What happend with Ogre?

[lonewolff]

Hey guys,

I started playing with Ogre back in late 2005. The forums were always packed and had a great welcoming atmosphere.

Since coming back recently, things seem extremely quiet. There seems to be less than half a dozen regular's now.

Those that are still here are still friendly and eager to help, but it is very quiet.

So what happened?

Is it the growth of the other major engines - like Unity, CryEngine, and Unreal Engine, that have had an impact on Ogre? Did people flee when Steve Streeting hung up his hat? Or has the times 'just changed'?

Apart from dabbling a little in DirectX now and then, Ogre has always been the 'go to' for me when it comes to 3D rendering. Never even tried the alternatives.

[Klaim]

Well first Unity is one obvious reason, then there is a lot of people going 2D so they use SDL, SFML, Cocos2DX, OpenFrameworks, and other tools...

Ogre become useful only if you need a very flexible graphic system and the ones in the game engines are not flexible enough for your case.

So I guess it's normal. Maybe there will be more people with Ogre 2.x releases but I think it would be far far more popular if it was easier to setup/manipulate.

[TheSHEEEP]

^ What he said.

It is not really surprising.

[al2950]

Its an interesting point. There has been a definite decline, and with things like UE4 becoming accessible by affectively everyone one can see why people would be tempted away. Ogre still has its place, firstly I think its very good for those learning programming (graphics or otherwise), i used it way back at uni and learnt more during one project than in 4 years!! Secondly for projects where the customer has asked for specific set of requirements, like simulation, you can not guarantee you can do it with something like Unity or UE4. I have seen examples of this, and everything has gone to pot because of some simple functionality which is missing. It can be as simple as a ::get* .... I know UE4 is open source but have you seen the source!! Its fairly epic!

Anyway Ogre 2 has some very exciting stuff coming, and I think Ogre 1.x got left behind a little on the graphics front. I know I am not paying much attention to 1.x, as I am trying to get up to speed with 2.0 with the hope I can get the tutorials converted and along with the new HLMS I think Ogre will become more attractive again. Time will tell, in some ways I think Ogre 2.0 was a bit late, although in other ways I would say it was spot on with the understanding on how graphics programming is changing ie Mantle, AZDO, Dx12 etc...

Hopefully we can breath fire back into the belly of the beast

[NotCamelCase]

Being C/C++ based is another reason, I think. Not everyone is so comfort or experienced in native as in C# or Lua, let alone the development time difference. You can use script language of your choice with Ogre surely thanks to OSS and native but that requires more additional effort as compared to using a pre-set, full-featured engine such as Unity or UE. That said, I chose Ogre because it was native as I wanted to improve my knowledge on graphics and native dev more. Anyway, I still see great Ogre-based games getting Greenlit and an awesome ongoing v2.0 process.

Just my 2 cents, I think the community (including me; I know I shamefully lack this) should be more appreciative and supportive to all the helpful people spending their times on Ogre voluntarily.

[Thyrion]

I am working since 2 years on my shit dream game (with ogre) in my sparetime ... (it will always be a dream)

I am still trying to glue all pieces (ogre,sfml,bullet,sqlite,flatbuffers,wpf editor) together ....

The last half year i am looking daily in the unreal forum (mostly if i am frustrated about my shitcode) and its just frustrating what they can create, within a super short time, by just clicking some things together with blueprints....

I am watching the ogre and sfml forum 5-10 times daily and the neonaxis project maybe daily, silently from the shadows.
In the last half year, this nice communities just seems to stand still and are dead compared to the UE Community.
The most active Thread in the Ogre forum seems to be: What game are you playing now?

after playing around hours with the unreal engine editor, i am getting frustrated and have to recognise art is hard work and i will never be a good game art maker.
So i turn back to my shitcode...

btw. porting the ogre code to 2.0 seems like a pita ...

[lonewolff]

Where does one get there hands on Ogre 2?

Is there a page that shows how it works and how it differs from 1.x?

