Torque3D

[Roskva]

I know there is a thread along the same lines here that went down hill unfortunately but I kind of agree with the idea of swapping engines. Just look: http://www.garagegames.com/products/torque-3d

This is what Rigs of Rods is moving to. They dumped Ogre, same engine as Kenshi.

So many things are preventing this though. Namely Chris being the lone-wolf developer he is (which is incredible).

Surely there is someone knowledgeable enough to assist Chris for free or through some limited contract. I get a slight feeling Chris is afraid to let another person work on Kenshi as it is his sole pride and joy and wants no issues with another person's ideals conflicting with his own. I feel selling alpha material with this progress rate is not promising.

This is all speculation however. I post this with no lack of enthusiam or lack of utmost praise for Chris and his creation. I see Kenshi with limitless potential and would like to see it fulfill even an inkling of that. Not to say it is not already impressive but let's face it, you can reach end-game in one sitting after how many years of development?

[Tolwrath]

One of the big problems with changing engines is the time consumed, and probable waste of time. Look at duke nukem forever. They changed engines, and then a better engine came out,so they switched to that, and then they ended up switching again. How much time do you think they spent changing engines to only change them again later?

If you change engines and your new engine goes obsolete, you're fucked. You just wasted probably around a year. Personally, if engine changes are to be done, I think they should be done closer to the end of a project to avoid such problems.

[Ides]

The problem with changing engines is when you have custom code that hooks into or uses a particular feature of an engine. Then you decide to switch and have to spend all that time recreating that custom code, maybe even dropping some of the features in the processes. You may also gain other features so essentially the game will be going sideways and not forward in terms of improvement.

I would rather see Kenshi maximize out the current engine it has and then if there is enough interest develop Kenshi 2 on a newer engine using the experience from the previous game. This allows for the developer to focus more on adding content and laying more and more depth into the game and extending the time before the player has done it all.

Unless there is a pretty big reason or limitation that the current engine has, then I don't see why Kenshi should not continue to be developed on that.

With all that said, It's always up to developer to decide all these variables and more. I can respect if the developer decides to switch to a new engine or keep the existing engine. The ones actually developing the game obviously have a better knowledge on the matter.

[iSuck345]

Yeah, we should just wait until Chris has finished Kenshi, then wait until he chooses what the new game will have new and see if thoose features can be implemented in the new engine. If not, then he will have to make a new engine or improve the one he currently has to allow thoose features.

[Roskva]

Yeah, we should just wait until Chris has finished Kenshi, then wait until he chooses what the new game will have new and see if thoose features can be implemented in the new engine. If not, then he will have to make a new engine or improve the one he currently has to allow thoose features.

I agree. I just hope to see this succeed. I've lost faith in all the big name companies.

[gamerphate]

Yeah, it would be kind of a waste of time like others mentioned. If you know French well, why stop writing your novel in French and go convert your novel to Spanish before you even have it finished.


Granted, features are the ONLY reason someone would want to change. Each game engine has it's benefits and weakness. But I am pretty sure Chris picked OGRE for a reason, either being he knows more about using it to make games, or he wanted specific features that it uses.


I am just glad he isn't using Unity Although its a great program...just kind of sick of that plugin lately

[iSuck345]

Yeah, it would be kind of a waste of time like others mentioned. If you know French well, why stop writing your novel in French and go convert your novel to Spanish before you even have it finished.


Granted, features are the ONLY reason someone would want to change. Each game engine has it's benefits and weakness. But I am pretty sure Chris picked OGRE for a reason, either being he knows more about using it to make games, or he wanted specific features that it uses.


I am just glad he isn't using Unity Although its a great program...just kind of sick of that plugin lately

Unity is for phone games anyways.

[Jorcee101]

Unity is for phone games anyways.

Untrue. Unity can be used for more than phone games. What made you assume that it is for phone games?

[gamerphate]

Unity is for phone games anyways.

Untrue. Unity can be used for more than phone games. What made you assume that it is for phone games?

Unity CAN be for phone games, but it is for ANY web platform. I am trying to think of a few big ones that are using it right now, I THINK Family Guy Online is written in Unity I believe.

[iSuck345]

I didn't mean ONLY for phone games, I never ment that it was restricted.

What I ment was that unity engine was more fit for phone games somewhere on the site, but I don't remember where.

[Ides]

Yeah, we should just wait until Chris has finished Kenshi, then wait until he chooses what the new game will have new and see if thoose features can be implemented in the new engine. If not, then he will have to make a new engine or improve the one he currently has to allow thoose features.

I agree. I just hope to see this succeed. I've lost faith in all the big name companies.

As he uses Microsoft's OS. Use Google? Have an Apple phone? Use Steam? Kinda impossible to get away from the big companies.

[Rage735]

I think in respect to game developers he is right. Lot of companies that used to create gold either disappeared or now produce eye-pleasing games, but they are full of dull content.

That said, I love mass effect 1,2 and 3

[Clawdius Talonious]

As for Unity, Wasteland 2 ( www.youtube.com/watch?v=HvNbuOenVPw ) Project Eternity, and Torment: Tides of Numenera are all using Unity as their engine. The reason you see a bunch of goofy little web based games using it is more of a licensing thing, and the fact that the engine itself can range from very lightweight projects to heavier concerns.

And, with regards to Ogre, it is NOT an engine, that is what has taken Chris so long to really get the ball rolling on development. Ogre is a renderer, it displays graphics and does nothing else. Chris has had to cobble together his own code for everything else, and it literally took him years to do so. All of these people coming in without having any prior involvement with the community, and declaring that things they don't understand should be changed is a bit silly.

As for the previous mention of writing a book in french and converting it to Spanish, that is really not the case here. While the art assets and the like could be ported over to a new engine, you're not considering the time it would take for Chris to become intimately familiar with a ton of new software. Anyone who has spent more than a couple of days following this forum will quickly see how efficient Chris is at squashing bugs, and there is a reason for that. You aren't talking about translating a book from one language to another exactly, you're really sort of talking about translating a book that has been written partially in one language and partially in a language made up entirely for the purposes of use in that project.

The bottom line is that it would be an inefficient use of time at this point. You're asking for months or years of stagnation in order to swap engines, and to what purpose? In your minds apparently the project is ALREADY talking too long. These are the same people who cry things like vaporware on a project that quite literally gets about an upgrade a month. Imagine what would happen if they got their wish and the project was ported over to another engine and no updates came down the pipe for months, maybe even a year as Chris learned whatever new software accompanied the new engine. I can hardly imagine that, even with regular updates about progress, we wouldn't start hearing about abandonware.

This is simply a case of people having no idea what they want, so they say something that sounds good. At least the last Op with this fairly silly idea seemed to have some intimate knowledge of the scope of the work that would be required.

[maxp0wer789]

True, Ogre is a graphics (code-)library so Chris developed it's own engine on top of that.
It wouldn't be simply switching the engine but rather throwing away years of work to just use the work of others from now on. As writing your own engine is a lot of work and really badass (if it works and it does for Kenshi) it's also a matter of coders pride not to change the engine. And of course u'll always understand your own engine and it's workflow better than a third party engine.

Also thank you for clearing up the Unity3D thing, Unity is one of the most developer-friendly engines I have ever worked with, neat for prototyping and small games but also for bigger projects (unity is AWESOME even if it has it's flaws )