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Cipher engine, looking for comments

Started by Fastjack Aug 5, 2003 at 2:05 PM 8 replies 1.4k views

Original Post

Aug 5, 2003 at 2:05 PM

i recently checked out the cipher engine page and was really impressed at the suite of tools you get for only 100$ and i pretty much made up my mind to go ahead and buy it, but i decided it would be prudent to check out all my other options. So i went and gave the (surprisingly long) list of indy/free/cheap 3d engines out there a cursory look and i am still most impressed by cipher but id like to ask around before i commit: -have you used the cipher engine before? (or are you now) what was/is your experience with it? -have you had a great experience with another comparable 3d engine you would like to tell me about? -basically any info to sway me one way or the other on the issue, maybe check it out at www.cipherengine.com and tell me what you think of the demos and feature list*** BTW: i want to use the engine for a variety of games, mainly strategy but rpg action/rpg action games might be along in the future. (one of them, seeing as i am working on a sport/strategy game right now for the IGF and me and my team are going to start a strategy game come sept. 1st) does it look as though it would support those types of games? my only real reservation is that the engine is programmed in c and i am more familiar/sharper with my c++ and thus would prefer that. Fastjack@hackermail.com

Fastjack

Aug 6, 2003 at 2:19 PM

im just bumping this one time cause its so important to me, just this once i promise, but plz post any relevent comments.

Fastjack@hackermail.com

Fastjack

Aug 6, 2003 at 3:14 PM

actually i was under the impression that cipher uses D3D for graphics but it uses openGL, with which i am not familiar. I will still be able to make games with it just not modify the graphics engine components, correct?

if anyone familiar with the engine could tell me if a working knowledge of OpenGl would be rewuired to create a gaming using cipher as a framework.

Fastjack@hackermail.com

stodge

Aug 6, 2003 at 3:42 PM

I believe you get the source to the whole engine, so you can change whatever you want.

oliii

Aug 6, 2003 at 4:00 PM

that''s the whole point of an engine. Hide the under layers, so you can use a higher level interface. It won;t matter if it uses OpenGL or DirectX, they are basically equivalent, and everything should be hidden from you. Learning OpenGL won''t help you much if you know D3D, unless you want to write custom shaders to the engine, or custom components (if the engine is customisable). Even then, it should be pretty straight forward.

One complain abou the engine, is that, from the screenshots, it seems to be doing vertex lighting only. No lightmaps. Makes things look a bit on the flat side. The physics part look a bit weak. It only does collision queries, and doesn''t seem to process physics. Also, it restricts the collision to BSP, so a bit limited with terrains and stuff. The engine does not support terrain rendering either. There are other free engine packages around, like the Cube engine, or crystal space. Maybe worth a look. There are free physics engines like ODE and Tokamak that you can probably plug into the cipher engine, to do the physics and more advanced collisions.

Fastjack

Aug 6, 2003 at 4:21 PM

thank you for the info oliii, i went ahead and gave ogre and panard vision and crystal space all a good look, ogre seems to beat the others hands down for my needs. I was over at their website (cipher''s) and people are posting that the tomahawk engine seems to plugin really well with little work (30 mins and one guy reported having a demo of cipher/tomahawk working) and i had been looking at tomahawk for awhile, and now it is free

i had figured that the C and openGL would not be a problem except if i wanted to seriously modify the engine components, which i have no real plans to do.

what is worrying me now is that the scripting they use is implemented through a VM that is a modified version of the lcc compiler which only takes c input, and like i said before i use c++ really, but they did express a desire to implement lua down the line for those who prefer it, and seeing as i have some experience with lua that might solve any problems i have with commiting to Cipher.

Please continue to post advice and observations you have on cipher or the other free/cheap engines out there.

thank you.

Fastjack@hackermail.com

Xsist10

Aug 6, 2003 at 5:26 PM

I dont trust a programmer that cant spell cypher

NLDEV

Aug 6, 2003 at 9:12 PM

You might want to look at NeoEngine http://neoengine.sf.net .

It''s pretty robust and extensible. It is constantly being worked on and several landscape implementations are being planned. It supports both Direct3D and OpenGL rendering backends, and Cg shaders.

Fastjack

Aug 8, 2003 at 12:41 AM

i just wanted to thank you all for your input (im gonna go ahead and get cipher, FYI)

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