Hi all. I’m currently doing a college course in the area of game development and I’m looking for some advice. The practical side of the course is mostly centered around 3DS Max and Unity. I’ve already mostly switched from using Max to Blender for asset generation as I already have plenty of experience with Max and I think Blender is a more realistic option for a freelancer (I don’t have €5,000 handy to spend on a licence). That and it’s a cool piece of software I’ve been meaning to learn for awhile. We have a final project coming up next semester which is basically “make a game,” and I’ve been thinking of trying to convince my tutors to let me switch from Unity to the BGE.
The reason I’ve been thinking of doing so is that the free version of unity lacks some features I expect to need, like reflective and refractive shaders and volume fog. The concept I’m considering for my project is something like an fps between submarines and surface vessels, so decent looking water is important. If I can’t make it happen, I have other concepts in mind which would work with the existing graphical options provided by unity, but this one is my first preference.
-Is YoFrankie a representative example of the stability of the engine? It seems very buggy and unfriendly to the end user. I also tried installing the crystal-space version (I know this isn’t BGE) but I couldn’t even get it to run, and installing it was tricky so it may be that it’s the project in general that’s a bit buggy. If there’s a better example of a finished game or even a nice prototype could someone direct me to it?
-Of all that sexy stuff on youtube from the candy branch (area lights, lens flares etc.), how much is usable and stable now, or is likely to become so in the next month or two?
-Are there reflective and refractive shaders immediately available? I’m in no way shy when it comes to coding, but I’m pretty sure that writing one would be far beyond my abilities and the timeframe of the project. If they exist, but aren’t in trunk, that’s fine, so long as they’re reasonably stable.
-If all of these are way beyond the BGE as it is now, would anyone be able to recommend a more suitable engine?
The Blender game engine is something I’ll probably want to explore eventually anyway. I just need someone to give me an idea of what condition it’s in before I dive into it for this project. If I do go ahead with it I’ll be test-typing over christmas and presenting a proposal in mid-january or so.
Thanks in advance for any replies.