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Engine Details

Ca3D

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Ca3DE is an all-purpose, modern 3D graphics engine. It can be used to create a variety of 3D applications, including games, simulations, and training and architectural software.

Author

Carsten Fuchs

Graphics API

OpenGL

Operating Systems

Windows, Linux

Programming Language

C/C++

Status

Productive/Stable

Documentation

Yes

Features

General Features

Object-Oriented Design, Plug-in Architecture, Save/Load System:

•	Resource management for efficient sharing of common textures, models, data, ...
•	"PreCaching" of resources for stutter-free animations
•	Well designed and documented C++ source code
•	Support for very large indoor and outdoor maps
•	New file system that virtualizes all file access

Scripting

New Lua-scripted GUI system that can also be used on in-game 3D "world" panels

Built-in Editors

•	Ca3DE World Editor
•	Smooth-Group support even for world brushes, easily controlled in the map editor.
•	CaBSP: builds BSP trees, CaPVS: does the pre-calculations, CaLight: performs lightmap calculations

Physics

Basic Physics, Collision Detection:

•	Natural player movement
•	6 degrees of freedom
•	Acceleration, Friction, Gravity, Water, Ladders

Lighting

Per-vertex, Per-pixel, Lightmapping, Radiosity, Gloss maps:

•	Combines lightMaps with dynamic lighting effects!
•	Radiosity-based, physically correct lighting
•	Dynamic, shader-driven, per-pixel lighting for both worlds and models
•	Spherical Harmonic Lighting

Shadows

Shadow Volume:

•	Stencil buffer shadow volumes (everything casts shadows on everything!)

Texturing

Basic, Multi-texturing, Bumpmapping, Mipmapping:

•	Naturally aligned textures
•	BMP, TGA, PNG and WAD file formats for all textures
•	MipMap application and linear filtering for both minification and magnification
•	Transparency (for glass, water, fences, grates, ...)
•	Support for diffuse-, normal-, bump-, specular-, and luminance-maps
•	Shader-driven, multi-textured or 2-pass LightMap rendering

Shaders

Vertex, Pixel:

•	Support for ATI and NVidia programmable GPUs and shaders

Scene Management

General, BSP, Portals, Occlusion Culling, PVS, LOD:

•	BSP, PVS and Portal-based rendering
•	Static Detail Models for adding a rich and immersing amount of detail to the worlds

Animation

Skeletal Animation, Animation Blending:

•	Can hierarchically combine sub- and super-models
•	Handles the rendering of the Static Detail Models

Meshes

Mesh Loading:

Special Effects

Environment Mapping, Particle System:

•	Cube-mapped skies (environment maps)
•	Particle Effect Engine (for explosions, smoke, fog, rain, snow, blood, ...)

Terrain

Rendering, CLOD:

•	Implements the SOAR algorithm
•	Provides continuous-level-of-detail, permitting very large out-door scenes
•	Employs geo-morphing for perfectly smooth transitions between levels of detail
•	View-frustrum culling yields an optimal terrain approximation
•	No restriction in combining terrains with other elements of Ca3DE worlds
•	Uses multi-texturing to combine a base texture, a lightmap and an optional detail-texture for rendering

Networking System

Client-Server:

•	Optimized for minimum bandwidth requirements
•	Integrated tightly into Ca3DE
•	Full client prediction (for movement, events, and weapons)
•	Delta compression for network packets

Sound & Video

2D Sound, 3D Sound:

•	Employs FMOD
•	3D stereo sounds and droppler effects
•	Can play MP3 and ogg-vorbis music files

Rendering

Fixed-function, Render-to-Texture, Fonts:

Features:

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Stability:

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Date Added

Wed, 7 Jul 2004

Last Updated

Thu, 14 Jun 2007

There are currently 10 reviews for this engine

License Name	Price	Source Code	Comments
Other/Custom	Free	No	Demo Version. Ability to make non-commercial MODs.
Other/Custom	Not public	Yes	Commerical Licence. Sound and music feature not included in this licence.

Screenshots:

Member Reviews

NOTE: The ratings and reviews below reflect the opinions of their respective authors and as such, do not reflect the opinions of DevMaster.net or its staff. The reviews are not moderated and some are completely inaccurate. Therefore, most reviews should be taken with a grain of salt. If you find any inaccurate or inappropriate reviews, let us know by stating in detail why you think the review should be removed and any links/documents that support your contention.

GOOD...............

Posted by: TatMei at Feb 11, 2006

BEST.............IT CONSIST OF ALL NECESSARY MODULE OF GAME ENGINE ESPECIALLY NETWORK SYSTEM. IT OFFER A NETWORK MODE TO LET MULTIPLE PLAYER PLAY TOGETHER IN THE SAME VIRTUAL GAME WORLD. IF NOT, IT IS DIFFICULT TO TAKE A VIDEO GAME ON THE pc PLATFORMTO MARKET TODAY...........

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Great engine

Posted by: Cipher at Aug 20, 2008

Hi everybody,

I work with this engine for some time now and I have to say I am surprised that this engine isn't more popular since it provides such a rich set of features.

