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Crystal Space

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Crystal Space is a free 6DOF portal based engine (based on the LGPL license).

Author

Jorrit Tyberghein

Graphics API

OpenGL, Software

Operating Systems

Windows, Linux, MacOS

Programming Language

C/C++

Status

Productive/Stable

Documentation

Yes

Features

General Features

Object-Oriented Design:

•	True 6DOF engine with arbitrary sloped convex polygons.
•	Optional MMX support for processors that support it
•	make libraries of objects, textures and other game related stuff and put it all in a seperate ZIP file.

Physics

Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body:

•	Hierarchical bounding box collision detection system.
•	Powerful physics library using ODE is included too. It is a dynamics modeling and simulation engine.

Lighting

Per-vertex, Lightmapping:

•	Static colored lights with real shadows. Lighting and shadows are precalculated before the world is displayed (unless stencil based lighting is used)

Shadows

Projected planar, Shadow Volume:

•	Stencil based realtime shadows on OpenGL hardware

Texturing

Basic, Multi-texturing, Mipmapping:

•	Supports GIF, TGA, PNG, BMP, JPG, and others.
•	Perspective correct texture mapping with interpolation every 16 pixels (for software renderer).
•	Transparent and semi-transparent textures

Shaders

Vertex, Pixel:

•	Supports both CG and ARB shaders

Scene Management

General, Portals, Occlusion Culling:

•	Visibility system based on a combination of portals, kd-tree, and coverage buffer.
•	Powerful XML world file format allowing you to easily redefine the world
•	Levels can be stored in standard compressed ZIP archives so that you can easily make a bundle of one level.
•	A convertor to convert MAP files (from Quake/HalfLife) to CS is also included. Also, Blender scripts (Python) are included to export models and levels from within Blender.
•	Sequence manager with triggers allowing the definition of object interactions from within the level itself.

Animation

Keyframe Animation, Skeletal Animation:

•	3D animated skeletal meshes using Cal3D animation

Meshes

Mesh Loading, Progressive:

•	3D triangle mesh sprites with frame animation. Convertors for Milkshape, Maya, Cal3d, 3DS, Quake MDL and Quake II MD2 formats to Crystal Space are included. Importers for 3DS, MDL, MD2, OBJ, POV, and ASE are also included. The meshes are actually progressive meshes allowing for dynamic LOD (level of detail) changes. There is also support for skeletal sprites.
•	Supports 3dsMax and Blender with exporter plugins

Surfaces & Curves

Splines, Patches:

Special Effects

Environment Mapping, Lens Flares, Billboarding, Particle System, Sky, Mirror:

•	Dynamic gouraud shaded sky dome (half-sphere) for a very realistic and nice looking sky
•	Support for multi-layered and animated skyboxes and skydomes
•	Optional halo's around lights for nice atmospheric effects. Also support for lens-flares.

Terrain

Rendering, CLOD:

•	Landscape engine. The new experimental renderer contains a landscape engine that supports scattering, lod, etc.
•	2D sprites and a particle system

Sound & Video

2D Sound, 3D Sound:

•	Support for DS3D, EAX, A3D, etc.
•	Support for various sound formats: WAV, Ogg/Vorbis, AU, AIFF, IFF, and MOD (using MikMod).

Rendering

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

•	Font system plugin to support other font types. Currently CS fonts and truetype fonts are supported.
•	GUI system

Features:

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Date Added

Wed, 7 Jul 2004

Last Updated

Sat, 8 Oct 2005

There are currently 46 reviews for this engine

License Name	Price	Source Code	Comments
LGPL	Free	Yes

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.

Well documented and dedicated developer base

Posted by: deckerego at Aug 6, 2004

Take the CrystalSpace, CEL (Crystal Entity Layer) and Crystal Core (the demo/tutorial in progress) projects together and you have a very extensive, well documented engine.

The new renderer, while not yet listed as "production ready," provides many advanced features such as stencil shadows, terrain generation and support for many model types.

