Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[booboo]

We have seen the production of many 3D engines. The quickest developments we have seen  have been about three years between the first screenshots showing the proposed features and the final release. And then they start adding the usability features and art pipeline. And that's with the team working full time.

If the plan is to go full-3D, wouldn't it be easier to create an adventure game-creating toolkit for an existing, low-cost 3D engine like Torque, Unity, Irrlicht, C4...?
I mean "easier" in the sense of focusing on P&C adventure-creating tools instead of the time-consuming 3D effects that everyone else is already offering; not in the sense of "easier to program".

Some of those already have toolkits that sell for almost the same price as the underlying engine. There are currently no affordable 3D engines in existence (that I know of) that allow creating adventure games with the ease and non-programmer-friendliness of WME. They can surely see that there's an entire new user base they could catch there. Considering the track record of someone who has already produced a tool of the power of WME, the producers of those engines would probably jump at the chance of helping with the integration of an adventure-creating front end of this power.

Although, well, if there are unique needs in the WME(2) plan that call for a new engine, I'm sure, from all that we've seen over the years, that it's a great plan and well worth the wait.

[sychron]

The main problem about long waiting times is:
WME finally hit the shelves. There are a bunch of commercial WME titles in the stores right now. WME is "active".
Dropping this status to "inactive" due to a long development cycle for an own 3D engine would be quite counter-useful.

[odnorf]

There are currently no affordable 3D engines in existence (that I know of) that allow creating adventure games with the ease and non-programmer-friendliness of WME. They can surely see that there's an entire new user base they could catch there.

I'm not the engine developer (so please don't quote what I'm saying) but afaik that's the plan (among others). Real-time 3D (without forgetting 2D & 2.5D) with the same usefulness of wme1.

@Sychron
At some point there has to be a "rewrite". This is a rule for every engine. wme1.x is of course not dead. The availability of source code "screams" the opposite. But some decisions have to be made at some point about the future.

[FogGobbler]

Hey, guys!

Well, I must say, I´m getting a bit confused now, because everybody is talking about the "new 3D engine" and I get the impression that people are getting mixed up with realtime 3D à la Farcry and modified 2.5D engine à la "Geheimakte 2".

A Vampyr Story, for example, is a 2.5D (prerendered backgrounds & 3D characters) adventure which was developed using a 3D engine.

So, to clear this point, is "WME 2" going to be a real time 3D engine, like say "Memento mori" uses or will it still use the 2.5D technique, but based on a 3D engine for better lighting effects, shaders, shadows, character animation, wide screen support, dynamic lights & camera and such things?

I personally really hope that WME 2 will stay 2.5D, because if you want to create a realtime 3D adventure, there are other tools on the market which are afordable. Sure, they won´t be so nice and simple as an engine that was specially developped for adventures, but it can be done, without too much trouble.

But there is nothing on the market to develop a modern 2.5D adventure (sure if you want to pay 20.000 €, then try ADGS4 ;-)) ).

Bye,
Oli

[odnorf]

@FogGobbler

Don't worry, the plan afaik is to keep the 2.5D functionality. That doesn't mean the engine can't move forward, having other uses as well. In any case, wme1 isn't going to vanish now that's lgpl. For the example feature list of codename:wme2 we all have to wait. It's still at a very early stage in development.

[JayBee]

Great news!
I hope that next big release of WME will support Mac and Linux 
It would also be great if the project was more open as to have its own mailinglist, bug-tracker and vcs so maybe others could contribute more easily.
Anyway, I'm looking forward to it!

[IcePoP]

Excellent news! Just been experimenting myself with the WME 1.8.6 and it is awesome - thanks for such a great tool for us to use for free. Just two things I'd like to point out/request.

1. Do commercial games created with this engine give a percentage back to the WME dev team? If not then I think they should do - put it into a big pot and let the ppl writing the plug-ins and extras use it for the future development of WME.

2. Comparing this to flash (I know I shouldn't!) but it would be nice to see the inclusion of a video format that would serve as a background or part of - rather than animated images - for example the easy import of flv video into the background of flash movies.

Otherwise thanks for such a great tool and I'm hoping to start creating games and interactive stories in the near future with this and hopefully 2.0 as well.

 

[Spellbreaker]

2. Comparing this to flash (I know I shouldn't!) but it would be nice to see the inclusion of a video format that would serve as a background or part of - rather than animated images - for example the easy import of flv video into the background of flash movies.

You can easily use Ogg Theora Video Format for backgrounds. It's free, portable and delivers good quality.

[IcePoP]

aha didn't see that one - cheers Spellbreaker!

[odnorf]

1. Do commercial games created with this engine give a percentage back to the WME dev team? If not then I think they should do - put it into a big pot and let the ppl writing the plug-ins and extras use it for the future development of WME.

It's in the license file. The engine is 100% free for commercial usage. But any user, especially commercial developers, are encouraged to donate.

[Jyujinkai]

If the plan is to go full-3D, wouldn't it be easier to create an adventure game-creating toolkit for an existing, low-cost 3D engine like Torque, Unity, Irrlicht, C4...?

I think that many people here, the guys making commercial games especially, have the wrong idea. Mnem, from what I know of him, doesn't make wme to make money. In fact I have heard him say on more than one occasion "I can think of better ways to make money". This one fact changes the entire "mood" of the game engine. Sure he could probably make a game engine a lot faster doing something like what you said, it may even have better implemtation of some feature (say networking or shaders) if you did it that way.. Still it seams to me that it is more of a intellectual pursuit making this engine for mnem and his coding mates. This is like a hobby. He wants to build a game engine from scratch with his new idea.. well because he wants to, it is that simple. Time restrictions, strict coding roadmaps, who is waiting or it... these are not really even considerations. In fact I suspect that 1/2 the reason he doesn't charge for it is so he has the freedom to do things this way.. or say go "man I cam sick of this I will not code for 3 months while I ride a motor bike across Europe". Like it said in the original post, do not hold your breath for wme2. It will take a LONG time before you see anything.

[IcePoP]

TBH the world would be a much better place (and cheaper!) if all folks were as generous as the wintermute team.

[Akusa]

If its already possible to get some answers of my questions but i would be really happy if you could answer these questions:

- Will the WME2 script language be an already developed script language (lua, python etc.) or will you write your own script language?
- If you design a new script language, can you already say the fundamental differences with the actual WME language and some primary design choices why you change the system?
- Will you still support full 2D games or only 3D/2.5D?
- Will WME2 feature the same tools or will there be a complete rewrite?

I ask this questions because im working on a long time adventure project with later addons for new content and stories. So if i have to (or better should want to) switch over to WME2, it would be nice to know how much work the coding could take to translate the game into WME2.

[Mnemonic]

- Will the WME2 script language be an already developed script language (lua, python etc.) or will you write your own script language?

Custom.

- If you design a new script language, can you already say the fundamental differences with the actual WME language and some primary design choices why you change the system?

It will be very similar to the current scripting, because I believe the current system works mostly well. There will be some differences, such as the event handlers replaced by methods.

- Will you still support full 2D games or only 3D/2.5D?

That's the plan. Basically if you support 2.5D, you're supporting 2D already, more or less.

- Will WME2 feature the same tools or will there be a complete rewrite?

Rewrite.

[Exsecratus]

Hi, just a suggestion
Characters animation could be imported in Source SMD (*.SMD) from half life format
I saw this on Dage, (a 3d adventure engine) and its really easy

one other thing is that shaders can be hard for newbies like me who don't know anything about hlsl and stuff

o/