[spacegaier]

There is a guide in draft stage: http://yosoygames.com.ar/other/Ogre%202 ... 0DRAFT.pdf

[lonewolff]

That keeps coming up as a dead link for me

[frostbyte]

year:2017...
location: OGRE forum
hello,hello does anybody hear me...???
is there anybody out their....??
i need help...
anyone...?...?...?

jokes aside...
noticed a steep decline in forum activety ever since the evil forces of unreal 4 "dropped the bomb"...
checked the download statistics and noticed that the decline is steady with peaks after each new release....
so i guess what your witnessing is a combination of the two above...
guess OGRE 2.0 when released can create some waves...

however as it seems , indie dev's are now more interested in actualy making games rather than fighting bugs, compilation errors and reinventing the wheel
OGRE is still relevant because it was never meant to be a game engine/ide...
it was always focused on being a rendering engine, and as such i think it's doing quite a good job serving its purpose....

code itself becomes less relevant to the edge software creator and much more emphasis is put on the development process( unity/unreal etc... ) of a software product and on the product itself...
eventualy as software and knowledge are alway's getting bigger and more complex all api's will function as "little black boxes" ( or "not so little" in case of OGRE ) in some sort of creative development enviroments...
better docs, nightly builds Ogre 2.0, sending bonbons to ogre users etc can make a difference but this course of study will not stop and will only go deeper and wider...

to sum it up...
ogre is as relevant as ever...( as an api )
gone are the days when the programmer wrote the code( in assembly of course ), did the art,music, pr, burn the cds, etc....
software designers, cg artists and software engineer are growing apart - i think its a good and natural thing...
fact that folks are switching from traditional c++ to a full game-engine ide( unity,unreal,cry ) to create their games faster and better does'nt mean bad things for OGRE as it was never meant to compete with such tools...
never the less - OGRE as it is a FOSS is the base api of existing and some upcoming ide's, if this ide's will take off( neoaxis - its time for mobile!!! ) i'm pretty sure OGRE will gain more interest and forums will be crowded once more...

[Kojack]

That keeps coming up as a dead link for me

Are you by chance in australia? Optus blocks the entire server that site is hosted on for some unknown reason. Matias and I tried to track it down a while ago. I have to use a proxy service to read it.


Unfortunately Unity and UE4 have pretty much stolen the show. Neither of them are as flexible or free as Ogre (UE4 is open source, but you need to pay for access, Unity's free version has limits and is closed source), but they massively simplify making games.

I've even been pushed away from teaching Ogre to programmers. Not by the actual programming students, they appreciate it, but by the local games industry (who I've watched berating students who use Ogre), other staff (who don't really understand it) and students in other disciplines (designers and artists are taught Unity, then hate using anything else).
Sure they are putting out good looking games very quickly, but with no real understanding of what goes on underneath.
(I like that when I browse slashdot without ad blocks on, I get adds for my college that use a screen shot of a student Ogre game in the background. Hell yeah.)

Did people flee when Steve Streeting hung up his hat?

Things did slow down for a while around then (as well as later losing cabalistic, xavier and jacmoe). But it picked up again as the team settled into their new roles.
Matias has gone crazy (in a good way) with Ogre 2.0, I think it's internals are going to give the other engines a run for their money.

I think something we need is a better alternative to Mogre. C# is quite popular for game dev and students. With .Net going officially cross platform and open source, that will increase. But Mogre lags massively behind Ogre and is painful to update. I wish it was possible to make Mogre be an official part of Ogre with both staying in sync (like the C# binding for SFML). I'm not a C# fan, but it is definitely easier for beginners.
(Of course there's NeoAxis, but I mean a lower level engine like Mogre).
Maybe Python too (I really hate python, but others love it). Both Python Ogre (still Ogre 1.6) and Py Ogre (web site is dead) seem to be gone.

[Kojack]

Time will tell, in some ways I think Ogre 2.0 was a bit late, although in other ways I would say it was spot on with the understanding on how graphics programming is changing ie Mantle, AZDO, Dx12 etc...

That's an interesting point. Steve leaving definitely delayed the 2.0 development while the team caught up, but the timing of the current 2.0 work fit in nicely with the recent gpu api changes.

[frostbyte]

Both Python Ogre (still Ogre 1.6) and Py Ogre (web site is dead) seem to be gone.

last i checked in the github rep, it was updated to 1.8 - https://bitbucket.org/kiwisoft/python-ogre
i've read the developer is still working on this - but that he doesn't have much spare time and thats why the progress is slow...http://www.ogre3d.org/addonforums/viewt ... =3&t=29591
any way it's not quite dead yet...

