Maybe on paper the features look similar at a first glance but in reality most things in Gamestudio (physics, shadows,...) are so sub-par that even the free Unity is superior to A7 Pro. Okay, you can extend gamestudio with plugins but if you want to work with C++ it's more worthwhile to spend your time with an open source engine.

Yes, but again, if you want to learn the backgrounds about the technology then better use an open source engine. This way you will learn much more skills that are useful in the industry than with an outdated closed engine with some proprietary scripting language like Lite-C.

I learned most of what I know about graphics programming with gamestudio and that is probably more than 99.9% of Unity users do.
There is no problem with postprocessing, deferred lighting, reflecting water and shadow mapping with A7 Comm.

Okay, seriously, I'll wait until Unity 3 is released. If it's released and Gamestudio didn't got some new awesome features, I'll get Unity and say bye bye to Gamestudio.

I know that stuff like shadow mapping can in theory be added to A7 by the user but I haven't seen a solution yet by anyone which can compare to Unity's (and also Ogre's) implementation in quality. There isn't anything production ready so far. This would be JCL's job actually.

a facelift to the editors (imo, completely drop the MED and write plugins for max/milkshape/fragmotion also drag and drop mdl importing for "new" world editor.) and a new rendering engine with better shadows etc. would give gamestudio a bump and shouldnot be too hard. Drop the qoole99 based WED, it's been 11 years. And write a new better editor from scratch.

Why not embrace Ogre, hire experienced users from the Ogre team/community , there are commercial engines already doing that. This could even remove the windows dependency of the 3dgs.

This is what gamestudio needs urgently, a new graphics renderer, better editor, platform independency. after that web-browser support.

Lite-c and the game programming logic/approach is pretty good, actually that is GameStudios best and last part that remains powerfull.

These are my actual wishes and suggestions for A8. For A7, it is already falling back, no need to add more viagra to the old man.

(p.s. i do not mean engine is bad or unusable, it is still very good and powerfull engine and final products that have been created on a7 can absolutely compete with the ones that have been created on the other engines.)

all GS needs is a better art pipeline, they rest too much of what can be done on the users shoulders, users should be focusing on making their games rather than dealing with the core technics of the engine, shaders, lighting and such, afterall, this is why developers license engines in the first place and so far it seems that alot of unity addons were made by its users then officially added to the engine, like the locomotion addon, after he wrote it, unity made it official for their engine and even hired him.. look how many awesome thirdparty tools we have, yet look at the the websites main page, its sad, or am to believe they dont even have as much as a web designer? which wouldnt matter because am sure ppl here would do it for free

Also Unitys shadow mapping is by no means perfect and the Ogre implementation is also not that awsome if you ask me. It is just that shadow mapping for the sun is not easy to archieve at a high quality and good performence. I had something working quite nice already, which thanks to jcl now also works without an engine extension and with view frustum culling. I just got a bit away from working on it due to other projects. But I think that it just needs one problem to be fixed until it is well usable. Unhappily I already messed with that problem for quite some time now and still don´t really know how to solve it.

The great thing about gamestudio is that you have everything you need to realize any feature you want as easy as it could be. I am pretty sure, that even with plugins you are more restricted in unity. Unity is just much more high level than gamestudio.

I am btw just trying to show you that gamestudio isn´t bad at all. It doesn´t mean that I consider Gamestudio to be the only engine everyone should use. I myself have already worked with A5/A6/A7, Irrlicht, Horde3D, ShiVa, Löve and will soon get into Unity. I just think that every engine has strength and weakneses and that one can´t say that gamestudio is overpriced crap while unity is god.

If you look at unities "biggest update ever" features, you may notice that from the unity side most of them meant nearly no work. There is absolutely no problem to use that lightmapper with gamestudio, same for the culling, deferred lighting and g-buffer means basicly the same and just needs multiple render targets to be fast and breakpoints should be a standart. From a coding side, there is no problem with that stuff in any other engine. The difference is that unity can actually pay it. And from the view of someone who wants to create a great game that update of course IS big and I mean really big.

I think that gamestudio will survive on the beginner market for quite some more time, at least if they really work on the templates, what conitec seems to do currently.
Another possibility to survive is in my opinion the way the C4 engine goes, which convinces with hightech and probably a flexible programming interface.
I see the biggest problem for T3D, but maybe just because I somehow always kinda disliked Torque...

Maybe we really should collect all things we want to see changed, and after we have a list, we post that to jcl, in the future forum.

I think if we ask him and not being harsh, i think he will change somethings


I mean, the whole community wants that, i think he will change things.

--> He will also earn more money


If you accept the idea, i will open a thread in morbius, where we can collect the ideas, and when we are ready i will make a list with all changes

I also always disliked Torque and still would use Gamestudio before Torque any day.

This exactly is the problem. Also the other user contributions always missed small but important last details and probably this always will be so unless someone gets payed properly and can work on it with full dedication.

I know that shadow mapping never is 100% perfect but still everything i have seen in Gamestudio so far was worse than in Unity and Ogre.

I really like this idea.

I am sure JCL already knows what should be improved and what is missing. I also think there are things and/or difficulities on JCL's side that we cannot see. I am sure that when this difficulities are overcomed, JCL and the team will start adding these things to engine.

i also completely agree with Slin's last post. A7 is still great.