Based on the existing DeathMatch MOD (that comes open source with the engine) you can easily start to assess the engine by creating a map and testing the SDK shipped with Ca3DE.
The world editor has an intuitive interface and even comes with its own built in terrain editor. Other planned features are an interactive GUI editor to create game menus as well as menus displayed in the game world and built in plant creation (similar to SpeedTree I think).

To really get down and dirty with the engine and make your own game you have to create your own "Mod" for it. To do this some C++ programming is needed (hence the 3 stars in ease of use, but hey this is an engine not Click and Play ;) ). Again the open source DeathMatch code provides all the information you need to get started.
Your game nicely integrates into the world editor as all custom objects are entities that can be placed in the world.
As the engine is fully scriptable through Lua scripts you can implement the behavior of your entities through scripts without hardcoding everything.

On of the things I like about Ca3DE is the fact that it always provides a fallback solution for older systems, so even on systems that haven't the latest 3D hardware this engine will still run with great performance (although some eye candy will be missing ;) ).

Another great thing is that you can develop even commercial projects with the free edition of Ca3DE as long as the price of your product doesn't exceed 10$.
A great way for all indies to develop their first project and sell it over the web. This certainly will get your name known in the industry and all you have to spend is long nights of programming :D.

All in all you should just try this engine out. If you have problems you can always write to the forums and you will get an answer (of the engines lead programmer) within the day. Hope to see you there :)

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Maybe the best free engine available!

Posted by: Cipher at Aug 16, 2008

The Ca3DE engine offers everything you need to develop your game.

When it comes to features the engine yet has to find an equivalent on the market - I don't know any engine in the market that has that many useful features. You've got everything you need: modern lighting features, a poweful terrain system, a very powerful scripting support (thanks to fully implemented LUA), a very flexible material system (for textures), good sound support and so on... It might not have the shiny graphic effects of a modern commercial engine - but which game developer can effort to bay some thousands of bucks for somey eye candy!

Ease fo use: This engine is not a intented for people without any knowledge of game design. This does not mean that it is hard to handle - it's the other way round. The engine comes with all the important tools you need to design your game.
The engine has it's own map editor with is very advanced and has such an outstanding quality that I dare to say that you won't find any better map editor better that this one for a free engine. Furthermore, there are tools for scripting, material design and modelling which extremely improve the workflow because they are all well-designed and comparably easy to use.
To coders: There is example code available. Furthermore, the code is documented, cleanly written and free of nasty bugs/errors. It only takes you some minutes to set up everything and compile the code! And as there is support for maps, models, assets, sound, graphic effects etc you don not have to spend months on just getting essential things to work. This engine provides everything you need "out of the box".

Stability&Performance: No matter what I did: I couldn't "crash" the engine. It supports many renderers and 2 different soudn systems and automatically employs the most suitable systems. If there is a bug - which is quite unusual, it gets fixed within days. The flexibility of the engine means flexibility in hardware support and therefore good framerates on all systems - but of course don't expect the engine to shine in it's full glory on a PC that is 5 years old!

Support: Unbeatable! The documentation of the engine is often being improved and if you miss something, you get your anwers very quick by using the forums or by email. It often only takes a few minutes or hours and the question is answered - but not with a quick useless reply but with extensive details! Just browse the forums and see for yourself!

Summary: The Ca3DE engine shines like a "diamond". The real strength of the engine is it's outstanding design and construction: The tools all work together, the workflow is outstanding and the way features are implemented is mostly cleverly solved!
When looking at the screenshots the engine does not reveal it's strengths because an engine is just as good as it's content and unfortunately there is no team of 20 game designers creating content for it!

Therefore I can only recommend you to have a closer look at the engine and it's tools, you won't be disappointed!

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Excellent Engine, Feature Rich with a complete toolset

Posted by: minosdis at Aug 13, 2008

Features:
Ca3D is essentially a complete game. Everything from a 3d engine to scripting, including network and sound is included. You really don't need to worry about adding features here, as Ca3D is based apon some of the best technology around.

Ease of Use:
A very well developed and easy to use toolset is included that makes developing (or importing) content a snap. Game code is written in C++, so programming experience is neccessary to some extent. Entities can be modified and created in some aspects with Lua scripts.

Stability and Performance:
This is one area in which Ca3D really shines. Despite having so many features, it is extremely stable. It runs out of the box, and doesn't require hacks to get it working. As for performance, because its built apon such solid technology, the engine is very efficient and scalable.

Support:
Another excellent aspect of Ca3D is the development team. They are very nice, and quick to respond with solutions to any problems you may have. One thing I would like to see more of is community involvment. There doesn't seem to be a huge amount of people working with Ca3d at the moment (the number is steadily increasing, however). Despite this, the wiki is up to date, accurate and generally thorough for beginner topics.