[areay]

For my part, I used to check the forums many times a day and post all my noob questions too. Then I got a bit better and started helping out by answering other people's questions. Now, after a few years using Ogre, I only visit a few times a week. I'm still working on my game every day but I don't *need* to come here as often anymore. All I need now is the Ogre manual and API doco, both of which I host on my local machine.

So what I'm thinking is that as competency increases, the frequency of forum interaction often decreases. Thankfully, there are exceptions like Kojack and other big-names who, despite being pros, still come back and post regularly.

For example, look at user 'pontus' http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/memberlist ... le&u=28154 he's been a member for 4 years, posted 6 messages and then "comes out of nowhere" to post this awesome looking game http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic. ... 3&p=511213 . This guy is obviously really good but he wasn't active on the forums during the time he made it. Same deal with the team that made "Torchlight". After finding this game I did some searching on these forums but couldn't find much to suggest that their devs were posting questions here. Makes sense as that team were mostly pro before starting Torchlight and I guess they just read the doco and API and away they went.

Maybe this "quietening" on the forums is somewhat related to Ogre's maturity and the hardcore user-base's increased skill/experience.

Also, I also forsaw doom for Ogre until I saw that Matias had joined the team and was spearheading Ogre2.0. I can't wait for that to be released. I don't mean to take anything away from the rest of the Ogre core team, it's just the big change is needed.

[frostbyte]

All I need now is the Ogre manual and API doco, both of which I host on my local machine.

its true, pro's dont realy need much help as the forum and docs are already packed with material...and they can already swim...
but there is a decline in the Newbie forum activety and my guess is that there is a similar increase in the unreal/unity Newbie forum activety...
any way ogre is losing popularity to the new kids ...that is an unfortunate fact...

[lonewolff]

Yep, I'm in Australia. With Bigpond though.

How have I not heard of NeoAxis? I have heard the name, but never knew what it was. Geez, and here I am writing my own game engine with IDE. LOL Talk about re-inventing the wheel over and over again.

I know what you mean about people writing games with the 'pre-fab' engines though. They create things, but don't really know how they are made. So, they are always constrained to that engine.

Myself, I have always wanted to know how everything ticks. So, I often find myself re-inventing that wheel, just to know how it was done.

[syedhs]

Yeah I kinda agree the quietness is due to UE4 and Unity, therefore many 'newbies' who actually questioned a lot, flock to those two engines development forums instead. For Ogre, there is still niche in the game/vr/simulator industries even when Unity is introduced because Unity doesn't have affordable source code licensing. With Ogre, you can have everything within your fingers but then when UE4 drops the bomb by significantly lowering the subscription price and, and giving out all source code - it is quite unfortunate actually.

And also, this affect all other similar engine like C4 and Irrlicht. And also Unity as well (David Helgason stepped down, replaced by former EA CEO probably to raise some money to combat Unreal), Unigine which charges quite a sum of money for simulation-target market but now find itself being trapped with UE's pricing. Similarly with Havok Vision Engine.

[Kojack]

Notice that we haven't had an "I want to make an MMO" thread for a while.
All those people are over on Unity now.
So I guess we should thank them for that. (masterfalcon, tell them thanks for us!)
(I still feel a little bad about the last one I remember on here a year ago where I somehow destroyed a girl's dream of becoming a game developer by pointing out that the people telling her that one programmer for a few months is enough to make an mmorpg were wrong.)

That reminds me, I haven't checked the irrlicht forum for a while...

Sorry about asking for the source. I mistakenly remembered my recent experience with Ogre as being my attempt to locate Irrlichts source. They have a project file that doesn't work because the source code is missing. (Only the headers and a bunch of sample projects exist).

Err... our source code is missing?
Damn, that was a month ago, I don't want to necro a thread on another forum.

Good to see they are still active over there though (and planning Irrlicht 2.0).

I wonder what Valve will do with Source 2? Will they try to compete with UE4?

[lonewolff]

Hehe! I was once one of those guys wanting to make an MMO.

