killadoob said:
ummm stupid question
so your telling me consoles are more powerful than an amd 4000+ 2 gig ram and 7800 gt?
or even sli with 2 7800?
Yup, I think so. I’ve not seen any direct comparisons (well I haven’t really searched for any), but e.g. the Xbox 360 has a core of 3 risk processors based on the PowerPC architecture, with each running two separate threads full-on (without thread swapping), effectively giving you 6 processors. The PS3 has 7 “cell” processors (with an 8th as being redundant. And both have fat GPU’s. Not that I really know what a "cell" processor is. I know risc and cisc and dsp processors, and even transputers, but a cell processor. Maybe it was a criminal that designed it.
I’m guessing here but the processing power you get from this is somewhere between a top end server from Intel running either dual Xeon or Quad Xeon processors, each Xeon able to multithread 2 full-on threads. So a dual Xeon gives you 4 processors effectively and a quad Xeon gives you 8. Of course you also need a fat graphics card with a good gpu, multiple pipelines and lots of graphics memory. My gut feel tells me the consoles are about the same overall as a Dual Xeon with a decent graphics card. But about somewhere between 2-3 times the current hi-end gaming PC.
Just as an example, I have a 2.8G Laptop with 1 G ram, and a Dual Xeon 3.1G with 2G ram. If I run the same 3ds Max render job on both the machines the Dual Xeon is about 4 times faster.
tibby.dude said:
Another problem is that most of programmers are not really skilled in developing multi-core programs.
Agreed, programming one application for multiple cpu’s is a whole different ball game. Most of the programmers I’ve worked with over the last few years only give you a blank stare if you start talking about distributed programming with multiple threads running on multiple processors. “Excuse me but what is a thread?”
tibby.dude said:
I reckon the 3D engine will become more part of the hardware and all you would do as a game programmer is load the polygon and AI data and boom your game runs
.
Well I can see the trend already. I saw a PCI based HW physics engine is in development, may even be finished by now. I don’t have the URL here but I can find it. There’s no reason why you can’t have a full game 3D engine, physics engine, and perhaps even AI engine in HW. You can either use ARM type devices or a bunch of dsp (digital signal processing) chips such as the TI TMS 320 C80 range of chips. The technology is there, but at the moment it’s probably not cost effective. That could change.
eye_suc said:
in the meantime, there are some interesting opensource 3dengines for the PC available. i think one is called purplesharp or something like that, and it has been used to create at least 1 commercial game, and several non commercial games. velly nice and flee. should keep you busy while looking into other possibilities and also a good platform for creating a prototype game...
Yup, quite a few Open Source engines at different levels of development. At the moment I have some mixed feelings about Open Source. I’ve at least two times in the past totally seen my a$$ with open source k@k that you have to redevelop because it doesn’t work as advertised. Many times Open Source is worth exactly what you pay for it. In this case my gutfeel tells me to go for a commercial engine.
DFantom said:
The engine of the moment is Unreal 3 Engine. It has already been confirmed for XBOX, XBOX360, PS2, PS3, and PC. From what you want to do the Unreal 3 Engine may be the way to go. There are also a few very talented (read: award winning) people in SA with the Unreal Engine
Where are these people? Are you talking about I-Imagine?
slimothy said:
unfortunatly its not that easy, you see to develop for concoles you need to get a development kit which is ussually only handed to companies consisting of 10 people or more and at a price. Most development kits for consoles do not support MS visual Studio products except you do get some that let you build debug binaries but not release binaries, this is largely because these companies dont want to be tied in with microsoft and do not want to pay licenses when borland or codewarrior will do.
This is from the Microsoft XBOX development website:
Xbox 360 games are programmed using the Microsoft® Visual Studio® development system. The Xbox 360 development kit (XDK) supports development using either C or C++. We recommend the following software for writing Xbox 360 code using a PC:
· Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 or Visual Studio .NET 2003
· Direct3D 9.0 Software Development Kit
· Microsoft Cross-Platform Audio Creation Tool (XACT)
Personally I would prefer Java or C#, I hate C++. But it seems you don’t have much choice.
slimothy said:
I'm not sure if when you say game engine you mean 3d engine, I'd say you either go get a commercial engine ($$$) or you use something pretty common place like open GL.
I have noticed that there is an ambiguity when you talk about a “game engine”. I think I mean the more traditional definition where the basic game engine is effectively a 3D CGI realtime renderer with objects/code that handle controller input, 3D scaling, getting stuff to the graphics card etc. Also a lot of little utility programs for doing stuff that you need.
Sometime it includes simple physics or sometimes you have to add a physics engine like Havoc. Same story for AI. Looks like the top AI engine is Renderware AI.
To get a game working you have to add code, typically in C or C++, and you have to add “low poly” 3D CGI models typically produced by a high end animation package such as 3ds Max, Maya, XSI or Cinema 4D. You program “game sequences” or “game levels” according to your game development spec. that includes the gameplay “storyline/storyboard” and the “game paths”. The more powerful your machine is the higher poly you can go with your CGI so that it can become very good, but not quite "photorealistic" IMO. Dependent on the shader that sits in the render engine you can either use procedural texturing or pixel mapping. And so on bla bla bla.
So the basic game engine is a “framework” with some functionality that you can build upon.
A good example of exactly what I have in mind is here:
http://www.trinigy.de/
I had contact with these guys and I have a copy of their engine sdk running on a machine. I now only need time to evaluate it.
Thanks for all the inputs guys, I’m going to have a serious look at Unreal 3.
Thanks matey!