Visual Game Development Tools

[supermortalhuman]

EDIT: Post shoulda been:

 

There is, that I know of or have otherwise tried thus far: Blender (Press P to Play, Yo Frankie!), DX Studio, Virtools, StoneTrip Shiva, Visual3d.net, 3D Rad, no more currently come to my mind, but to suffice it to say, they weren't really very memorable in other ways either - however I'd use them if it turns out one or two have benefits I don't yet know about and steer clear from them if they have things I won't like (like dependencies on bsp brushing and terrains!) etc.

 

What do you use for your visual scripting or visual development? What do you wish your artists would use, if you are a coder wishing you had more artists to work with?

Edited September 1, 2009 by supermortalhuman

[trip]

There is something called KODU game lab that is build on top of XNA. I haven't tried it

 

http://creators.xna.com

Do the getting started videos (located under the education menu) for 2d games and you may decide to just learn the ways of c# and xna and scrap the idea of using a 'game builder'.

 

best of luck.

 

 

side note:

I'm just about ready to release my first game for the xbox360 thanks to xna.

 

[supermortalhuman]

It's just that I want to make/put my art in some precompiled environment that can be easily extended with standard programming languages - things designed for it, but I want to know about any I haven't mentioned before I dive into the process of learning one through-and-through. It would suck to get really far in something and find out something else was way way better and I just couldn't find it. It's a real investment of time, which is limited for us all.

 

The precompiled thing - streaming, something that can take little meshes for all of my land like how they map GTA games, not terrains, can switch the LODs - it doesn't have to do this as long as it can with a programmer - I can team up with those guys when I have something good for them to enjoy working on, etc. Doesn't have to load from text files, most of the ones I named are editors with viewports, I'm ok with that, I just don't want to be forced to use bsp/brushes in any way and I don't want to have to use terrain "if I want a big world". Not a lot to ask, but as a non programmer, I don't know if any of the ones I named, or the others out there, offer this, or what feature to look for.

 

lol:

http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projec...gramming_ui.jpg

 

edit: OH! Kodu! I remember. I hope it's not xbox only PC version available only to schools -and I don't like it. It's kind of the opposite of what I need in that way.

Edited September 1, 2009 by supermortalhuman

[trip]

you might be on a difficult quest.

 

i have never seen a game builder that is actually 'worth it'. it sounds like you might be more in the market for an existing game engine - and they aren't cheap if you want to use anything current.

[supermortalhuman]

I don't think so, go look at all those I mentioned. They are decent, I just don't want to spend time learning a couple of them until I know all the options. Let's just start talking game dev, maybe it'll evolve to a new thread about developing games in "easy" ways (both programming/art).

[ghost of delete key]

tripmills pretty much nailed it on the head, although there are plenty of freeware options available.

 

Learn C or Pascal, and learn OpenGL at the very least, if not DirectX. There is no getting around these, and you will have to spend the time to learn these in depth.

 

You'll then have everything you need to create whatever it is you need.

 

As far as content editing?

 

3DSMax/CharacterStudio and/or Maya for 3D, TerraGen for awsome landscaping. AcidPRO for audio. Photoshop or PaintShop Pro for GFX/texturing.

If you're poor, there are cheap/free alternatives to these.

THESE ARE ONLY CONTENT EDITORS!!! THESE WILL NOT MAKE UR GAME FOR U!!!

 

Out-of-the-box "game makers" are crap. DarkBasic anyone?

 

Simply choose APIs that handle the kind of rendering and physics you desire, and code your own engine. Not that hard once you understand Object Oriented Programming concepts.

 

Search "free rendering engine" or "rendering API". there are more than 600 open-source rendering and physics APIs out there for you to use. Some suck, some pwn. Many are Sourceforge projects.

 

For coding, you are best off with C++Builder/Delphi (now Embarcadero RAD Tools). Stay away from Microsh*t, ESPECIALLY VisualBasic. Nobody wants the f*cking runtime environment mess that it introduces.

If you can't distribute your app without an entire version-sensitive runtime environment installed on the target machine, you officially suck. The EXE and maybe a few DLL's are all you should ever need.

 

Anytime I install a new program and the installer gives me sh*t about VBRUNDLL or any other sh*t to do with the M$ runtime hellride, I back the f*ck out and throw it away. Don't need the headaches. Besides, VB code compiles to very inefficient machine code. Stick to C/Pascal, and use assembler routines for heavy math and string handling. Your code will be light and speedy.

 

For Open-Source freeware versions of C & Pascal, use DevCPP and Lazarus. These are very close to the standard hi-dollar suites, and generally cross-compatible with only minor differences.

 

Personally, I use Delphi7, and I highly recommend using the GLScene library for the 3D API.

 

Other than that, you're on your own as far as what to do with it all. get creative.

[supermortalhuman]

Update: UNITY 3D!

 

That's all I gotta say, here's the link if you are interested: http://unity3d.com/

 

Here is an awesome example of the power of this pipeline: http://unity3d.com/support/documentation/video/5.html