• We’re currently investigating an issue related to the forum theme and styling that is impacting page layout and visual formatting. The problem has been identified, and we are actively working on a resolution. There is no impact to user data or functionality, this is strictly a front-end display issue. We’ll post an update once the fix has been deployed. Thanks for your patience while we get this sorted.

Two popular game engines now free !

Modelworks

Modelworks

Lifer
Two feature complete game engines are now free.
Unity and Dark Basic Pro.

Unity was formerly $200 and Dark Basic Pro was $69.
I have been looking at unity and the scripting and ease of use is really good. The abilities of the engine are pretty high for something that is now free.
You can even make commercial products with the free version .

I haven't used Dark Basic Pro before but it looks pretty capable as well.

http://unity3d.com/unity/
Particle Systems
Direct3D 9 and OpenGL
Flexible Pipeline
TrueType Font Support
Texture Handling
High-Quality Mipmap Generation -Detail Fade, Kaiser Filters, Gamma Correction, and more.
Audio Support - ogg, quicktime, wav, mp3
Hit Save in Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, Cheetah3D or Blender, and Unity will pick up all changes across your entire project.
Lightmaps
Screen Space Ambient Occlusion

Image Formats

* Photoshop .psd and .tiff are imported with layers automatically flattened.
* JPEG, PNG, GIF, BMP, TGA, IFF, PICT and many other image formats are supported.


Unity's shader system combines ease of use, flexibility and performance. All the built-in shaders integrate perfectly with any type of light, with cookies or without. If that's not enough you can write your own shaders in Unity's powerful ShaderLab language with Cg and GLSL

Realtime Networking

State Synchronization
GameObject position, velocity, animation, and anything else can be synchronized between players using a delta compression algorithm or uncompressed unreliable methods.

.NET socket libraries can be used for real-time networking, by opening TCP/IP sockets or sending UDP messages. They also make speaking XML easy, and can connect to ODBC database connections.

Ageia PhysX™
Unity contains the full capabilities of the Ageia PhysX next-gen Physics Engine.

Unity supports full Rigidbody physics. Rigidbodies act under forces, collide, and work in Joints with no scripting required.

Hinges, springs, ball-sockets, character limbs, and the fully-customizable configurable Joint. Make them breakable to allow emergent game play.

World's Fastest JavaScript
Unity's JavaScript implementation JIT-compiles to native machine code. It runs 20x faster than Flash or Director based JavaScript, and the same speed as C# and Boo.

Game logic runs on the Open Source .NET platform, Mono.

Moving, rotating, and scaling objects just takes a single line of code. Duplicating, removing, and changing properties is done likewise. Everything can be referenced directly, by name or hierarchy, tags, and proximity or touch

Cooperative Multi-Threading
Logic flows that involve waiting a bit of time are performed in three lines of code. This makes multi-threading easy and robust.

Standalone Mac & Windows
Click to expand...


Darkbasic Pro
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/
Binary Space Partitioning (BSP)
Potential Visibility Set
Pixel & vertex shaders
Real time shadows
True reflections
Lights
Matrices
Advanced terrain
Multiple camera views
Particle system
Lightning fast 2D sprites
Polygon collision detection
Bump mapping
Light mapping
Environment mapping
Multitexturing
Bone based animations
Cartoon shading
Rainbow rendering
Low level access of object data
Vector and matrix manipulation

Creates .EXE files
Encrypt and compress exes
Icon control of exes managed
Breakpoint markers
Produces 100% machine code

DLLs containing FORMATTED FUNCTIONS can be dropped into the plug-ins directory, after which they become commands within the language All components are modular for safe and stable upgrading
Click to expand...
 
That Unity engine sounds like it might be right for something I have been wanting to do. Thanks for the tip.
 
Blender Game Engine? I'm familiar with Blender, the open source 3D modeling tool. I am not familiar with Blender, the Game Engine.
 
Hmm... neither support DX10? Well I suppose they have to hold back something from their free editions. Anyhow, this may be just the starting point I need. Thanks!
 
wwswimming said:
how do they compare with Blender Game Engine ? that's what i've been concentrating on learning.

thanks for the info !
Click to expand...

Unity is way ahead of blender game in ease of use.
An example is making a fps type game.

To do this in unity I start a new project. Create my level in 3dsmax with the textures, export with fbx and load in unity. I add a player controller and click play to explore what I just made.

Of course there is a ton of other things like scripting and assets but it is very easy to get a lot done fast.


If you use max to make levels some tips I found:
I set the grid to one square = 4 feet, then on export in the fbx dialog changed the unit correction to feet.
Bake the textures using render to texture in max, all objects must have at least a diffuse and a lightmap. Place those textures in the project/assets/texture folder.

In unity before dragging assets to the main window be sure to check generate collision data, or you will fall through 🙂

Unity updates the second you save the files.
 
Last edited:
SunnyD said:
Hmm... neither support DX10? Well I suppose they have to hold back something from their free editions. Anyhow, this may be just the starting point I need. Thanks!
Click to expand...

sorry nope. One of the reasons is these are both things that have been around for a couple years, so they started with earlier versions. I am sure they will eventually add more support.
 
Thanks for the links, Modelworks.

Markbnj said:
Blender Game Engine? I'm familiar with Blender, the open source 3D modeling tool. I am not familiar with Blender, the Game Engine.
Click to expand...
If you have Blender, you have the game engine. If you can get past the Blender interface, it's pretty easy and fun to put together some simple games. I started out with Blender just for 3D, but after a few physics experiments in the game engine, I found myself spending more and more time testing out game ideas. There's a simple logic brick system and you can add more complex features with Python.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Back
Top