Perfect game engine?

I'm gonna reflect on just one particular point in your post. I'm not an expert in the field so maybe someone can correct any mistakes i make.

The Ps2 vs. PC engines debate.

You need to know that the two are vastly different(in the core part of the engine, once you abstract the hardware trough libs they're preety much the same thing). When you're writting an engine for PC you've have to consider all possible cases:
what kinda of graphic card the user is gonna have, what kind of a processors, will he have up to date drivers, what OS. The engine needs to be very robust and scalable to be ready for every configuration it could be run on. That involves loads of testing.

With Ps2 you know exactly what ur dealing with. You write the code and run it and if it runs on your test Ps2 its gonna run on every single Ps2 ever produced(if its not broken). Whats more its gonna run equally fast, and look the same (more or less depending on the TV). This allows you to go down to the machine code level and optimise, knowing its gonna work while with PC you just don't know if this ot that clever optimisation is gonna work on all the configurations (and it probably won't, you need to make queries for processor type if you wanna use Pentium or AMD specific functions).

Ps2 is also built differently. Its got a wider and quicker BUS. Meaning it can transfer data to and fro memory more quickly than PC, hence why it can work so well with less RAM, no to mention that Windows love to eat memory.

Oh yeah J&D and Dropship probably have simillar amount of detail but their worlds are of different sizes. Take the J&D world and stretch it, you'll feel as if you have less detail but now you'll have a lot of space to go around it at supersonic speeds.

Over and out

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Original post by SoLO_tHe_ChaOs like Unreal crap

Have you ever used the unreal engine? It is probably the most sophisticated piece of engineering for writing games there is, atm. It allows users of all levels to create new games based on the engine , you can do it in code, code and script or purely in script. Technologically it is superb, right on the cutting edge ( the next gen stuff looks amazing ).

Tackling a few of your points...

1. No, it's diferent tools for different jobs. The engine that is perfect for a 2d platformer certainly wont be perfect for a mmorpg for instance.

2. A Guy from CRO seemed to cover this pretty well. The ps2 is a completely different beast to write for.

3. GOAL was developed ( as an extension to lisp ) by the team to tackle the specific problems they had. Again, it's whatever suits the project.

4. It is rather ironic that you seem to not like the unreal technology as this is the exact answer to this question. Check out this page for games made with the unreal engine ( on consoles too don't forget! ) http://www.unrealtechnology.com/html/powered/released.shtml

Examples include Deus Ex: Invisible War , splinter cell , rainbox six 3 , xiii to mention only a small number ( all great games too ).

5. The problem here ( that FPS are boring and samey ) is not the fault of the engine, game design is a whole other area which requires as much if not more skill that the coding. It seems that currently publichers are unwilling to risk their cash on new untried concepts but would rather stay with tried and test money winners ( like our friend the fps ). This is only natural behaviour of course.

6. Again , this has already been covered.

7. No problems I'm from Engalnd and my English sucks!

Good luck in your search for that mythical perfect engine!

AH I WANT WRITE CODE ON PS2.
SORRY BUT PC S CKS.
Driver , cards and blaa, blaa ,blaa DX and OGL and blaa, blaaa.
There is no hope that i can make games like ps2 on PC,isn't?.
Unreal is like library program u can make every crap game if u want.

Is game has to be universal program like MFC?
"Examples include Deus Ex: Invisible War , splinter cell , rainbox six 3 , xiii to mention only a small number ( all great games too )."- that all FPS (yea good story but FPS crap)

And i know that this is beacuse u have a suberb Pad on PS2 and PC has Keyboard and mouse in standart.
I'm born coder (I love fast HW like PS2 O_O)

Not to be rude but a standard consumer PC of today is way faster than the PS2. When it comes to computing and graphics power the XBox is far superior to the PS2 and what's in it? Basicly a PIII running at 733MHz and a GeForce4 that and a slightly modified much saner architecture.

Why you drag an old outdated windowing framework into this debate is beyond me, and there's good controllers for the PC to. And heck if you use D3D there's a HAL and HEL to fix most differances and if you're only doing something simple and really don't need the newest hardware (and if you're doing PS2 look alike stuff you don't) simply stay away from anything that is labled "you need a DX9 class video card for this).

Shees, it has never been so simple to create good looking games for any platform as it is to create one for the PC today, if you knew shit 'bout what you're talking about and actually had tried to understand the technology you're bashing and where it come from you wouldn't post rubbish like this.

the unreal 2 engine is the closest you can get to a perfect game engine currently. It can do any kind of game you want, it made games like Lineage 2 and the Rune games, it made the Magic the gathering Battlegrounds game. You see a bunch of FPS games with it because it is ideal for making those games, however it can do anything you want. it costs 350,000 with royalty fees or 750,000 USD without royalty fees. it has versions made that work on PC ps2 and Xbox, and it comes with basically everything you need to make a game aside from the actual Development team. So if your looking for a kitchen sink that happens to be a game development suite its Unreal Engine to the rescue.

I believe that when you say that Ulrealscript is good for making any kind of game, you really mean any kind of game that involves the player looking down the barrel of a weapon. I'm looking to write a Super Smash Brothers clone for PC, and I'm currently writing my own 2D physics engine, because a full 3D engine seems like overkill, yet another proof of the original point, there is no perfect engine. However, any engine that makes coding modular and does not complicate the structure of the game, and does a good job handling the game data, is a pretty good engine.

