spookyboo wrote: A real problem is that Ogre lacks in the tool and art department. Yes, there are a few good applications/games that are based on Ogre, but overall it still takes a lot of effort to develop the application you want.
This is exactly what I think is hurting Ogre in the grand scheme of things.
Ogre isn't a game engine. But for the most part, nearly everyone I've ever talked to is using it for video games.
Due to name recognition, Unity and Unreal will suck off the nooblars who do nothing but create noise. And that is fine. We don't need those people because they don't create anything. The real problem is exactly what Spookyboo pointed out.
My game was released in EarlyAccess this year. (And its' doing well! Thanks to everyone who bought it!
) Using Ogre, my little tycoon game with very little 3d (although there is 3d) will have taken 5 years to complete. 4 of which was full time work (Around 60-100hr a week.) Because Ogre, for better or worse, continues to stick with the "Tools/Exporters should be made by 3rd parties", "There should be no official GUI", mind set, my game took a year or two longer than it would have if I used something like C4.
Because exporting meshes was a pain in the ass or expensive until Easy Ogre Exporter came out, I lost 2 damn good, free, artist. Thank god for EOE, or I would of given up on finishing the game, and would have continued working in a dead-end retail job until I blew my brains out. But still, between v1.4 and v1.8 the only option for export of meshes from 3dsm cost $800 per license. That's a lot of money. I could have paid for 3 copies of c4 engine and get that functionality out of the box...
Even with the awesomeness of EOE, my artist still has trouble, and I find my self editing files by hand. Hopefully I never subcontract work to someone who uses maya, because I have no idea what I would do then.
That aside, because of the ease to make games in other engines now days, I have increased competition, even in my niche. My game looks like crap compared to other car games because someone using unity can generate awesome car paint shaders with a click of a mouse, where as I have to fight rtss, assuming I'm lucky enough to not have to write the shader my self...
So this is maybe a little bit of a rant post. I understand Ogre is a rendering engine. But in my 5 years, I had a hell of a time making good use of its rendering abilities productively. I'm really glad Ogre doesn't have physics or sound integrated into it. But that's no excuse to not have a drag-and-drop shader editor, official working model exporters, and possibly (debatable) an official GUI with ~finished~ set of tools.
It is art and third parties tools that has made me seriously consider other options after I finish my current project and start the next project. C4 is on top of my list because it's cross-platform and straight up C++. I assume the modern wave of smooth chin programmers look at ease of use (both in language and in tools) and don't even consider Ogre.
And yes, I could write my own tools to do these things. But that defeats the purpose of using the lib in the first place. If I wanted to write my own basic functionality tools, I would write my own specific api. That way I would have a narrower focus and more efficient toolset.
Sorry for the rant, but that's my take on the state of Ogre3d pre-2.0
) However, contractually In most cases I am responsible for any additional export tools they need to purchase to deliver the models. This is especially true when you're working with people in the developing world. That adds up. Specially If you have 15 different people doing $1000 jobs each. (Granted I was lucky enough to only deal with 3 companies/freelancers max.)
All IMHO