Good engines for a city

    What are good engines for a city?

    Upcoming engines are also good.

    The crysis engine looks good for this. Anyone experience with it?

    Also, some might have used dota2 tools. I'm wondering could source 2 be a potential engine for a city? Bit early to say probably

    O yeah, for the size. It doesnt have to be insane huge. 3x3 times the size of dust2 will do.

    I'm more worried about performance when you can see pretty far and a lot of buildings as well. To make it even worse, most buildings should have access to the inside.

    I'm not sure about the detail yet.

    I'm more a fan of good gameplay over graphics.

    But bad graphics are so hard to sell.

    Also it's more fun making something detailed.

    Quote from clankill3r

    O yeah, for the size. It doesnt have to be insane huge. 3x3 times the size of dust2 will do.

    As everyone mentioned, CryEngine and UnrealEngine should be good choices for urban landscapes.


    If you're feeling a little adventurous, you can still use Source since the overall size is only 3 times the size of dust2.


    Of course, you would need to have many props to circumvent the brushwork limit in Source and you would need solid optimization to render only necessary parts of the map and avoid fps slide shows but it's doable if other engines are not an option at the moment (licensing fees, no time to learn, etc...)


    Good luck


    In the case of Source, you should check out some of the custom maps for Garry's Mod. There are enormous levels (outdoor, city, you name it) for it on the Workshop.

    what are you really concerned with ?

    -occlusion ?

    -distance lod ?

    -streaming ?

    -performance ?

    -memory footprint ?

    -dynamic lighting ?

    -dynamic collision ... can i blow up a house ?!?


    those are importent things to think about when choosing your engine.


    if you dont need dynamic lighting than source and unreal move up in the ranking but if you do cryengine and unity move up instead than again if you need proper streaming unity moves down etc ...


    give us a bit more info on what you need and what you could sacrafice

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    what are you really concerned with ?

    :

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    -occlusion ?


    With source I do. Since brushes don't support LOD I would go for models if I use source. But then I need to hide simple null brushes inside the models to deal with the occlusion I guess.


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    -distance lod ?

    Yup.


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    -streaming ?

    What do you mean?


    Quote

    -performance ?


    Yes, smooth movement is one of the main important things. Having a framerate of 60 or higher is a must for me.


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    -memory footprint ?


    Well this raises a question. Does source for example have a limit of models it can load?

    The last time i was active was on gold source and there was a entity limit of 512 by the map if I remember correct.


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    -dynamic lighting ?


    Not needed. I do like it but it's more a plus then a requirement.


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    -dynamic collision ... can i blow up a house ?!?

    Not needed, although I do like it. But from what I have seen I don't like current implementations of destruction.I can be wrong but from the videos I have seen the debris doesn't destruct. --- I only have experience with gold source. I mapped for source a little but hammer was full of bugs that I hated it.What I like about source is that most pc's can run it. On the other hand, if something is ambiguous then it can save so much time choosing the right engine at the start. I have no hurry at all. First I want to make a small prototype anyway to test the fun of the gameplay mechanics. About the maps in garry mod. They are really abstract.I might do a test with combining some different cs maps to see if it still compiles.

    Quote from Pampers

    I don't think you are ready for a task like this


    [Blocked Image: http://cdn.chud.com/7/73/731ef7e5_tumblr_ljxrjuklNn1qai112.jpeg]


    ~


    But more seriously, depends what you are thinking of clankiller. The question make immediately think of a sandbox game so wouldn't think of Source as a first. I would even look further away in stuff like the ARMA engine? I remember a few videos of the toolkit and you could build areas quickly.

    Engines with pre computed occlusion won't cut it. Placing portals by hand in a city map is pure hair work, you'll either have to place buildings such that there is a lot of static geometry occluding things or limit yourself such that lines of sight going in and out of buildings aren't that many and there aren't that many crossing each other.

    no commercially available engine is very good, most city based games use very specific engines with very specific streaming setups


    by city based I assume you mean open world city

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