Game creation software?

[Aldeb]

What game creation software would you recommend for creating... old looking dos games in the vein of Doom or Duke3D, but with modern furnishing (kind of the visual style you would get from the Doomsday Engine or brutal doom)

I'm fooling around with the idea of a 3D shooter crossed with RPG mechanics, kind of like Hexen mixed with Diablo. I have some experience with 3D modelling / texturing, level design (back with UT99) and have dabbled a bit with UDK (better with the visual side of things. programming = fail)

[tienkhoanguyen]

Jesus Christ!hehe

I have a little experience with true bit graphics so you might like Microsoft Small BASIC or something like that. That one was free a year ago. However depending on popularity might go for pay? It is a really simple language and you can develop for Microsoft Windows. I really like it.

There is also Pelles C, Pelles Assembler and such for Microsoft Windows, which is geared towards 64-bit mode surprisingly. As for 3D modeling and rendering I am not too familiar with CAD/CAM however maybe combine the drawings of CAD/CAM with one of the above mentioned softwares?

Cheers (drink water for good health)

Thank you Jesus hopefully you find your niche!

[MrFlibble]

I'm fooling around with the idea of a 3D shooter crossed with RPG mechanics, kind of like Hexen mixed with Diablo. I have some experience with 3D modelling / texturing, level design (back with UT99) and have dabbled a bit with UDK (better with the visual side of things. programming = fail)

I'm not aware of any game creation software per se of the likes that you're looking for, but since the Doom and Duke Nukem 3D engines are open source and there are advanced resource and level editors for both games, you could probably try using those community tools to create something.

For example, WGRealms 2 is a stand-alone RPG-ish FPS game on the Duke Nukem 3D engine.

[tienkhoanguyen]

Jesus Christ!hehe

Well, if you program things yourself - you have pretty much complete control over everything. I have found using a game creation package limits you pretty much to a certain design.

If you do program things yourself, I really recommend Borland Turbo C 2.01 to start off with since it is really easy language. Then you can add on Borland Turbo Assembler 4.1 for super speed where your games need a boost.

Thank you my The LORD of all hosts for giving me the graceful talent to complete my entire studies. It is all downhill from here. The hardest part was reading all six-hundred and thirty pages of notes.

[MrFlibble]

I have found using a game creation package limits you pretty much to a certain design.

That is certainly true, but the upside is that this is a great opportunity for people who lack any substantial programming skills to do something on their own.

I love the old times when development teams were small and people would many different things - programming, level design, graphics even acting or music. But it is inevitable at some point that job specialization emerges. Some people are more keen at level design, others at programming etc.

So if you're a one-man team with a great concept and a knack for level building, but no advanced skill in programming, game creation software is a good solution.

There are a lot of games built with the RPG Maker or similar tools. I haven't really played many of those but it is my understanding that even though there are limitations, there's a pretty wide scope of what you can do with that software.

Oh and BTW, to answer Aldeb's question, I remembered that there's a couple of free 3D engines that may (or may not) be useful for you, like Retribution Engine or Cafu Engine. I also remember one free/open source FPS engine which had a feature of talking to NPCs, but I can't remember what it was called. Wikipedia has a list of such engines (scroll down any page like this one), but that one with NPCs doesn't seem to be listed (?).

[tienkhoanguyen]

Jesus Christ!hehe

Those are very good points. That is like someone who built Borland tools and I used it to create games. However it did costs me forty-one years of my life before I realize I wanted to program for the rest of my life. haha It is kind of sad that I wasted close to half my life away before I did something with it that I wanted. However, better late than the whole life wasted right? hehe

[pseudocoder]

What game creation software would you recommend for creating... old looking dos games in the vein of Doom or Duke3D, but with modern furnishing (kind of the visual style you would get from the Doomsday Engine or brutal doom)

My first thought would be to download the source to doom or such and recompile it to suit your models, but if you aren't familiar with the programming side, that may not help. You might even try to retexture the existing models, maps, etc.

I've never used it, but I *think* Game maker may be worth a look though any modern models probably wouldn't work since it's built around antiquated hardware.

There are a few more modern packages such as Game Studio that allow importing models. The older XNA versions were interesting, but required C#. Much of creation software is either crippled and / or seems to require some level of programming whether it be a mainstream language, some clone like interpretation, or the author's idea of an "easy to follow" scripting language.

Best of luck to you.

[Aldeb]

Thanks. I've noticed there are many doom engine source ports. Maybe some of them can be modified