Yeah, let me give you some detials, originally, my friend Joe (a basic programming genius now learning c++) and I (a guy who decided to start with c++) decided that we were going to make a 3D first person shooter. Well, there are many faults in our plan, the main one being that while at our age (15) and expirence level, and LACK of time a project like this will simply never get finished. The other flaw as that neither of us are artists in the 3D sense, i mean I am a gread drawer, but I suck at 3D modeling. Instead of lowering our expectations, and making one of the endless array of tetris clones, we are determined to finish this project( not to mentions start it). I have had a chance in my free time to write a lot of expeimental code to teach myself Gl and some DirectX components, but not to fully tackle writing the framework of a 3D engine. Rob Edited by - felisandria on 1/4/00 4:12:02 PM

Oh man, you guys are setting up for a steeeep climb. I would download Genesis3D source code or Quake, or CrystalSpace or Blitz engine, or others and really try to study it to find out how it all fits together. Are you ready to deal with the 3d hardware work arounds or do you have strong math skills and I mean understand things like cross and dot products and how to use them for collision detection, Constructive Solid Geometry, Lightmapping, alphablending, binary partition trees, possible visible sets, using portals, ray picking, sound, ai, input, network, particle fx, and host of other things? If not just download a ready made engine and a good editor to go with it and create a game, since by your post I gather that you guys want to do a game more than spend time coding a 3d engine. If you decide to do a 3d engine then start small, like do only flat shading without lighting for example then make a game with it and show it to others who might joing you once they see that you are serious and have some foundation already built. Make a 3D editor for simple shapes and don't go into CSG without some knowledge. Also check out d3d retained mode for mesh objects, it might be useful when writing CSG editor. Most of all don't give up when things get tough, and you most likely will succeed in what ever you do.

Starting to rant so beware:)

I myself have spent few days going over Genesis3d v1.1 source code and decided to postpone working on my CSG editor and d3d engine for now. There are a lot of newbies like you and I that will benefit from Genesis3D game programming. The Genesis forum is great place to start and you can build on the foundation that was given to you by WildTangent to create a game. I mean why reinvent the wheel by making yet an another engine that will at best be mediocre. Invest your time into a coding community whether it be Genesis or CrystalSpace or whatever but unless you have a team of programmers that you pay $100,000 a year each for their knowledge you will get almost nowhere. 400 people are working on CrystalSpace and the engine doesn't even have a complete editor or to my knowledge no one made a commercial game with it. Talk about manpower. Look at linux community, 1000's of people working only on bug fixes and small changes to the code. If you want results you hire professionals, otherwise the code becomes a playground for people to learn from and expand on but nothing beyond that. I might be wrong about this, and there could be small teams of let say 2 to 3 very dedicated people out there who have the smarts/math to pull something like this off, but consider the fact that even if you do make a nice engine then it might not be competitive enough to earn living from. I look through the internet and some companies are offering 3d engines and tools for level and character building and yet fail to attract developers and make money from it. So they are coming up with schemes like lets give out free engine and tools and to make living from this let the game programmers insert ads into billboards within the game and attract advertisers to sponsor us while we pay the developer of the game 30%, to us we pay %30 and the rest is spent on promotion of the game. I think the whole 3D engine scene is getting overcrowded and one thing I learned from economics is that as long as there is a profit to be made from selling the engine, developers will persue this avenue until you break even and when that happens the code might be released like CrackDotCom people did(money ran out). By the time you finish your engine the market might change and the engine will have to be compatible/work in your browser to be competitive with others out there. WildTangent is doing this with genesis2 and I read somewhere that John Carmack is looking into using the internet for somekind of virtual reality thing with the cheap cameras and somehow incorporate this into a game. You can bet that other developers/companies who don't want to be left behind are already researching/spending money on this and other things that will give them an edge. I am in no way saying that you guys should abandon the idea of making a cool engine and if you are looking for a team through which you gain experience then by all means go for it, but you might find that you will attract beginners and learning will be an uphill battle and lot of confusion and will result in blind leading the blind. (I know you are looking for experts also, but I think those are making money in other companies) Well, I am going to close this novel and let you guys get back to programming. If anyone feels like me then write about it here and let me know if I am insane and need to get out of my cave to smell the roses and see the sunshine;-) See ya!

