Is jPCT-AE the right engine for me?

[Kernle 32DLL]

Hi there,

I'm developing android apps for around a year now, and developing games in general for around 6 1/2 years now. With a ton of private projects to choose from, I thought it would be an excellent time to port my private projects to android. The essential problem is: Most of them are 3D games. I searched several weeks for existing android 3D-Engines (since, even after all that time, I don’t have the knowledge to write a 3D engine my own), and the only useful thing I found was jPCT-AE.

I don't want to use one of those "script-engine" things, like Unity, jMonkeyengine, or Monkey, since I don’t trust them, for being performance wasters (additionally to 2 of them being expensive). Alternatives for jPCT-AE were all either outdated, or not in any useful state.

So, the essential question is: Is jPCT-AE the right choice for me? The games I want to port are written mostly for DirectX 7 and 9, and some for OpenGL. So nothing fancy here.

Any thoughts on that matter would be highly appreciated.

So long,
Kernle

PS: A picture example of a game I want to port is attached to this post.
PPS: One short question that came to my mind: Does jPCT-AE fall under the same licence as jPCT?

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Kaiidyn]

It appears that based on your screenshot, it could be ported using jPCT..

as for the license:

License

The license is the same as for the desktop version of jPCT: The jPCT-AE license

as stated on http://www.jpct.net/jpct-ae/

[EgonOlsen]

I don't see a problem with porting games like that (albeit its difficult to judge that from one screen shot) using jPCT-AE.

[Kernle 32DLL]

Well yeah, I think I was a bit unprecise with my question. The real question was like "Is jPCT-AE powerful enough for semi-amateur games"?. To clarify, I don't intend to compete with high-class game developers like Gameloft. All I want to do, is code some nice 3D games, which people will say "hey, this might look cool, lets try it out". On a side note, they will be released for free of course.

The problem I see is, that jPCT-AE looks a bit restrictive in some ways. For example the way Object3Ds are handled. For me, I'm used to load an 3d model into memory, and then created as many "instances" of it as I want. In jPCT-AE it seems like you have to clone that same object over and over again. That said, the javadoc makes many many comments about this and that is memory wasteful.

Don't get me wrong. I'm only using jPCT-AE for serval days now. It's just that I don't know what to think of the engine yet. Its a kind of question like "Am I forced to use this engine cause it is the only one out there, or do I want to use it cause it is actually a good engine?".

So long,
Kernle

PS: Sorry for me beeing so cryptic, I don't know what I want to know for myself >.>

[EgonOlsen]

If i wouldn't think that it capable of delivering what is needed to create a good looking game, i wouldn't have released it. I'm always trying to make sure that its actually able to handle what it  needs to create something by trying it by myself and improve the parts where its lacking while doing so. Regarding cloning of objects, you can easily make cloned objects share data with the object from which they have been cloned. I'm not aware of many statements in the docs that claim that cloning is costly. Maybe you can point them out to me so that i can revise these parts. It might be that they are not current any more.

[Kernle 32DLL]

Sorry, as I said, no offense intended. Concerning the JavaDoc, I have to correct my statement. I was not refering to object cloning to be memory wasteful (the javadoc even mentiones that they use shared data), but more general things. HOWEVER, I'm not able to find those functions I'm actually refering to right now.... Shame on me! Anyhow, as soon as I find them again, I will ask you about them ;-)

For now, I'm pretty satisfied with the engine. There are some things that are uncomon for me, but so far I was able to solve every mystery I came across (with your help btw) :-)

So long,
Kernle