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I am looking for a game engine for my school project on computer graphics. There are specific requirements that I do not want to implement by myself, since they are irrelevant for the grade, but relevant for the final result.

So reusing other one's code is a good thing here and I am looking for an engine that supports the following features, or that has plugins/3rd party projects available that can do it for me. I have already been looking for it for 2 days, but maybe some of you might just know the right fit for me.

Requirements:

  • Open Source / Free [so people can always view back my code without any licensing.]
  • 3D
  • OO [I'm not so good at C++. Preferred are: Java, C#]
  • Crowd Simulation [I need walking people in my scene. This could be a 3rd party lib. Probably best with nav meshes.]
  • Render to Texture [I need panels with moving images on it. Unity3d fails here.]
  • Multi-project [I cannot adjust the installation folder on my school computer. UDK and CryEngine fail here.]
  • Networking
  • Cross Platform (at least for Linux)

Engines that fail my requirements:

  • CryEngine 3
  • UDK
  • Unity3d
  • OpenSceneGraph: not a real engine. I need more interactive components.
  • XNA: not cross platform.

Update
I found a nice crowd simulation lib after a long long search: http://gamma.cs.unc.edu/RVO2/ So that is not a big issue anymore

Update 2
Apparently, my mentor wants it to be cross platform. Which is an ouch for XNA.

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    \$\begingroup\$ This seems like a really specific, localised, question... \$\endgroup\$
    – thedaian
    Jan 4, 2012 at 17:30
  • \$\begingroup\$ It befuddles me why a school project on computer graphics would ask for networking. Crowd simulation, maybe, if they're looking for frustum culling or ensuring the frame rate stays decent. But networking? Interesting. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ray Dey
    Jan 5, 2012 at 4:16
  • \$\begingroup\$ I know it is specific, but I was hoping that someone would know an exact match for what I want. Networking will probably be used for multi-user interaction in my software. It is a user interaction project for Data Visualization. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marnix
    Jan 5, 2012 at 10:04
  • \$\begingroup\$ @Marnix fair enough, it might be easier to find separate libraries for each and integrating them together. \$\endgroup\$
    – Ray Dey
    Jan 5, 2012 at 23:08
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    \$\begingroup\$ Why not ask your mentor for suggestions? They're the one giving you these requirements, they should know your skill level, and they should know what engines are out there that can fulfill the requirements. We'd just be guessing, or randomly suggesting things that might not work for you. \$\endgroup\$
    – thedaian
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:11

2 Answers 2

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Xen is open-source, C# and XNA and has crowd simulation plus lots more.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ My mentor doesn't seem to be too happy with XNA. He likes a more Open Source approach. But it still seems like a good choice, so +1. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marnix
    Jan 6, 2012 at 11:53
  • \$\begingroup\$ My mentor would even like it to be cross platform. Which doesn't make XNA available anymore. \$\endgroup\$
    – Marnix
    Jan 6, 2012 at 14:32
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I decided to go for the Delta3D engine. It can be built on any platform using make. Unfortunately it is in C++, so I'll just have to do my best to understand everything.

The Crowd simulation of RVO2 fits in very well and seems to cause no trouble.

It is open source and can easily be used over multiple projects. The engine is not included inside the project folder, but is installed separately on the computer.

It also has python bindings, so I could even do it in Python.

There are also connections with animation libs, networking and CEGUI.

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