Good 3D Engine???

**TheLion** · 17-12-2002, 05:00 PM

I'm looking for a good 3D engine which would give me a headstart in making a first-person shooter. I want to be able to edit or communicate with the engine through Delphi and the engine must be freeware.

I've searched the web and all I could find was genesis3D (http://www.genesis3d.com/), however this engine doesn't really work well with my hardware (The demo that came with the header files didn't find a compatible device and the other pre-compiled demos complain that I don't have glide2x.dll which is a very old dll and now almost useless dll).

Thanks in advance...

**Loafman** · 17-12-2002, 11:41 PM

You may want to check out the following:

http://www.aztica.com/modules/news/

and

http://www.powerrender.com/homepage.htm

Power Render looks nice. I have been meaning to get there lite version. Here's a quote from the site:

"A new lite version of the Power Render 3D engine has been released for independent software developers. This includes the full engine and toolset for $89.95 US but does not include technical support. The lite version has been created in order to build a larger community of PR users that either cannot afford the full version or do not require additional support."

**Kim Friis** · 18-12-2002, 01:40 PM

You should look at: http://www.delphigamer.com/ that hosts the Delphi header translations for Genesis3d, and it should work with almost all cards, because there is also a software rendering engine and a DirectX engine. But perhaps the example was compiled specifically for the Glide engine? (3dfx cards only)

The Genesis3D engine does look like what you are looking for, BUT it does take a little time to learn how to use.

**TheLion** · 18-12-2002, 04:36 PM

Thanks, I'll give it another shot!

I still find it a bit weird that it still uses the old Glide version (glide2x is pretty old), while OpenGL is available, but software rendering would do just nicely if I can make it work!

**TheLion** · 18-12-2002, 04:44 PM

I just tried it again and used the G4D chaser demo, but the driver list is entirely empty, so either the G4D demo is wrong or the engine is written specificly for glide2x.dll

Anyone a working example for Genesis3D that works on a normal GForce 3 card ?

It could also be that the API functions used in the Chaser demo do not work with WinXP...

**TheLion** · 18-12-2002, 04:48 PM

Neglet my last message, I forgot to place a few DLLs in the directory.

**TheLion** · 18-12-2002, 05:06 PM

I retried the engine, with the correct DLLs in the directory, but the same error keeps appearing. Finally I got the Chaser demo to run, but I keep getting the Glide2x.dll not found error. I placed the glide2x.dll in the directory, but then I get an I/O error. After I placed the other missing DLLs in the directory I'm able to chose graphics cards but on the choice of some my entire computer crashes till the ground and goes for a restart.

I don't think the Genesis 3D engine is what I'm looking for, it looks like it is very outdated and the graphics presented in both the chaser and the official demo are not very impressive.

Since I haven't been able to find any good 3D engines prepared for first person shooters I guess I'll have to begin writing one myself, a task that I was trying to spare myself...

**savage** · 19-12-2002, 07:43 AM

I have 2 suggestions...
There is the excellent Quake 2 to Delphi project ( http://www.sf.net/projects/quake2delphi/. I think you will be well on the way to your first person shooter if you used this as your starting point. The team is in the process of porting the rendering DLLs so it won't be long before the whole thing written Delphi

.

Another suggestion, which may require more work is DeathTruckTion ( an old home page can be found @ http://deathtrucktion.online.fr/ though the latest source is part of http://www.sf.net/projects/jedi-sdl ) which is a 3D engine demo that is part of the JEDI-SDL project. The engine currently uses Pick-up trucks tthat can be driven in a death match arena, but could easily be modified for a first person shooter. All the main engine code is Delphi/Kylix and uses OpenGL for 3D acceleration and should work on both Windows and Linux.

I hope this helps.