Horde3D

Hi,

I'm a Java/C++ developer looking to start developing a game. I have no experience with graphics or game programming.

The characters in the game are people in a room or outside and I wish it to have amazing graphics and very immersive.

Do you recommend Horde3d for that? How do you recommend starting?

Thanks

Hi,

it is not easy to tell if Horde is the right thing for beginners. Basically it is designed as a professional level engine which can do almost the same as commercial engines. The API is very simple to use but the real power comes from the shaders and support for specifying rendering techniques in XML. If you just want something standard you are fine using the sample shaders. But as soon as you want to do something more advanced you have to begin to learn gaphics algorithms which is of course not trivial. But this is the same for other engines. The only difference is that it might be easier to create very basic materials in other (open source) engines since they are usually not completely based on shaders.

I would grab a couple of other engines like Irrlicht and Ogre along with Horde. Build the API references with doxygen and try each one out by making modifications to their demos while using the API reference to understand the "what" and "why" of occurences in the engines.

Once you've Identified the one that's going to be the easiest for you start working with, stick with it for a while to build experience with the least resistance.

It's most likely going to take you some time just getting the hang of things before you really start on a game project and you can always switch to another rendering engine if you don't over invest before understanding.

Thank you guys very much for the great advices, I already started looking at that.
Here is the thing: The game I wish to develop already exists. It is a simple online game that includes a server, multi players and a client. The main differentiator I wish to achieve is the graphics. That is why I try to insist and stick to Horde3D. I wish to have that advantage.

Since I come from the server and enterprise application development world and it will take me some time to gain experience in the gaming world I’m thinking to form a virtual online team to start that project. What do you think?