Archive for the ‘Source engine’ Category

Game engine change

Sunday, January 27th, 2008

As I finally decided to make some tests with the UT3 engine I noticed that the UDPlink function from UT2k4 is not implemented in the new engine. But I will need something to communicate with the outside. So I took a look around again and evaluated the Source engine a little bit. So maybe I will not use UT3 but Source from Valve instead.

There are several plus-points to the Source engine:

  • It seems that it is possible to communicate with the outside over UDP. There is a class called CBlockingUDPSocket which was pointed out to me by Dustin Hulm aka Teddy from the mod Dystopia. Thanks for that.
  • I like the visual aesthetic of Team Fortress 2 as you can see in the machinima Ignis Solus. And hopefully there will be soon the opportunity to make mods with the new version of the Source engine. A beta update is already there. I am waiting for the final.
  • It runs better on my notebook. My notebook is my primary tool for working.
  • The Source engine is older than the Unreal Engine 3. This lead hopefully leads to more experienced users with it, more tutorials and lesser bugs.
  • There seems to be a good documentation from Valve for the engine: Valve Developer Community

I already bought Orange Box and set up some stuff. Hopefully I will find the time to do some testing soon.

In the meanwhile I hope I can register/apply my thesis soon. To be able to do this I need to find a second supervisor/tutor.