A New Game Engine Comes To Linux

[HaRo]

C4 is commercial, however it's pricing is very affordable. It's license model is targeted at independent developers and small teams, which, i bet, are found amongst linux users.

I've been using the C4 engine for a while. And i'm not a developer team nor did i make games that have been put on the market - for me, it's just hobby coding. I've in fact read the news here and, after reading this thread, made a forum account here, for i do think that some programmers, no matter if professionals or hobbyists, who frequent these forums might want to give the C4 engine a second look.

Even though C4 is targeted at independent developers and small studios, it's used by some professional groups because it does have a few extreme advantages :
1. - you can completely program in C++, no need to learn some weird scripting languague and you can code every aspect of your game's behaviour
2. - the engine's scripting languague, if you want to use it, is graphical, every artist can use it
3. - the engine can do everything from graphics to shaders to sound to physics and it's native GUI is extremely flexible (but you can still use own implementations)
4. - no royalties !!! no per-title-payments !!! perpetual per-seat-license !!! fair price !!!
5. - from the standard edition on, which comes at a lousy cost of only 250 lice-infested scalawag bucks per developer seat, you get the whole source code for the engine. It builds out-of-the-box.
and 6. - said source code is written extremely clear, stable, reliable and well-commented. Want to look something up, just check the headers (or the API documentation). And just working with C4 did teach me some really good tricks about object oriented multi-threaded programming.
EDIT: and 7. - C4 suports voxel terrain natively, with an automated LOD. Even streaming terrain for huge worlds is on the closer roadmap, which means it might take a few months until it's in.

The engine is constantly being developed, lots of features are added on a two-month-ish major update base, and since my little server code runs on a Ubuntu machine (which also runs the database), i'm quite happy that it can run on Linux natively, that might make stuff easier.

Of course C4 is no market giant, and it's main users are smaller companies and developer teams. That also means that development on C4-driven applications does not have as many graphic artists as huge commercial companies can afford. That means the Demo's made with C4 are not as shiny as they "could" be because the models used are not too complex. But except for HDR support, which is a feature that C4 will support in the future, you'll find out that C4's graphical abilities can very well cope with actual market standards.
If interested, you might want to check some youtube vids, just search for :
"C4 Engine Dungeon Level"
"C4 Engine Physics Test Tour"
To see a few not so outdated youtube examples of what the C4 engine is capable of.
However, Terathon is actually making a little game called "The 31st", which might become a better demonstration.
And you can always download the C4 engine demo and play it's game levels, that's always fun too, that is if you don't have a too lousy graphics adapter and if you're not too fixed on the big market masters.

Saying that, i still got killed kinda early in the cemetery level. Bloody bats.

[HaRo]

@Adarion: One game will be released by Terathon itself. It's called the 31st, and it's aimed to be released this year. Since the next C4 version runs on Linux, you can bet that game will as well.
However, C4 is not for too weak graphic chipsets. It's optimized for fully OpenGL-able GPUs, as far as i remember.

[Hirager]

Thank you, HaRo.
If what you say is indeed true, then I am looking forward to develop with this engine myself. By the way, I think of porting some small, but artistic Flash games to C++ to free them from coming doom. Could this engine be also good for "flat" (no true 3D) games?

[HaRo]

I don't know, perhaps you should ask that question on terathon's forums. Answers come very quickly there, usually the engine's main developer himself replies to technical questions. C4's support forums are outstanding.
As far as i know: You can use quads in the engine, simple flat geometries that display pictures. Or you can make flat geometries with alpha parts to show the sprites. For those that can't be used as particles, that is.
And you get the full source code when you get the standard license, so implementing own features is always possible.
Community made plugins like a generic particle tool, editor plugins, an FBX importer and lots of other things are also available for standard users.
A side hint : The C4 Demo contains a full toolset, the world editor and its tools in the demo are fully functional - although the engine's development roadmap has "lots of editor improvements" listed, so stuff will get added and improved until 2.9 with linux support comes out. You might want to check those out.

[HaRo]

The 2.9 Beta Version of C4 is around since a few days, it has full linuxability.
From what i have experienced, the release time from an alpha build to a full C4 release takes about one to three weeks.
Everyone with a standard license of C4 can participate in beta testing, so if anyone has already decided to get it and just waited for linux support this is a good time to get it, test it excessively and report.
If C4 bugs are reported on the forums within a beta test phase, they are usually taken care of in the full release. Severe bugs (which rarely happen though) after the testing phase usually get a fix, that is if the next release is not just a few weeks away which will solve it.

[HaRo]

Status update : The final version 2.9 is out since a few days with full linux support.
The Engine Demo also shows Version 2.9, and it has a Linux download :
http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/download.php

The free Demo game has some nice fully playable levels and those should be multiplayer-able too, so you can indeed have some fun with it!

[kraftman]

I don't know, perhaps you should ask that question on terathon's forums. Answers come very quickly there, usually the engine's main developer himself replies to technical questions. C4's support forums are outstanding.

Except stupid anti Linux trolls and bsd fanboys who rule the C4 forum. With such attitude you won't achieve much.

[HaRo]

I haven't seen real "anti-linux-trolls", perhaps there are a few users who don't like linux but that is their problem, not one of the community. In fact, the main answers to the news that C4 becomes Linux-Able that i have seen were "YAY finally", and people are looking forward to upcomint iPhone and Android systems support.
The 2.9 demo does not seem to have a multiplayer mode yet. Cemetery level and haunted arena have monster hordes. The rest is engine demo, however with the included tools you can build stuff.