I honestly think it wouldn't be that hard to do.

[Klaim]

I think it's a big project for one man, but if you feel like you can do it and have time to do it (maybe not for free) then why not?
I guess that the position your project would take depends on the exact feature set you are targetting, in particular regarding tools. I mean, performance is an argument that is actually relevant only for some kind of projects, not for all, in particular in the indie scene community.

But a game maker with a (optional?) C++ interface would be indeed nice.

[TheSHEEEP]

Well, there are a LOT of tools similar to Game Maker / Unity out there. Each with their advantages and disadvantages.

What you should do is take a look at all of them and try to find something they don't do, or at least not good, and focus on that.
For example, I don't know of any extremely simple (and thus very limited) 3D game maker toolkit that could be used to teach students some basics, without going into the depths of C++ or C#.

I honestly think it wouldn't be that hard to do.

I hope that is irony!
If you do that, you'll be entering a world of pain.
Creating a whole game out of blocks (rendering, physics, audio, etc.) is painful already. Creating a toolkit out of blocks that shall then be easily usable to create a larger variety of games with... oh my!

[spookyboo]

Start with Ogitor. The basics are there but it is far from complete. It is however a good starting point. Probably there are more projects that gather dust but are very useful.
It would be nice that Ogre gets its official sister project 'the official Ogre gameengine', but that probably never happens.

[c6burns]

I agree with Spooky ... and I can say Ogitor is a dream come true. I can't think of a better starting point for an editor, anyway. I have people using Ogitor on both Linux and Windows currently. Soon I will have someone using it on a Mac. If there were an Ogitor cheerleading squad I would join it and wave around pom poms and so on

One day I hope to contribute something back to these projects that have given me so much to get started, but for now the necessities of my first title are the only thing driving the features of my framework. Hopefully I'll have time at some point to clean things up to the necessary standards and contribute them back.

[lonewolff]

I think it's a big project for one man, but if you feel like you can do it and have time to do it (maybe not for free) then why not?
I guess that the position your project would take depends on the exact feature set you are targetting, in particular regarding tools. I mean, performance is an argument that is actually relevant only for some kind of projects, not for all, in particular in the indie scene community.

But a game maker with a (optional?) C++ interface would be indeed nice.

True, I'd love to give it a try (atleast for a month or two and see what pans out). And yes, C++ interface all the way

As with Ogitor, sure that sounds like an option too. But, I know nothing about Ogitor and would be frustrated learning it from back to front to see if it suits what I have in mind. So, in this particular case I'd prefer to do it from scratch.

[c6burns]

I think the opposite way. Eg. All I have to do is learn Ogitor back to front and then I get to start where they finished. Not sure if that means I get more done though ... jury is out on that one.

[Wolfmanfx]

I guess Ogitor would be the better starting point - Qt makes a lot of sense for the editor. I just dislike anglescript but he its just a plugin.

[c6burns]

I also dislike angelscript and so do the scripters I've shown it to. It's too strongly typed, too much like C++. I've embedded Lua in a lot of projects and never been disappointed.

[Zonder]

I would consider a c# interface as well. That way your API to begin with can be c# compatible there is alot of interest in this area.

For scripting scenes I have to agree something that isn't strongly typed is probably best you don't need something so strict as it should be doing simple things.

[Sslaxx]

If you're still working on this you may want to take a look at http://enigma-dev.org/ too.

[lonewolff]

If you're still working on this you may want to take a look at http://enigma-dev.org/ too.

I looked at Enigma, it is extremely buggy and poorly implemented. Even added a patch to the source myself, but it is really a lost cause. The lead dev's heart is not in it. There is so much I wanted to add to Enigma to make it a viable project, but the more I dig into the code, the worse it gets.

Erroneous code is built upon erroneous code. The more you try to fix the deeper you have to go to fix another problem.

The dev teams main goals are to try a match the functionality of GMS no matter the cost. Rather than thoroughly testing every aspect before moving on to the next.

For that reason, I am back onto my initial project (as per my OP).

It isn't feature packed yet, but everything is rock solid so far with loads and loads of internal error detection and handling.

At this point it is very difficult to break it

[spookyboo]

Example video please

[Sslaxx]

A larger still problem concerning ENIGMA is it's licensing, which has been a point of contention for months now. Don't blame you for not using it - it's not worth it.

[lonewolff]

@spookyboo - Sorry mate, nothing worthy of video yet. I'll see if I can whip up a demo over the next couple of weeks.

@Sslaxx - Yeah, the licensing of Enigma was very poorly chosen. They were arguing over it a year ago when I first tried Enigma. Essentially, anything created in Enigma is bound by licensing terms to be open sourced also.

I wan even contemplating writing closed source DLL's to fill some of the voids/flaws that Enigma has, to leave the open source stuff to them to patch up. Although the lead dev said it was ok by him, he still warned that any other contributer still has the right to file a lawsuit, if they wished to.

So yep, I'll be staying right away from that one. Not worth the hassle anyway.

[lonewolff]

Lately I have become renewed in my efforts to press on with this.

I started making an IDE a couple of days ago (which isn't pretty at the moment). Functionality is limited to the more common 'global' type of options. But it works. And that was the main goal



So it is a matter of hitting the toggle boxes, hit the compile button (the cogs at this stage), and 12 seconds later there is a working exe

As you can see from the screenie, I'll have options for 'insta terrain' and 'insta water' shortly.

It will be a matter of selecting sizes, textures, height, etc.. in a window and the IDE will fill in the code.

Yes, it will be a long and hard path, but I am in no rush. Even if it takes several years to complete.

[frostbyte]

i was just looking at ogre3d wikipedia value( boredom... ), when i saw that ogre was already ported to game-maker( 4 years ago... )
i don't realy know game-maker and what's happening there...but still...reminded of this thread...
might save you some work...http://code.google.com/p/gmogre3d/

[lonewolff]

Nah, that only works up to GM 8.1.

GameMaker: Studio is essentially a new product line.

[frostbyte]

GameMaker: Studio is essentially a new product line.

ok, as i said i realy don't know much about gameMaker beside the fact that it is mostly used for 2d...
do you plan to do an ogre backend for the 2d part? add 3d support? both?...
OGRE can realy use some more initatives on the 2d side, but afaik GAME-MAKER is commercial and not free...that is a turnoff for me...

Edit: visited the game-maker market-place, i wonder if it is possible to make a living from that...
any hints will be helpful...

[lonewolff]

Gamemaker has recently become very much 'free'.

The only real restriction is the free version has a splash screen.

So you are perfectly allowed to sell your games with the free edition

There used to be limits on the number of sprites you could use, etc.. But these restrictions have now been removed.