Irrlicht open source engine

[Anonymous]

Greetings, I’m new here and to game development.

Names Simon and i’m from the north, (strabane just outside derry) =)

I have a question for the more experienced people on this website.

I have looked at lots of different game engines and lots of reviews and found torque to come out as the one i would go with.

But

I looked into the open source engines and i found an engine called Irrlicht.

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/index.html

It looks like a great engine! But i was wondering if there would be problems with file formats maybe? For example .x

Dont know how relevant that question is hehe i am a a real newb here

All i wana know really is, is it worth my while putting time into an open source engine like irrlicht or do you guys recommend i stick to a game engine like torque?

Thanks, Simon :D

[Anonymous]

Can’t image there’s going to be file format problems…I’m assuming they’re either using something standard, or have the appropriate exporter/importer tools. Otherwise how are people using it…
Don’t think much abouth either engine other than hearing that torque wasn’t that great.

[Anonymous]

Don’t know much about Irrlicht so I won’t comment on it too much. Based on screen shots alone seems quite capable for an indie project but research what you want from an engine and be sure you are confident you can code anything you feel is missing.

Here is the file format details you wanted.

Currently supported mesh file formats:
No conversion required! Can be loaded directly into the running engine

* 3D Studio meshes (.3ds)
* B3D files (.b3d)
* Alias Wavefront Maya (.obj)
* Cartography shop 4 (.csm)
* COLLADA (.xml, .dae)
* DeleD (.dmf)
* FSRad oct (.oct)
* Irrlicht scenes (.irr)
* Microsoft DirectX (.x) (binary & text)
* Milkshape (.ms3d)
* My3DTools 3 (.my3D)
* OGRE meshes (.mesh)
* Pulsar LMTools (.lmts)
* Quake 3 levels (.bsp)
* Quake 2 models (.md2)

In addition, there are exporters for popular 3D packages (Blender, 3DSMax, Gile[s], ..) included in the SDK.

Currently supported textures file formats:

* Adobe Photoshop (.psd)
* JPEG File Interchange Format (.jpg)
* Portable Network Graphics (.png)
* Truevision Targa (.tga)
* Windows Bitmap (.bmp)
* Zsoft Paintbrush (.pcx)

[Anonymous]

Hi Simon,

Welcome to the boards!

As well as Irrlicht, the two other main 3D ( and free ) game rendering engines are…

Ogre 3D ( this seems to be the best one, based on general chat on boards )
http://www.ogre3d.org/

Crystal Space
http://www.crystalspace3d.org

The best of luck with your project – don’t forget to start small with your first projects. Also, feel free to keep the boards updated, via an online blog or something.
Mal

[Anonymous]

Thanks a million david4482 thats what i wanted to know about irrlicht. Apparently OGRE dosent support .3ds and .x and you have to convert them to import them. Im going to go with irrlicht now to see how i fair.

Thanks mal, i will keep in touch definitely. Ive started a tetris game in darkbasic pro and its my first project so its going slow and will probably end up not so good :roll:

As for irrlicht, it has the power to teach me the basics i think and the games made by it dont look to bad so id better get learning.

:) Thanks guys

[Anonymous]

No probs Simon. Good luck with it.

[Anonymous]

I’ve messed around with Irrlicht a bit. It takes about 10 mins to set up and you can have stuff up and running very quickly. The libary is so high level you can get a model displayed with 10 or so lines of code. But it lets you get into the cogs if you want to. Read the online tutorials.

[Anonymous]

I’ve used it.
Takes no time at all to set up, some great examples, and collision as well as animation.
A warning, sound is not included, and the best way to add sound is through a library that has a more restrictive license. Free for non profit games and demos, but a price otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Well it looks like the reality engine for my course this year.

:)

I know so much more now than when I started this thread its unbelievable..

DarkBasic hah!

Have to start somewhere i suppose, DarkBasic is the worst language ive used so far. Ive come to dislike the higher than high level languages..

They make things easier but not as straightforward.. if that makes sense

Simon

[Anonymous]

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[Anonymous]

A couple of us created some really nice demos in Darkbasic Pro. We did discovered that to do anything serious you needed to be, at least, an intermediate programmer.

What we had hoped to do was create an event around DB Pro but then, about 3-4 years ago, XNA CTP came along. Rather that people having to invest in the ‘basic’ language they got to learn a reusable language such as C#. They could then use their C# learning investment for other projects.

DB Pro is available in an C++ version (I think….sorry its been 3 years since I touched it) if your going to do any work with DB Pro thats the version I would use.

[Anonymous]

Yep, the C++ version of DBP, called Dark Game SDK iirc, is free now aswell for non-commercial use, and is actually provided as a download on the Microsoft website alongside Visual C++ Express. It’s far better than DBP in the way that you have the power of C++, without the bugs of DBP ;)

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