IMHO, Ogre3D and Blitz3D/BlitzMax are bad recommendations. Blitz3D/BlitzMax have no place in professional gamedev (Sure, useful for newcomers, but why learn how to use Blitz when you could learn any other engine just as easily, and keep it relevant).

I bet you don’t even know how many hits were written in a Blitz language – you’d be very surprised.

@Lachlan: Kai-Peter – a guy I chat with now and then – used Ogre3D to build ShortHike – and he says about Ogre:

“To the seasoned developer OGRE looks different. It is like the carbon steel knife my friend uses to cut sushi in his restaurant. Deceivingly simple, yet a very potent tool in the hands of a craftsman. A single blade, a single purpose. The Zen of 3D engines, if there ever was one.”

It’s true that Ogre is a graphics engine – but the net is filled with add-ons, tools and exporters and software (like Irrlicht) that use it and make it a good choice for gaming.

ROFL, anisotropic filtering can take between 60 seconds and 30 mins to implement, depending on how much configuration control you want to give to the user, unless you’re doing a software renderer… Then you’re probably crazy/genius and it takes less than a day XD

I would have absolutely no idea how to do that in 60 seconds – or even in a week. That’s why I like to pay guys like you to do it :)

IMHO, Ogre3D and Blitz3D/BlitzMax are bad recommendations. Blitz3D/BlitzMax have no place in professional gamedev (Sure, useful for newcomers, but why learn how to use Blitz when you could learn any other engine just as easily, and keep it relevant).

Thanks for your opinions.

I really honestly think that Technology itself plays absolutely no role in professional gamedev. If somebody goes to make games using Flash or uses DirectX10 – I couldn’t say which one is more “professional”. I look at the results. A “pros” can start a project using the “latest technology” and keep doing it for 9 years with million dollar budget while the Flash maker has done 50 games & made nice buxs on that time. If that would be the case then I wouldn’t care if Flash maker wasn’t considered a professional: if he is releasing more games and making more money while the “pros” are busy wasting their effort… I’d call that a success. (Bit exaggerated example, but you guys get the point: I honestly think that the technology doesn’t matter – it’s the released product that matters)

Oh, and thanks for mentioning Irrlicht – I’ve heard good about it in the past, but forgot to mention it. I add that to the list.

For my product I had a tricky problem about converting user timezones and showing them when they did something in their own timezone. I spent about a week trying to figure this out myself, but in the end I paid a smart programmer from greece about $20 at RentACoder who did this in a day. My time could be better spent at something else.

@Ali: Yes, that’s exactly what I thought :)

ROFL, anisotropic filtering can take between 60 seconds and 30 mins to implement, depending on how much configuration control you want to give to the user, unless you’re doing a software renderer… Then you’re probably crazy/genius and it takes less than a day XD

IMHO, Ogre3D and Blitz3D/BlitzMax are bad recommendations. Ogre3D is only a rendering engine and Blitz3D/BlitzMax have no place in professional gamedev (Sure, useful for newcomers, but why learn how to use Blitz when you could learn any other engine just as easily, and keep it relevant).
I’d like to point out that Irrlicht is a full game engine based on Ogre3D, with just as good documentation, opensourceness, freeness, etc.

For my product I had a tricky problem about converting user timezones and showing them when they did something in their own timezone. I spent about a week trying to figure this out myself, but in the end I paid a smart programmer from greece about $20 at RentACoder who did this in a day. My time could be better spent at something else.

A very inexpensive commercial license at $150 USD.