Oh man, you guys are setting up for a steeeep climb. I would download Genesis3D source code or Quake, or CrystalSpace or Blitz engine, or others and really try to study it to find out how it all fits together. Are you ready to deal with the 3d hardware work arounds or do you have strong math skills and I mean understand things like cross and dot products and how to use them for collision detection, Constructive Solid Geometry, Lightmapping, alphablending, binary partition trees, possible visible sets, using portals, ray picking, sound, ai, input, network, particle fx, and host of other things? If not just download a ready made engine and a good editor to go with it and create a game, since by your post I gather that you guys want to do a game more than spend time coding a 3d engine. If you decide to do a 3d engine then start small, like do only flat shading without lighting for example then make a game with it and show it to others who might joing you once they see that you are serious and have some foundation already built. Make a 3D editor for simple shapes and don't go into CSG without some knowledge. Also check out d3d retained mode for mesh objects, it might be useful when writing CSG editor. Most of all don't give up when things get tough, and you most likely will succeed in what ever you do.

Starting to rant so beware:)

I myself have spent few days going over Genesis3d v1.1 source code and decided to postpone working on my CSG editor and d3d engine for now. There are a lot of newbies like you and I that will benefit from Genesis3D game programming. The Genesis forum is great place to start and you can build on the foundation that was given to you by WildTangent to create a game. I mean why reinvent the wheel by making yet an another engine that will at best be mediocre. Invest your time into a coding community whether it be Genesis or CrystalSpace or whatever but unless you have a team of programmers that you pay $100,000 a year each for their knowledge you will get almost nowhere. 400 people are working on CrystalSpace and the engine doesn't even have a complete editor or to my knowledge no one made a commercial game with it. Talk about manpower. Look at linux community, 1000's of people working only on bug fixes and small changes to the code. If you want results you hire professionals, otherwise the code becomes a playground for people to learn from and expand on but nothing beyond that. I might be wrong about this, and there could be small teams of let say 2 to 3 very dedicated people out there who have the smarts/math to pull something like this off, but consider the fact that even if you do make a nice engine then it might not be competitive enough to earn living from. I look through the internet and some companies are offering 3d engines and tools for level and character building and yet fail to attract developers and make money from it. So they are coming up with schemes like lets give out free engine and tools and to make living from this let the game programmers insert ads into billboards within the game and attract advertisers to sponsor us while we pay the developer of the game 30%, to us we pay %30 and the rest is spent on promotion of the game. I think the whole 3D engine scene is getting overcrowded and one thing I learned from economics is that as long as there is a profit to be made from selling the engine, developers will persue this avenue until you break even and when that happens the code might be released like CrackDotCom people did(money ran out). By the time you finish your engine the market might change and the engine will have to be compatible/work in your browser to be competitive with others out there. WildTangent is doing this with genesis2 and I read somewhere that John Carmack is looking into using the internet for somekind of virtual reality thing with the cheap cameras and somehow incorporate this into a game. You can bet that other developers/companies who don't want to be left behind are already researching/spending money on this and other things that will give them an edge. I am in no way saying that you guys should abandon the idea of making a cool engine and if you are looking for a team through which you gain experience then by all means go for it, but you might find that you will attract beginners and learning will be an uphill battle and lot of confusion and will result in blind leading the blind. (I know you are looking for experts also, but I think those are making money in other companies) Well, I am going to close this novel and let you guys get back to programming. If anyone feels like me then write about it here and let me know if I am insane and need to get out of my cave to smell the roses and see the sunshine;-) See ya!

Edited by - JD on 1/4/00 12:29:13 AM

Wrong forum for a help wanted post, put it in the "Help Wanted" forum... but due to some good comments I''ll leave it for the time being, unless people object?

-fel

Since you obviously didn''t listen the first time, I''m going to have to edit out your attempts at advertising in the wrong forum. Otherwise it wouldn''t be fair to the other people I''ve deleted posts of for this.

-fel
~hey, nothing personal, it''s my job~