Ok, I''m currently working on my game engine based on OGL. I know OGL very well and that''s not a problem. I also bought the 3d Game Engine Design and Real Time Rendering books. Both are very good books in my opinion. Right now I''m on bounding volumes in 3d Game Engine Design. I understand what they are used for and in the most part can write some of the code for them on my own. However, I can look at the code that came with the book and then it makes some sense but not complete sense. My question is what do you believe the competance should be for someone writing their own engine? Should they be able to look at some documentation without source and be able to write it by themselves or should they be able to get away with only the basic understandings of how it is used and just copy and paste the code? Or is there a fine line between the two? Just curious. Doodah2001

There is no level of competence.

The more knowledge and experience you have, the better you engine will be.

Even if you don''t get everything now, persist and do what you can. You will learn so many things by doing that.

In a couple of months, you will come back to the problems you had and laugh saying "man that was easy, how come I did not get it x month ago".

You will only get as good as the efforts you put into learning and understanding.

Yeah If it works you''re competent enought. If not read some more/try something easier

Cut and pasting code is not programming.

If you want to write your own engine you have to be able to understand exactly what you want and problem solve a solution without tutorials and books.

If you''re good, you''ll just know. By the way you talk about coding, by how you program, how you problem solve, ect.

For the game I''m working on, there are few books explaining how to do it. Those that do I''ve already excelled above on my own. If you want to be good you can''t wait 2 years for a book to come out to explain how to do something.

Ben
http://therabbithole.redback.inficad.com

Hey check out my site your bound to find something there. Think about what you want from an engine, different engines suit different games. Tyhink about file types whern making games for editing and compatibility.




Some times you only want the best...
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nuff said!