Yes, but I have not seen any 3D game that makes me want to really play it. I find the 3D aspect interesting professionally, and from a technological perspective, but I don't find it adding entertainment value.

I disagree that customers demand 3D on mobile. In fact, I disagree that they demand it on desktop, for many game concepts. Despite what my personal tastes say about it, tons of people play stuff from casual vendors such as Big Fish Games especially from the "Hidden Object" category.

Does 3D add significant value and (more importantly) improved visuals to puzzle games, to hidden objects? Do you think people wouldn't play Torchlight if it were 2D? 3D games we already very strong back in 2000, yet Diablo II was mostly 2D.

I don't think people's tastes are all that radically different today. Games can be improved by 3D, but it might be unimportant, and it may significantly hinder the visuals of the games if they have the same budget. A game with 2D sprites, background et al can take advantage of excellent renderers in 3D modeling packages and only then be touched up in Photoshop to improve the look. A game with 3D environment has to have great texture artists, great modelers, great shader writers and display the entire good looking 3D environment quickly on even poor machines.

It all depends on what your market is.

I agree with this one completely!

It does depend, however, on how complex is it to implement your ideas with an off-the-shelf game engine, and sometimes it may even be so with an off-the-shelf renderer. Just sayin'. :-)

Interesting! Thanks for the info! I'm pretty sure if one sat for a while and thought about it, one could come up with a way to easily implement wrinkle maps with Ogre. On the other hand, there may be many such tricks in CryEngine.

In the end, it all comes down to this: how much of those tricks does one need for most games?

Rendering engine means nothing without good artists. Otherwise, insightful -- here's a cookie :-)

Business move is smart, indeed. How useful to other developers - this remains to be seen.

That's right!

Nice to hear from someone that actually used the engine to confirm my suspicions :-)

There are numerous libraries typically combined with Ogre3D to provide it physics and audio. AI can be written relatively easily, and reusability is limited. Networking can be difficult to reuse.

So, nitpickers are making me say "Ogre3D + additional libraries typically used with it"? :-)

Sure, those few generic classes for AI can be taken off the shelf. Is that among the things that CryEngine offers?

Crappy stuff can be made with any of those. So can good stuff. I'm talking about erosion of market because major stuff is available in all engines for free. Open source engines are mostly missing fancy editors, since they work primarily with rendering.

Since you are obviously knowledgeable with all three systems, when you work with them, what major thing is missing from Ogre3D? What major thing do you think Unreal Engine 3 and CryEngine include that cannot easily be done with Ogre3D? Feel free to be subjective, if you need to be.

Can you also say a few words on flexibility of UE3 and CE when developing a new idea?

For most stuff on mobile, you don't need a 3D engine. In fact, 3D games I have played on mobile are all far less compelling than 2D, but fancy, stuff I have seen. What game do you find compelling that uses 3D on mobile, and that its design depends on 3D and could not be done with 2D?

That's what I meant -- rendering engine. In Ogre3D, input handling is practically bundled (OIS). AI is not and can not be universal; that piece of the puzzle is definitely game code, not engine code. Audio is easily integrated.

It may not be a complete solution, but for rendering (which is one of the hardest pieces of the puzzle) it's surely good.

Looks like market for selling engines off-the-shelf is generally badly hit over the last few years. You can get a quality engine (and SDK!) for free, and you only buy extras. Engines and SDKs that I know of and that are free, or require payment for commercial development or upon release: Unity3D, Unreal, now CryEngine. Not to mention Ogre3D and other open-source engines (without editors, though).

To keep posts short and to the point.

Thanks!

I'm curious what's the problem with Speex for voice transmission? (A non-rhetorical question.)

Who gave them that?

Are you saying that Israel is the problem? I am not that actively tracking the status in the region, but they never seemed like a major troublemaker to me. If they are, what is the logic in destroying everyone around them?

Russia is not half-way around the world.

I'm afraid I do not understand how all this justifies entering the conflict in Libya. If Gaddafi was mad enough to openly attack Israel, he had over 40 years to do so. I'm also not sure that bringing US' "sons of bitches" into power to replace one who was previously US "son of a bitch" is the solution. You should observe problems in political transition of countries from socialism to capitalism. Even worse scum comes to power.

There's an insightful campaign slogan for local elections in one small town in Croatia: "Vote for us; we already stole what we wanted." If other people come into power, you have no idea who you'll be dealing with.

It is interesting that in less than a month since the first uprisings, a rebel "government" has been organized in Libya. It has already organized a "central bank" (with what money?) and secured oil export contracts, not to mention armed itself. Hmm.

Who is trigger happy here?

Everything always must come down to Israel, doesn't it? This seems like an ironic twist on the Godwin's Law.

United States is on the other side of the world compared to the Middle East. It is not directly threatened. Israel does not seem like a natural ally. United States is not threatened militarily and it's not really threatened by the Middle Eastern countries at all, and should not look at small countries as its allies. United States should feel much more threatened by the China.

Government of the Gitmo Nation West should more closely try to end the dependence on the Chinese products and the Chinese market, work on economic ties with the rest of the world, kickstart manufacturing and science, and overall regain its economic and cultural strength. Gunning everyone that dares to oppose the "world's last standing superpower" and its wishes is not a solution.

And it will bring neither stability nor democracy. Instead, United States are for the last decade turning into the very monster whose creation they are trying to prevent.