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Game Development

Gamebryo

I’ve been using Gamebryo lately and the more I use it the more I like it. What I like the most is the toolset. Yesterday I was able to create an object in MAX that had 3 different textures with the default shader and apply an animation. I was then able to directly export this […]

I’ve been using Gamebryo lately and the more I use it the more I like it. What I like the most is the toolset. Yesterday I was able to create an object in MAX that had 3 different textures with the default shader and apply an animation. I was then able to directly export this into the level editor, see the animation, and add a sound property. From there I was able to load the file into the game and with some debugging to see my object move around.

The equivalent in my engine right now would have been a monumental task, involving material files, adding programming for the sound and animation, and study of the code to figure out how to get the animation in the right place and to update over time.

The more I use it the more I realize the art problem with my own game was that I lacked the artist support tools that they provide

1. Level editor, with support for custom properties
2. Editing/viewing shader properties by artists in MAX
3. MAX previewer using the game renderer
4. Direct import of levels
5. Direct support for .fx shaders

If I had these things from the beginning I would have saved months that I otherwise wasted redoing art assets and the levels would have looked 10X better. Plus it would have been supported on the consoles.

Support is also very good. I get answers the same or the next day and the technicians are helpful.

My only major complaint is the documentation is incomplete. Yesterday, I spent 3 hours trying to figure out how to load their level asset format and then get the scene node root pointer. It took me 2 days to figure out how to load a custom shader, again mostly debugging. The documentation tells you part of what you need to know, with undocumented preconditions, or references to other systems. In those cases you have to debug the samples and source which is very time consuming.

Ogre is very good about this, where I generally can program from the documentation and didn’t have to build the source until late in the project.

What’s ironic is had I known about Gamebryo at the start of my project I wouldn’t have licensed it. The licensing fee would have scared me away, and if it didn’t, I still wouldn’t have used it. I would have looked at Ogre’s documentation and whatever I want to do would be very clear, vs. days of debugging in Gamebryo, assuming I had the source.

However…

Knowing what I do now, at the end of this project, I would have licensed it. I spent more than the licensing fee in wasted money on artists, redoing art myself, and setting up hard to use tools.

If I manage to find a publisher I’m probably just going to restart the project and use Gamebryo. Especially now that I’ve already been learning it.

10 replies on “Gamebryo”

So how much is a Gamebryo license?

And have you looked at Torque yet? May not be as fully featured as gamebryo, but the price is right. 🙂 150$? You could probably buy all their tools Indy for

You’d have to ask them but it’s a significant cost. They are trying to compete against the big guns (Unreal, Quake) but have a ways to go. If you can do a site license it’s probably a good deal at this point because you can get it cheaper.

One thing which may be a positive or negative is the engine is abstracted away from any particular usage. So you don’t get the automatic networking and certain other features (esp. in the level editor).

I tried Torque before and dropped it because I didn’t want to learn another scripting language.

Gamebryo engine is really awesome.

I’ve worked almost 5 months with this technology and it is one of my favourite graphic engines. The only problem that I’ve found on the version that I worked with was the collision system. It was imprecise, unstable and heavy. The solution was to integrate ODE inside Gamebryo, it worked flawlessly.

I’ve done some lipsync and AI work on the engine too, it is really pleasant to work with Gamebryo.

This is not very deep evaluation, for sure.
Any decent engine should be able to export a composite mesh and attach it to a game object easily, nowadays.
Gamebryo afaik lacks of serious implementations for scene graphs, the sphere-tree thing is slow. I.e. – no good terrain, no good indoor.
Also, they have scary things, like shader constant setup by string, smart poniters flying around as parameters and more.
However, I never used it seriously, so this is all ‘imho’… Just know some devs, that dropped it after pulling one game with it.

“Any decent engine should be able to export a composite mesh and attach it to a game object easily, nowadays.”

That is true. What I should say is that it is much easier to make a game using a complete engine solution (that means including editors, import, and artist tools) than it is to do what I did, which was take libraries and integrate them.

“That is true. What I should say is that it is much easier to make a game using a complete engine solution”
Of course. Integration.
Until you hit the limits of the engine, it feels realy good.

one the the best game creating experiences I’ve had is I’ve recently tried the NeoAxis engine. For a 0.4 release I have been amazed how easy and pleasant it’s been to work with. Apart from being OGRE based the editors for composite/full physics/shaders/level editing with custom properties/terrain are all great. I’m a teacher at a games course and we thought we’d try it out. The inexperienced students are all getting great results and frankly makes my ‘engine’ look a bit shit 🙂
The major problems are it’s windows only, c# (which is a great scripting language though), the workflow from visual studio/resource editor and level editor is a bit clumsy, but I’ve no doubt he’ll streamline that. I’ve used Unreal a lot and it’s nasty and frustrating. Never used Bryo though. I hope this dude makes money to get it on consoles.

“That is true. What I should say is that it is much easier to make a game using a complete engine solution (that means including editors, import, and artist tools) than it is to do what I did, which was take libraries and integrate them. ”
Thats why ‘big’ engines charge so much…because there is awfull alot of work to make an integrate solution that will realy help u make games in reasonable time. In general ppl think getting libraries together will come close to finish to having an engine and make a game but this is about 20-30% of what a real game engine should be. The rest is mindless but very helpful work and thats what pays off in the end

Hello Rak’kar. Nice to see you’re still involved with games and all that jazz. I am here to lodge a complaint. I saw that you have a rating scale for duelers in your subspace strategy guide. I used to dominate many of the players on that list, except kboom. For instance, I *never* had a problem with little, in fact I probably trained him extensively and he was on my squad, and he’s an 8/8. 🙂 Weather helm, d.boon, I all beat in ladder duels.

I’d like to invite you back to subspace. Chaos/league zone is where it’s all at now for vie players, the state of the game is pretty sad yet there is still competition. Players like monkey boy when trying are pretty damn good. I have gotten back into the game and there’s a small community of people dueling again. Around 2001 I created a very elaborate dueling/2v2 system which I’ve never been able to teach anyone because they couldn’t understand the basics of it.

I tried downloading galactic melee and playing it, yet I couldn’t log in. I had thought you made a 3d version of subspace, yet it seems its really just 2d with 3d models or something.

Hi Rak’kar,

I don’t know if your keycode is still valid, but if you sign up for a Gamebryo forum account and send support your display name for activation, the Code Swap section has some extra samples with things like how to write your own custom materials and HDR. I’m working on various supplemental samples that are well documented to explain how to use a single feature from beginning to end.

-Tim Kerchmar
Gamebryo Support Czar

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