Hey Jeroen, I'm glad to see you back and rocking!!
Although everyone knows I love WME and for me it's the best engine on Earth for graphic adventures, I'm 99% sure it won't implement full 3D features, at least not in the short or middle term. And I think it shouldn't, really... mixing the 2D capabilities with a full 3D using the same interface and system seems very difficult, and if it could be done, it would be really a mess: People using 2D features would find the 3D features and options innecessary and annoying on the interface, and vice-versa.
I think that a full 3D adventure engine should be done since the start with that focusing, developing tools and a IDE completely tailored for 3D adventures.
I also agree with what you stated: WME currently is so good that when people start using it, they get delusions of grandeur about how a great game they could make with the engine. It even happend to me the first time I used it, back in the initial beta versions!! So I'm sure right now that "grandeur" effect is even bigger. That is a real problem because, again, as you said, the result is a lot of on-hold of half-finished projects, with lack of smaller but finished games like the ones made with AGS, which has a lot of games. I'm sure that newcomers are very surprised to see there are only a few finished games after almost 4 years since WME's first public beta version.
So, in conclusion, I think that WME won't and shouldn't become a full 3D engine. If Jan ever thinks that such an engine would be good and he's interested in doing it, I think the best approach would be to start making a new engine. I'm sure he would be able to reuse a lot of WME's code, but, specially on the IDE, he should make a new one from scratch.
So the next best option would be to use a general-pourpose 3D engine. At least I haven't found any 3D adventure engines, maybe you have been luckier. The best options right now in my opinion, in free LGPL-licensed engines are:
Crystal Space, with an example of adventure game developed with it being
Bonez (although the view is a la NeverWinter Nights and there are some fighting so for me it's more of a RPG...).
Some screenies of Bonez:
![](http://img169.imageshack.us/img169/8786/ex1screenrp1.jpg)
![](http://img136.imageshack.us/img136/8076/libscreen07ve1.jpg)
Ogre3D. In my opinion, this engine is much better than Crystal Space, specially graphics wise. There is already two commercial point-and-click adventure game released using this engine, and with very nice graphics in my opinion. They are
Ankh and its sequel,
Ankh - The Heart of Osiris. The best thing is that there is a Game Framework, by the name of
Yake. It is a general-pourpose framework, but it means that you won't have to deal directly with the engine all the time, but with higher-level functions focused on game developing. It is still a very young project but there are some stuff I'm sure you'll find very useful. There are other game-focused tools for Ogre3D under development, like
GOOF or
Ogre Studio, but I think they are less developed than Yake nowadays.
Here some pics from Ankh 1:
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album22/ankh_scr4.sized.jpg)
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album22/shot4.sized.jpg)
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album22/ankh_scr5.sized.jpg)
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album22/shot9.sized.jpg)
And Ankh 2:
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album45/10062006_102108175.sized.jpg)
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album45/10062006_114831698.sized.jpg)
![](http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/albums/album45/10062006_104722980.sized.jpg)
You can see high-res (1024x768) screenshots at the
Ogre3D gallery of Ankh and of
Ankh 2There are also demos available for each of the games:
Anhk 1 demo (in english)Ankh 2 demo (in germanOf course, developing a game in any general-pourpose 3D engine is going to take much more time, money and resources than in WME... so it's something one must think deeply about.