Trying to decide which Engine to use.. a little help?

[Captain_Ahab]

I know its not Sandbox or cube2 related engine, but this is big news

http://creativecommons.org/weblog/entry/21906
http://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/ryzom-free-software
http://dev.ryzom.com/news/13
http://media.ryzom.com/
http://www.ryzom.com/en/

A ready to use mmorg engine with all the bells and whistles

looks like all the assets are open under the CC-by-sa license too

[RonnieNeeley]

Wow, I was surprised to see how many people have replied to this!

My friend and I understand this will be a daunting task, and I assume we will be recruiting help when the situation calls for it, specifically in coding and maybe some models. Right now my friend and I are just getting our ideas together and getting the rough outlines done.

Thanks a lot Captain_Ahab, I will look into this, as this is pretty substantial stuff. I have never heard of that game, but am surprised they are releasing all of that. My friend and I are torn again, this time between Sandbox, RealmCrafter, or the Ryzom engine. Again, we are going back to our research >.> (However, even if we make this game in another engine, we both love Sandbox and will continue to mess around with it)

By the way, when is Project: Regen coming out? It seems to be one of the biggest games in development on sandbox and I would love to see what the engine is capable of.

[GR1M]

Well I'm not going try to pull you towards Sandbox but rather give you words of advice about things. Learning how a humongous tool such as Ryzom takes to learn and understand is not even comparable to Sandbox!. With Sandbox your able to jump right in and start creating. With Ryzom "Don't quote me on this but this is a professional tool" you need a vast amount of knowledge about everything before even getting used to the controls!, i don't even think you can edit the geometry in real time?. I'm not even going to start about how much more time consuming it would be but I love Sandbox it doesn't require many things for you to be a expert.

Gr1m

[arcones]

I don't think I can add much more to GR1M's post so I'm just going to say this: Even the coding isn't hard once you get used to it!

[GR1M]

I was just thinking that, all we use is scripting not even needing the source code only if its really required.

[arcones]

Yeah, pretty much.

[RonnieNeeley]

Yeah, I downloaded the Ryzom thing and my head exploded, so that is out of the picture. It's down to RealmCrafter and Sandbox. Honestly, we are pulled towards RealmCrafter due to lots of things already built in, but we haven't decided on it yet. Sandbox is easy to use, we just need to do a little more research first. Thanks to everyone who is helping in making this decision

[arcones]

I just checked RealmCrafter out and I have to say this:
RealmCrafter

Sandbox

Graphics: Great

Great

Lighting: Great

Great

Physics: Basic Physics, Collision Detection

Coding needed

Shaders: Fine

Fine-Great

Animation: Keyframe Animation, Skeletal Animation

You can use Blender and other programs for this (and they are free)

Networking System: Client-Server

Client-Server (Not completely functional but for the most part it works)

AI: Pathfinding, Decision Making, Finite State Machines, Scripted

Coming Soon (Maybe Next Release)

Scripting: C/C++

CubeScript (infinitely easier to use)

Price: $100.00

Free

Stage of Dev: Fourth year

Second year(?)

As you can see, there are some things that Sandbox is lacking, but those things can be fixed if you can code and/or maybe in the next release. And considering that this is only the second year of development for SB, what we have already is great! Overall, they are about the same with the major difference being the price. Are you willing to pay one hundred dollars for RealmCrafter? Or would a Free game engine (Sandbox) be better?

For me, free is the way to go. And most of the stuff for RealmCrafter, you have to buy. So, that's my take. Go for the free program that you don't have to keep buying as it comes out.

BTW, here are what people are saying:

While it was $50, it was an excellent platform to learn the basics of an MMO. As it stands now with the $100 pricing, I would say no.

Cons: Cost is not worth it, not many remade models, pain... for a lot of people trying to activate, not too reliable compiled server.

RonnieNeeley, I believe you asked about Project: Regen? We are still in development but things are going pretty well. For more info, check out our thread in the "Show off your Work" section!

Hope that helps!
Arc

[GR1M]

You didn't even add the fact that Realmcrafter isn't open source...Sandbox is which opens the door to endless possibilities.

[siimvuss]

I want to add another quote (somewhat) that is really great advice:

You should start with making a RPG and then consider adding the MMO part to it.