About that reaching into the coffer thing... isn't that true about any company that offers a compiler? So basically, if we have enough bandwidth and servers etc, we can make an MMO without much difficulty on XNA? The school may be able to lend us some servers/technical advice :P But assuming we have the servers and connection strength etc, this is reasonably achievable using XNA?
Or would you reccomend that we use the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition compiler and Blender to make the animations then use the C++ to tell the game how to use them? Whichever you think is most practical/achievable and would be the most efficient/professional. Thankss again for the help and also for putting up with a clueless progarmming nub ^^
It depends on the license, I am unsure of the license for Visual Express editions because 1) it's Microsoft, and 2) it's free. Blender you can do whatever the hell you want with so to speak, it's open. XNA I am sure has an agreement in it which limits your usage unless you're willing to pay extra.
Making a free game, then I doubt you'll run into problems. Trying to make money and you'll want to look into reading all the fine print. The EULA and all that must always be read anyways. I read XNA's agreement once, long ago, which is why I bring it up, but I just can't recall all the details.
If he's using XNA, no need to just use OpenGL... it'll only work on Windows anyways so Direct 3D is probably his only route anyways.
I really would suggest baby steps.
Blender has it's own game engine for example, and I think you can use OGRE3D with it too, where Blender will be the game engine and OGRE3D is the renderer... a nice one to boot.
Going a little further I downloaded the TGE 1.5 demo last night and was blown away by the overall looks of the engine, I am definitely upgrading from 1.4.
I am re-reading the EULA right now and I think it's a good place to start in showing you some of the things you'll run into.
Here is the EULA for the INDIE license, it's the license you'd want. It basically states that it's a single seat license(only you can use it), non-transferable. Sounds bad because you have a team, but it's only $150 bucks at the same time, however, it should be noted that any number of games can be created with it, sold and distributed as long as you make under $250,000 annually, if you go beyond that you'll need to upgrade to the Commercial license. So in effect, you'll have full rights to whatever you're going to do with the game engine within reason, but only you. Each person on your team will need their own license.
I am bias towards this particular engine due to it's maturity, but it's also very easy to use and develop with, has a huge community backing it up, it's been used in Commercial games such as Tribes and Tribes 2, it looks fantastic, has awesome network code(MMO?) many tools are built in, you have full use of source code, and there are whole books written for the engine.
Now one other thing I also intended to mention in this post was something I found on the web long ago I am still searching for, but it was tutorials of start to finish of building your own graphics engine, it had code to show you how to build things in 3D and such from scratch that I recall having some fun with. It won't build anything like Half Life 2 with it, but.... it's a start to learn how the inner workings are in a game engine.
I think I found the site I used originally, it was a crappy Geocities site that only the first page works now, at least it looks like the site I used long ago.
I haven't read much through either of these sites, they may contain old code, or not be what you're looking for but they look interesting to begin with.
There is also the OpenGL website, it should have a number of resources of it's own. But I need to cut it here today for my research on this topic, gotta try an do some concept art of my own for a project I am doing to get me a new job haha.
Comments
Or would you reccomend that we use the Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition compiler and Blender to make the animations then use the C++ to tell the game how to use them? Whichever you think is most practical/achievable and would be the most efficient/professional. Thankss again for the help and also for putting up with a clueless progarmming nub ^^
Edit: Clueless programming nub^^
Making a free game, then I doubt you'll run into problems. Trying to make money and you'll want to look into reading all the fine print. The EULA and all that must always be read anyways. I read XNA's agreement once, long ago, which is why I bring it up, but I just can't recall all the details.
If he's using XNA, no need to just use OpenGL... it'll only work on Windows anyways so Direct 3D is probably his only route anyways.
I really would suggest baby steps.
Blender has it's own game engine for example, and I think you can use OGRE3D with it too, where Blender will be the game engine and OGRE3D is the renderer... a nice one to boot.
I am re-reading the EULA right now and I think it's a good place to start in showing you some of the things you'll run into.
Here is the EULA for the INDIE license, it's the license you'd want. It basically states that it's a single seat license(only you can use it), non-transferable. Sounds bad because you have a team, but it's only $150 bucks at the same time, however, it should be noted that any number of games can be created with it, sold and distributed as long as you make under $250,000 annually, if you go beyond that you'll need to upgrade to the Commercial license. So in effect, you'll have full rights to whatever you're going to do with the game engine within reason, but only you. Each person on your team will need their own license.
I am bias towards this particular engine due to it's maturity, but it's also very easy to use and develop with, has a huge community backing it up, it's been used in Commercial games such as Tribes and Tribes 2, it looks fantastic, has awesome network code(MMO?) many tools are built in, you have full use of source code, and there are whole books written for the engine.
Now one other thing I also intended to mention in this post was something I found on the web long ago I am still searching for, but it was tutorials of start to finish of building your own graphics engine, it had code to show you how to build things in 3D and such from scratch that I recall having some fun with. It won't build anything like Half Life 2 with it, but.... it's a start to learn how the inner workings are in a game engine.
I just need to find it first.
I haven't read much through either of these sites, they may contain old code, or not be what you're looking for but they look interesting to begin with.
http://cone3d.gamedev.net/cgi-bin/index.pl
http://scorpioncity.com/djdirectxtut.html
There is also the OpenGL website, it should have a number of resources of it's own. But I need to cut it here today for my research on this topic, gotta try an do some concept art of my own for a project I am doing to get me a new job haha.