What engines are available?

L

Logun

Spaceman
I'm sure this is a dead horse that has been beaten over and over again, but I'm a newbie to this forum and to programming (Like very, very new). I love the WC series games and want to try my hand at programming (on the side as a hobby).

1) So what engines are available? Can you list them all and what games were done with which and where can I find them (Links to them would be HUGELY appreciated)!!!

From what I undertand EA won't release some of the engines? Is this still true?

2) Is there a newer type of engine that can be used like 3D game studio or something like that? Or is everyone staying with the original engines or the ones that are close to keep with the original look and feel?

3) Besides forums, is there documentation on how to use the different engines someone is going to list (i.e. Vega Strike, FC (Force Commader???)?

4) How hard will it be for a newbie to catch on to the engines?
 
As far as I know their are 5 engines that are used to create WC games:

Standoff/UE use the Vision engine from WC Prophecy/Secret ops to do their mods.
Vega Strike...don't know that much about it. Its open source as far as I know.
Flight Commander is a selfwritten engine.
Pioneer seams to use also its own engine.
Saga that is using an modified Freespace2 engine also known as FSopen.

For documentations I would say contact the specific projects to get more information about it.
 
Hi. Welcome.

Available engines I know of.
Vision-Not open source and EA has not plans for it being one.
Flight Commander-Self developed and similar to Vision, but open source. It is a work in progress.
[/U]Vega Strike[/U]-Another open source engine. It is like Privateer.
Freespace 2-It is now open source, you can download it on the Internet.

As for documentation, check their websites, especially FC and Vega Strike. They have their own websites.

Editing games is no picnic from my own experience. It takes time and practice. Those fan based projects tookn years to make. Prepare to have plenty of patience with you.

Hope this will help you.
 
Well, it's worth thinking about. This is probably nowhere near complete, but it's a nice start.

Privateer, of course, is the most famouse source of engines. The game and its addon creates an unnamed series of seven progressively better engine systems available on the civilian market -- numbered Level 1 through Level 7 (note that levels 6 & 7 aren't introduced until 2670 in Righteous Fire).

Fleet Action introduces quite a few names for engines:

* E-8 Engines (used to upgrade a Granicus-class Medium Corvette)
* Mark 10 Engines (from a Falcon-class Light Corvette)
* Yatug-class Engines (from the Kilrathi Hakaga-class Heavy Carrier)
* Tangent-class Engines (from the F-57 Sabre class Heavy Attack Fighter)

The book also mentions "Sabre A engines", attached to a Ferret by the Landreich. It's unclear whether or not this is another variety of engine or if they're engines off of a F-57A Sabre.

End Run also references engines but in a similar confusing manner. The TCS Tarawa has "a Gilgamesh class engine system" which replaces her original "Mark 33 transport engines". We don't know if these refer to ships or not, since there's a Gilgamesh-class Destroyer (so, in that case, perhaps the Tarawa was originally a 'Mark 33 Heavy Transport').

We see some early war civilian engines in Action Stations. Kruger upgrades the Lazarus with Reverberator 3000C engines, prompting Richards to point out that the Reverberator series is up to 3000E (in 2634).
 
Nice one, LOAF.

As for engines, I think the best engine depends on what kind of a game you want.

First of all, if you want to make any kind of space trading project, vegastrike is pretty much your only choice ATM.

If you want to make a game with a WCP-like feel to it. Try vision or flightcommander.

SCP (the source code project/freespace) is good if you want modern graphics, and a great flight model.
 
Well, there is a lot of editing tools for the Vision Engine, plus lots of documentation and help, but it takes patience to learn how to edit everything to the way you want. There are also of course some limitations such as you can't edit the AI (as far as I know this is too well hardcoded for a dll to handle) and certain other features like cloaking. (although HCl, and other programmers have made amazing strides in customizing the SO engine) In the end, though, your primary limitations will be in the graphics (although the high-res patch helps considerably) and the size/polygon limits placed on models (and a limit on the number of allowed ships and such).

The Flight Commander engine's first problem is that it is incomplete in several major aspects (ie Ship AI, turret AI, and a navsystem beyond going from nav to nav in sequential order), but the engine is very much at a stage where many aspects can be easily edited or incorporated into the engine's external files meaning that you can currently add most of the stuff your mod needs added or edited like ships, capships, other types of models, music, missions, briefings, the essientials of most mission scripts, most weapons (excluding multi-missiles), basic cutscenes (scramble, go to briefing, etc.), voiceovers, etc. There is also an advanced mission editor to add in many of the non-scripted aspects. And lets face it, most of the needed aspects for the engine will probably be complete by the time an advanced mod project (one that customizes multiple parts of the game and has 3d animated cutscenes in addition to missions and some fiction) will be in need of them.

I don't know much about the FS2 engine except for the fact that the work Saga has done in editing the engine has made it very WC-like. (as for editing it, I have no idea)

Vega Strike (same thing, no idea except that it was built for WC-based mods)

Also I know little about the engines being used for the Privateer-like games except that they are being build or crafted for trading-based mods.
 
Thanks!!!

Thank you all for all the great info and it's great to be here. I look forward to getting to know you guys better in the future.
 
End Run also references engines but in a similar confusing manner. The TCS Tarawa has "a Gilgamesh class engine system" which replaces her original "Mark 33 transport engines". We don't know if these refer to ships or not, since there's a Gilgamesh-class Destroyer (so, in that case, perhaps the Tarawa was originally a 'Mark 33 Heavy Transport').
Click to expand...

I think the key here might be the word 'system'. The Gilgamesh-class Engine System sounds to me like the system of propulsion of a Gilgamesh-class Destroyer. Whereas the 'Mk-33 transport engines' sounds specifically like the type of engine used. Mk-33 engines may have been the standard engine of the Heavy Transport type, the 250 kps capable engines found in the Gilgamesh class DD may have been a better choice for Confed's new CVE.
 
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