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Original post by SoLO_tHe_ChaOs AH I WANT WRITE CODE ON PS2. SORRY BUT PC S CKS. Driver , cards and blaa, blaa ,blaa DX and OGL and blaa, blaaa. There is no hope that i can make games like ps2 on PC,isn't?. Unreal is like library program u can make every crap game if u want.

What the hell are you talking about?

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Original post by pTymN I believe that when you say that Ulrealscript is good for making any kind of game, you really mean any kind of game that involves the player looking down the barrel of a weapon.

cant have seen the marble madness clone that was made for it then [smile]

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I believe that when you say that Ulrealscript is good for making any kind of game, you really mean any kind of game that involves the player looking down the barrel of a weapon.

Actually, the Unreal Engine has been used for many different types of games, ranging from MMORPGs (Ultima) to strategy games. It's quite a versatile engine, but it also costs a pretty penny to license.

To answer the original question: No, nor should there be. Engines should be optimized around the types of games that they're designed for, otherwise you're going to sacrafice something in order to get things to work. Does a FPS really need the concept of massive item databases? Does a turn-based RPG need the concept of BSP?

Why do you worry about dealing with video cards? You should be using an API like D3D or OGL. With D3D, you really don't have to worry about checking to see if a video card supports something (unless you're using the newest features, of course). If you specify a D3D8 compliant card is required, then you can use pretty much any feature in the D3D8 set and things will work. It's not too complicated. With OGL, you really SHOULDN'T be using Vendor-specific extensions (except maybe as a hack).

At the end of the day, these considerations should make up less than 5-10% of your total code base.

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fit that in 32 MB and 4 MB vram

Well, 2 things here:

1.) It's all effectively integrated memory on a ps2, so it's silly to say you have 32MB of ram and 4MB of vram. It's more like having 32MB of ram and a 4MB frame buffer.

2.) Low-resolution textures, 320x240 TV resolution, no other programs running at the same time...it's not difficult to see why you don't need so much memory.

The average PC game uses less than 128MB of ram at any given time. The reason you see 256MB minimums on game packages is because, well, you need to give the OS and other applications some memory to work with, too...dur.

Sure, developing for PC is harder when it comes to balance stability, compatibility and performance, due to the plethora hardware combinations and software/driver combinations, and it's a riskier market, comercially speaking, because PCs are generic tools with many uses, and a wide range of different users, many who are not into games at all, or whose computers with on-board Intel cards won't be able to play anything made whithin the lastest 4 years properly (I'm talking medium-big games here - of course there are the budget and indie games, that are often more forgiving on their requirements).

But, as a n00b like you sound to be (forgive me if I'm wrong about you, but that's the impression you gave me), you can't quite easily develop on the PS2, for free.

Sony will only sell (it's more like leasing) the SDK to stablished companies with some experience in the market. Newborn companies can only get the SDK through publishers who decide to invest some of their money into them.

The free ways to develop on the PS2 (and in most other consoles, BTW) will require you to get special communication cables, or mod chips, so you can run your code on it. There is a free compiler out there that compiles code for the PS2. But that's all. You get no libraries, not enough documentation (unless you go through illegal ways) and no engines.

Without those, unless you're highly skilled and have tons of time in your hands, it's unlikely you'll anywhere as close to J&D.

Actually, the ps2 linux kit (which is what I'm assuming you're referring to...?) is ONLY available in the U.S. at present. The Euro / Japanese ones are no longer being sold. At least that's what the website claims.

Thank you all for so much knowledge.Learning new things is so good too me and it give's me so much pleasure.
If i work hard then my dreams come true and i will be programming on Ps2 or Ps3 with has more than one thread.


I know D3D ,OGL on advenced level.I know that if game has 60 fps then it has good gfx engine and only the gameplay is the ture game heart.I know that Naplink can help with Ps2.I know that is good to have a 6800 or X800 on borad and get that power out of card.
And if u have good team then u never do things like unreal game engine (2d unreal :) platformo-shooto-drivingo?-FPSmosto-crap because u think that gold is only thing that shine).
Blizzard team rules !!!

Thank you very much.
Ps.
Can u give me more :)

let's hope his native lanuguge is danish and he's using a translator.

I genuinely have no clue what you just said.

I'm wired or wreid?
Yea you are right :)

I would guess your 15 but that's quite irrelevant :)

And really developing on the PS2 as indie is sure to be a headache quite much worse than developing on your home PC and really for small stuff compatibility isn't really a huge thing, if the only ones that's going to see most of your work are your friends then really getting it supported on those computers really isn't that much of a deal and really you'll have to start making some really weird shit before it starts breaking on a painfull percentage of computers espically if you keep to known standards and don't start relying on undefined behavior throughout your application.

True :) Thank you DD. I'm older.

You're right :)
Without exp and practice there is no "pure" knowlegde.
I'm only saying that i want to create a ps2 like games on PC.
One thing:
(game==data base ? universal crap : one type solid)
witch choose?

What he means is that game engines developed for PS2 are better than game engines developed for PC. That is of course without realising that most commercial game engines are designed to be cross platform. And also that the PC can be much more powerful than the consoles with enough money. If you're a born coder, then you should have done some research on this yourself.

If you haven't yet taken a peek at the Unreal 3 engine, then I guess your delusions are understandable but sadly misinformed. Looking at the points you have raised, it looks like you have little knowledge on the subject you have brought up.

Sure some PC engines sucks, in terms of graphics quality, or speed or whatever. But the art of the game also factors (in a major way) how the game looks like. Your point on how Jak & Dexter has worlds that looks better than every other single PC game on the planet (which I must point out that it's simply not true) is irrelevant to a discussion of game engines.