[RyanT]

Hey, I want a 3d world that I can create objects in and assign any c++ code I want to the objects to change their physical makeup and also give them behaviour.

What would the name of this environment be (I guess they're not engines..?) and are there any good free ones available? reccomendations??

An example would be telling a model human to walk around randomly over a chessboard and then to jump if it steps on a white tile. That's all I'm after but I have no idea where to begin searching. Just after a pointer for where to look

Thanks

[estel]

Uhh, this is very complicated compared to developing console apps. From what you describe, you'll need at least a graphics engine, physics engine, modelling tools blah blah.

The simplest way you could accomplish this would probably be with the UDK, but that depends on what your aim / motivations are.

[RyanT]

Thanks, I'll download and have a go.

For the start I just want to make an object walk around in a random pattern, if it's standing on grass, to eat the grass, after 10 "moves" to fall asleep etc...halfway through making a console version of this atm

[Psyk]

Could try OGRE. OGRE is just a graphics engine, but quite a powerful one. It allows you to draw models to the screen, move the camera around, etc. but has no physics or anything like that. UDK does a lot more, but all those features may or may not be useful to you. The good thing is UDK has logic in to make a character "walk", so you could probably control the character by telling it a position to walk to and the AI will walk there and animate correctly. Where as OGRE doesn't have any concept of a "character", it just draws models, so it's up to you to implement that behaviour (which is perhaps what you want anyway).

[RyanT]

(Original post by Psyk)
(which is perhaps what you want anyway).

Yup, I've got UDK installed now although getting to grips with it is a big job for tomorrow

Seems to be ideal for the job, just getting to understand it now

Long-term I'd like to make a mini-forest and fill it with an ecosystem doing their own behaviours

[jordan.uni]

If you're looking for a C++ environment to code in, and I know you can only get access to the engine source code in UDK as a licencee you could try CryENGINE3 which is a 100% free to learn engine coded in C++ and using Lua as a scripting language.

In my opinion creating terrain in CryENGINE3 is easier than UDK and if you are used to C++ you can implement your own functionality without having to learn a completely new language like unrealscript.

The graphics in CryENGINE are amazing, also.

You can create vast, interesting landscapes with features such as caves, forests, fog volumes, water volumes, etc. look at this;


Hope I could help.

[Psyk]

(Original post by jordan.uni)
If you're looking for a C++ environment to code in, and I know you can only get access to the engine source code in UDK as a licencee you could try CryENGINE3 which is a 100% free to learn engine coded in C++ and using Lua as a scripting language.

In my opinion creating terrain in CryENGINE3 is easier than UDK and if you are used to C++ you can implement your own functionality without having to learn a completely new language like unrealscript.

But you don't get access to the source code of CryENGINE 3 either do you?*(genuine question)

I think you actually can at least call natively compiled C++ in UDK now. I don't know if they have a publicly available C++ API for the engine itself though, it may just be that you can call C++ functions from Unrealscript.

While there certainly are advantages to being able to use C++, I don't think not having to learn Unrealscript is really one of them. Any decent C++ programmer should be able to pick up Unrealscript fairly easily.

[jordan.uni]

(Original post by Psyk)
But you don't get access to the source code of CryENGINE 3 either do you?*(genuine question)

Yeah you get access to the CryENGINE3 source code, as a free user, whereas with UDK you don't

(Original post by Psyk)
While there certainly are advantages to being able to use C++, I don't think not having to learn Unrealscript is really one of them. Any decent C++ programmer should be able to pick up Unrealscript fairly easily.

Yeah okay, I'll retract that statement and say that;

Being able to code in C++ is, in my opinion, better than having to learn unrealscript. I half agree with your point, but I think it's not hard to see that using unrealscript you would be quite restricted whereas having access to the source code gives you much more flexibility.

Still I've tried both UDK and CryENGINE and found CryENGINE to be the better of the two.

Still no harm in trying both, I guess it's down to personal preference.

[RyanT]

Thanks Jordan, downloading the engine to have a look at it. I had a go at the unreal engine, felt a bit overwhelmed but managed to get some basic objects out. Youtube guides invaluable

[jordan.uni]

Please let us know how you get on, would be interesting to see the progress on the miniature forest.

[Psyk]

(Original post by jordan.uni)
Yeah you get access to the CryENGINE3 source code, as a free user, whereas with UDK you don't

I think you must be mistaken. A company isn't going to give away such a valuable asset for free. A quick Google search can't find anything about the source code being included without a licence, only statements to the contrary. Obviously you will get some source code, basically samples of how to use the engine, but they don't give away the entire source code of the engine.

(Original post by jordan.uni)
Yeah okay, I'll retract that statement and say that;

Being able to code in C++ is, in my opinion, better than having to learn unrealscript. I half agree with your point, but I think it's not hard to see that using unrealscript you would be quite restricted whereas having access to the source code gives you much more flexibility.

Still I've tried both UDK and CryENGINE and found CryENGINE to be the better of the two.

Still no harm in trying both, I guess it's down to personal preference.

Yeah, Unrealscript is somewhat limited by design. It's meant to be a sandbox for writing game logic. C++ does give you some more flexibility, at least in terms of performance and being able to integrate it with 3rd party code, but without full source code access (which as I've said above, you don't get for free) it's still limited by the APIs they give you. Although it's unlikely anyone using the free version is going to find something they can't do with it.

[jordan.uni]

Riiight, I see. Yeah, the Free SDK is a 'watered down' version of the actual CryENGINE.

Sorry.

[jordan.uni]

How's it going?

[RyanT]

I got as far as making a boat that sank to the bottom of the sea everytime I ran the map. Backed out with the fear of god in me, working with QT to link up the built in GUI makers with game logics that I can write in c++ =)

Main project is trying to build a sci-fi style quasi military log system (text+video) but I'm back to uni in September so bit bogged down with economics