Edited by - JD on 1/4/00 12:29:13 AM

I read this post and all of a sudden something struck me as being very funny. You don''t want to make another in an "endless array of tetris clones", so instead you set out to make a Quake (or the likes) clone--probably one of the most overcloned products in the history of computer games (with the possible exception of Dune II). I assure you it is perfectly possible to make an original game without even having to resort to 3D graphics of any kind. All you need is some inspiration, which I can also assure you will not be found with Quake.

JD and Shrinkage, thank you for your replys. as for my reply to them, JD, I fully comprehend the whole i have been digging for myself by deciding on making a 3D engine, as I have been doing research in my spare time on the mathamatics related to 3D computer graphics for the past year. I now understand vector and matrix math, and am fairly good at using the OpenGL API, visibility determination is something i am working on at the moment, so that i can choose the best file format i can think of for the engine.
Shrinkage, I am short on time right now so in reply,I am making a FPS because they are my favorite Genre and I am doing a game in 3D because those are the games I play and as a result know most about.

Thanks,
Nomad

Not to knock desire and it was said above but you guess certainly have a long road ahead of you. While true gameplay is simple in most FPS, they are arguably the most advanced and complex renderers out there for games. You guys have a seriously tough road ahead of you, but hey more power to you :-).

Wrong forum for a help wanted post, put it in the "Help Wanted" forum... but due to some good comments I''ll leave it for the time being, unless people object?

-fel

Uh, I would definitely start with something small. Real small. Like tic-tac-toe. With text only. Then move to something a bit bigger; perhaps add a graphical UI on top of tic-tac-toe. With sound and graphics via DX I guarantee just this small task would take you months to complete at your experience level.

Diving right into 3D is ludicrous. You won''t understand _anything_. Especially when looking over the hackish code in Genesis3D....

Perhaps, there is some misunderstanding Anonymous Poster, this is NOT!!! the first game that my friend and I have made, however it is the forst one we plan to actually sell, even if only on a small scale at school.True, we neved did a tic tac toe or tetris program, but we did write a chess game with a 2D GUI and decent AI in C++. This is NOOOT i reiterate our first game. when i say we are newbies, i compare us to some of the others who post here we both however have been programming in c++ for close to 2 years, my friend in Basic before that since 5th grade(he is now in 10th) we are new to the 3D scene as programmers, but we have both been 3D or at least 2.5D gamers since Wolf 3D. I understand the scope of the project ahead of us, and that is why I made this post, so we can get help, but as much as both of us are obssessed with this project, our ambition may be ahead of us, but it WILL get finished. You have to burst into the 3D scene somewhere and this is our way of doing it.

Thanks,
Rob


Edited by - felisandria on 1/4/00 4:10:33 PM

Since you obviously didn''t listen the first time, I''m going to have to edit out your attempts at advertising in the wrong forum. Otherwise it wouldn''t be fair to the other people I''ve deleted posts of for this.

-fel
~hey, nothing personal, it''s my job~

Well, Nomad, I don''t have too much to add right now, but it seems like you have a very general plan, and it''s already taken you a long time to get this far, a 3D FPS I hear is incredibly difficult to make (I haven''t made one yet because I''m not yet experienced with 3D and I need to keep working on the overhead rpgs so I can finish at least one or two of them before I graduate (I''m 15, graduating in 2 years). Basically I think you might end up with a similar problem as I have, which is that a game that is worthy of a spot in the games section of stores generally must be well-made and have lot''s of thought put itnto it, and most of all, must look original and cool, and not make people say, "well why would I waste 50 bucks on this game, Quake3Arena looks cooler, and I hear it''s great!" Now I''m doing an overhead (Warcraft2 like perspective) rpg (2D of course) and, granted it will have thousands of distinct tiles and many cool features and spells, etc..., but the bottom line is my engine will be significantly easier to make then yours, and I''ll be amazed if I can get even the first "chapter" (the game is broken up into 3 chapters) done before me and my friend who are working on it granduate.

So I''ll shut up now and let others comment, I have stuff to do...

(PS: if you do make this, can I have a complementary copy?)