I started by finding and downloading Ogre 1.2. Then downloaded code::blocks and the MSVC 2003 compiler. Then I started to learn C++ as I had never touched it before.

^^ All in that order - Hahaha!

I have come a long way though.

[cybereality]

It's pretty obvious what happened.

At one point Ogre was the top of the class in FOSS cross-platform rendering. Sure there was Irrlicht and some others, but Ogre was highly competitive.

Unreal Engine 2 (and then 3) were out for AAA studios with half a million to blow. What small dev could afford that?

Unity was fairly new, and Mac only. Many other engines were Windows only. Ogre really was a great choice and, of course, free.

Not to mention that mobile came out of nowhere, and most indie devs (or aspiring devs) jumped on the gold-rush.

I've been here for a while, but never really ever made anything substantial with Orge. I mostly stick around since I like the community and it's great to keep up with the computer graphics industry.

To be honest, I've spent the past year and a half writing a custom engine in Dx11. It's been both extremely crazy and extremely stupid but an interesting learning experience.

If I was actually trying to finish a game and not just learn I would probably license UE4 or Unity and be done with it. I do love Ogre, but I feel it's behind the times (ie. Dx10 or 11 never worked, etc.). It's also sad to see that there was never an official level editor, many plug-ins and add-ons were in various states of disarray or abandonment, model exporters weren't always updated, etc. It's hard to compete with the huge toolset and ecosystem that Unity has built.

I'm sure 2.0 will be great, and I will keep my eyes open to see what happens. Maybe one day I will be smart enough to actually help with development. This stuff is still confusing to me, so thanks to Steve and everyone else who has contributed.

[c6burns]

(I still feel a little bad about the last one I remember on here a year ago where I somehow destroyed a girl's dream of becoming a game developer by pointing out that the people telling her that one programmer for a few months is enough to make an mmorpg were wrong.)

Oh I thought it was me that ruined their dreams. Good to know it was just you bstone was the one that tracked them down to another forum through google (or magic) and found out they were 12 and made us all feel bad. I blame bstone!

It's hard to compete with the huge toolset and ecosystem that Unity has built

So true. I love Ogre and my first ever title is going to ship next year on mobile/PC using a totally vanilla Ogre 1.9. But sadly, I will probably end up with Unity after that to spare myself the headache of developing a title that's portable across consoles, mobile, and PC hardware. Also avoiding a lot of tools work that would likely be necessary for me to push parts of my workload off onto technical artists. I wish I had the time to implement a rendersystem for each of sony, nintendo and microsoft's hardware ... or I wish someone were standing around with working ones to license me, but I assume no one is

Still, working with Ogre and the community have taught me so much. I'll likely always be hanging around soaking up the knowledge that gets spread around here. Ogre 2.0 is going to be really cool and I can't wait to watch that unfold.

[al2950]

Where does one get there hands on Ogre 2?

Is there a page that shows how it works and how it differs from 1.x?

Various places, although reading the whole of dark_sylinc blog gives the majority, but I would specifically read;
http://yosoygames.com.ar/wp/2013/07/ogr ... 3x-faster/
http://yosoygames.com.ar/wp/2014/05/a-g ... 2-0-final/
http://yosoygames.com.ar/wp/2014/08/ogre-2-0-final-faq/

I would also give the porting manual a read, specifically the part about the compositor;
https://bitbucket.org/sinbad/ogre/src/6 ... dt?at=v2-0

. porting the ogre code to 2.0 seems like a pita ...

Its not as bad as you might think. I guess it really depends how you designed your engine. I ported my engine within a day, albeit with some bugs! However that does not include porting the 3rd party libs I use.

[lonewolff]

Unfortunately as Kojack pointed out, every one of those links are blocked in Australia.

Any alternate links? Or can the contents be posted on a thread here on the forums?

[edit]
I wasn't even aware we had Internet censoring here in Australia. Go figure.

[Kojack]

It's not all aus providers. iinet can view his site fine. But optus (and apparently telstra) block the ip address (but not other servers owned by the same host). I wonder if every time we try to go there we are being added to some ASIO log or something?

[lonewolff]

Why would it be blocked? Is there something dodgy on that site or something?