Hello all, I have a MUD that I''ve worked on for some time and have it working quite well in text mode. I''m preparing to create a graphic version and am looking for a good 3D engine, preferably Open Source. I need an engine that will support large open areas, so the areas of the world can be fairly large (ala Everquest) or continuous (ala Asheron''s Call). I''ve looked at Crystal Space, Genesis3D, and Jet3D, but they are based on BSP trees, meaning large areas won''t probably work well there. Anyone know of a good Open Source engine that will handle large areas? Thanks in advance, Rodney Burns (aka DeadMeat)

That a problem that I''ve recently had to compromise on. I too was looking for a free outdoors engine. Here is what I came up with:

-Crystalspace has it comming ''soon''
-DDG is a pure graphics renderer, it will be integrated in to crystal later...
-Blitz has it planned
-Wildtangent, is what I went with, though regrtetfully its not open source thought it IS free.

The wildtanget engine ''gamedriver'' is free, comes with some decent tools. The developers are ex MS Directx people added to the developers of Genesis.

Right now it''s windows(directx7) only but they tell me multiplatform is scheduled for before the end of the year.

Even though is not free, you may want to check Power Render www.egerter.com it has a neat terrain engine.

Genesis3D seems to be one of the better bets out there. The fact that it''s free is a big one. It also has some multi-player coding already in it, although it''s better you do it yourself since it''s the built-in coding is probably aimed at deathmatches. G3D''s level editor is a great one. I''ve used it many times.
The only downfall of G3D (and this can be a big one) is that it isn''t very good at fully doing outdoor areas. Wild Tangent says they''re working on it, but until then things can get a bit shaky when you render an outdoor scene. Plus, their skybox could use a bit of tweaking too.
But, all and all, Genesis3D will probably be a good bet for you. I''d check it out.

I just thought of another one you may want to check out. The Morfit engine is a good one to check out, too (www.morfit.com). Their licensing is a bit odd, but that is an engine that is built to be user friendly and easy to use. When I first tried it, I had a working game going in about an hour with minimal lines of code. It''s also great for outdoor scenes, although there is no skybox, just a moving bitmap background.

I''ve been looking at Morfit - looks promising, but the 3D Card rendering doesn''t look as good as software mode for some reason. Maybe it''s the textures they are using...

I''d love to use Genesis, simply because of the user base out there, but from what I''ve seen it can''t handle large outdoor areas without choking.