On a side note, its worth mentioning one distinct difference with Ca3D. The engine is contained in an executable, and the game code is the library. This is a distinct difference from engines like Irrlicht, Ogre, etc, where you would write code calling engine functions. Instead, with Ca3D the framework is already done (and very well, I might add), so you're basically only required to write code for things like entities, weapons, etc. This has upsides and downsides. For instance, writing a framework is probably the hardest part of writing a game, and most often the place indie developers get stuck and give up. However, when the game code is a library, it can be difficult to tell what options you have, and where certain functionality lies. Overall, Ca3D is an excellent starting point for anyone making a generally traditional 3D game.

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State of the Art Lighting

Posted by: Dunecat at Aug 17, 2008

First i was really impressed, what is possible with an Engine, which is Open Source. You really get Everything, from the Tools you need for Game Design up to a very complex Mapping Tool.
I do Mapping for quite some Time now and i have to say, that the delivered Mapping tool is very good for a free Tool. For Example the Possibility of doing very large indoor and outdoor Areas is quite impressive. The only Engine i remember capable of doing this is the Cry Engine 1 and 2. And these Engines are not for free!!! Even if you don't know much about different Editorsystems, you get all the Help you need inside the Forums or Support Section of the Ca3De Page.
What really impresses me is the big bunch of Features which are delivered with this Enginesystem. There is Multiplayer Support, Crossplattform Compatiblity and and and... You have to read all the stuff for yourself on the Page, it is quite huge :) So if you planing a noncommercial Mod or something like that, i suggest: Try this System :)

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Moving ahead fast! Dont miss out.

Posted by: ScottS at Sep 9, 2008

I've been following the development of Ca3d for a few years now and I have seen it grow from a simple tech demo into a nicely maturing piece of technology. Development is coming along quickly and very smoothly with more useful features each release as well as stability and performance increases.

Some of the stand out features are:

The heighmap based terrain editor is quite simple to use, it supports 16 bit greyscale images and has a useful tool for creating roads.

Lighting: Radiosity based lightmaps combined with normal maps look excellent. The normal maps and specularity don't lose their definition.

Per-Pixel dynamic lights and shadows combine seamlessly with the lightmaps.

Familiar tools and workflow: If you have made content for Half-life or quake engine games then you will be instantly familiar with the level editor.

Runs on windows and Linux.

LUA Scripting for entities and interactive GUI's.

Excellent price for full source code! Check the website. Its a pretty good deal.
http://www.ca3d-engine.de/licensing/overview

"The license does never expire and can be used for producing an unlimited number of titles. "

Some of the cons:
There are a few things that haven't been implemented YET, but are planned and should come in the future, they are as follows:

Needs more shaders right out of the box. Just things like Parallax, reflection and refraction, different types of specular falloff etc etc.

Decent terrain texturing, something like texture splatting, right now you have one large texture with a detail map tiled through it.

Editor needs a few more work flow enhancements.

Website needs a few more tutorials and documentation.

Particle system is all handled in C++, there needs to be a generic system easily configurable in the editor (For the basics)

I highly recommend any serious Indy developer check out Ca3d. Its got great potential and will only get better

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Very fast Engine for all operating systems

Posted by: Nexus at Nov 13, 2008

The Engine is very very fast and stable.
You can use them on Win,Linux and OS-X Systems with opengl or directx.
The online Support from ca3d ist perfect!

Ca3d just need a improved World Editor.

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Best for Beginner

Posted by: peacefan at Nov 19, 2008

Hi, I'm a beginner Graphic Designer. So far this is the first graphic engine that I come across, although there are many other graphic engine and world editor available in the market and free, Carsten 3D engine prove to be the best graphic engine for beginner.

For me the best quality in this graphic engine is the world editor doesn't require user to get the newest graphic card on the market in order for user to use it, I myself use a laptop that is bought in mid 2006, and the graphic engine work remarkably well with my laptop.

I'm still an amateur and still learning many stuff about graphic design, but for me this engine have given me the the chance to learn and sharpen my skill.

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Surprised :)

Posted by: MatthiasG. at Mar 13, 2009

Hello everybody!

I was searching for a easy way to make 3D - Applications (especially Games), and what I found was Ca3DE. I've read about it in the c't, a famous computer-magazine in Germany. So, I've tried it and was surprised about the great features, that Ca3DE offers you.

So I've installed the whole Engine and planned my first map with the online-tutorials. It was very easy and soon I've made my dirst Multiplayer-Map!

What I liked about rendering the maps was, that the programm is searching for "holes" in your map, so it is easier to make a Map without bugs.

Then I've experimented with light or other weapons than a normal pistol. It was very easy to place them, but it was also very realistic!

It's great!

But if you don't want to make games: I've also made my house in 3D! With all details...
And also you can place GUIs in your game, like a computer-Desk or a button to switch light on or off...

And that was not the whole story:
I've made a big terrain eith CaWE (the Map-Editor) with trees, caves, houses, etc. It's all possible!

And If you know, how to program with C++, you can make easy your own simulations or apllications in 3D!

There are more features, than I've told about...

I'm very surprised, that it's so easy to make 3D-Games with one engine!

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a good engine.

Posted by: jngl at Feb 13, 2010

it is a good 3D engine that deserves to be better known. the linux version is stable but the version that is pre-compile for linux i686 and windows but not for amd64. the better it is open source.

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