gardon

There are so many game engines out there (I'm looking at Torque Engine and 3d Game Studio at the moment) and they claim to make programming games easier and more reliable in publishing.

So... is it worth paying the 1k for the engine or just make the game from the visual studio compiler yourself? Yes command line games take a much longer time to make, but is it better in the end?

Check out www.3dgamestudio.com and see the forums and downloads and stuff and see what you think. The a6 engine looks pretty cool but is it worth the time taking to learn the engine to be able to apply real programming to it?

Ryan

It all depends on what fits the game's needs. I wouldnt buy an engine without playing the game that uses the engine, and getting to know it better. I would use a free one (some are out there) or a low priced one before making one, just to see professional code at work. Thats just My opinion though.

Mjordan2nd

I'm sure it's worth the money. I heard Doom payed an extravagant amount of money for their 3D-engine (although I don't know how true that is...don't remember exactly who told me), but if there 3D-engine weren't so good, then Doom 3 would be just another FPS, therefore spoiling the Doom legacy. If you think you can write one as good, or better, though, I say go for it. Never hurts to try.

Also, a friend reccomended me www.ogre3d.org, although I've never used it. He's a pretty experieced guy though, so I'd check it out if you're looking into that stuff.

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Ravilj

I think it also depends on how serious you are about making a game, if your looking to do it for fun and such it may not be such a bad idea to sort of build your own engine it will be very enlightening. Yes challenging as well but to me thats part of the fun. There is a mass of resources out there.

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Dizzutch

I've had some experience with CrystalSpace and Ogre3D, both opensource engines, and i easiliy accomplished my goals. If you're not sure if you want to use an engine, i'd suggest to give these a try before you drop a grand on a commercial one.

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