Developer team is extremely helpful - probably more responsive than most OSS projects. Documentation does its best to stay current and provide concrete examples.

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The most complete open source 3D SDK!

Posted by: heroalex at Oct 1, 2004

I know Crystal Space [CS] since 2001 and follow the development with much interest, though not as an active member most of the time, I have learned very much from it.

There is no other "free" 3D Engine, I know of, with such a great and competent development crew!
A big "Thank you!" to Jorrit and Eric and the others!

If you are new to CS it is a must to join the "CsMain" mailing list and/or the IRC channel. With their help and the relatively good docs you will see that CS is easy to use because of its advanced design and API.
But you have to know C++. CS will not give you much if you can't read other peoples code and write your own.

Another plus is that you can use pretty much any Quake style world editor (Worldcraft, Quark, Radiant, etc.) and/or professional 3D modeling suite with relative ease to create your content. The plain text XML format of the models allows for extreme fine tuning and control, but you can also just stick with the defaults.

There is also a new OpenGL renderer currently in development and ready soon. It supports the exciting features of modern GPU's and is in it self a very modern and flexible design. Marten Svanfeldt and Anders Stenberg and others did a great job!

I also like the portability and scalability of CS.
I successfully compiled and run it on x86 Linux, Windows and PPC Linux, MacOSX ! And you don't have to change any of your code! It runs on my laptop with a crappy and old graphics card as well as on modern hardware getting the most out of it!
(Well, there are still some areas to improve, but it already works very well for me)
Imagine that the Game or App you develop with CS will run on nearly any system and OS that is out there!

Another point is that CS is not limited to games only.
You can use it for any other application, I can think of, where you need interactive 3D!

There are projects successfully using CS for different things than games, but the most actually create cool games with it.

I also like the licensing of CS, because I believe it is very uncomplicated, but you better ask Jorrit :-)

Well, I didn't intend to write a book so I'll stop here, but you got the point, I somehow like this project :-)

- Alexander Hermann

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Crystal Space is smashing...

Posted by: LaScoyt at Oct 5, 2004

There is no doubt what is the best. OGRE laks of features and speed. It looks still very confusing for me to use it. So Crystal is my choice... I think that as soon as a commercial game be available for it many people will vote for it..

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Biased opinion by the author

Posted by: jorrit at Aug 18, 2004

Basically my take on Crystal Space is that it is a very feature rich engine but it is not very easy to use. Documentation is adequate but not 100% up-to-date in all respects. Some people think CS is a bit bloated. While CS is indeed a very big project the structure is very modular and all plugins are relatively independent. This makes CS less bloated then it could be. The strongest point of Crystal Space is flexibility.

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Powerpack Crystal Space

Posted by: NicholasFox at Oct 1, 2004

I guess Crystal Space is the most advanced, best packed and easy to use 3D SDK out there. The usage is a little more complex in comparison, but here is what you get:

Stability, Usability, Flexibility, Speed and astunishing graphics. It is nearly unbelievable what can be achieved using the Crystal Space engine.

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in one word? averyniceengine

Posted by: sueastside at Sep 23, 2004

The documentation might not be 100% up-to-date, but that doesn't matter at all: there is always a dev online, ready to help you with ALL of your problems.
They never say RTFM or google, theyll always help you int the best way they can....

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Best free engine.

Posted by: reed at Sep 23, 2004

CS is the best free (open source) 3d engine/toolkit out there. It's development is always very active-- always improving. There are several good scenegraph libraries for just the graphics, but CS offers (almost) everything you need for a game or other 3d graphics app: graphics, sound, IO, animation, dynamics/collision detection, terrain, GUI support (both "native" and, coming soon, "external" gui via wxWidgets). Other, related projects like CEL (a game framework by Jorrit specificaly designed for CS) and VOS (a networking framework with special CS support), provide some unique infrastructure for your project.

The feature list above covers most of the important features, but there are more. Each major feature is implemented as a plugin, some with multiple implementations to choose from (e.g. collision detection/physics), so you don't need to link against a giant library with all of these features, just the plugins you need.

The best part about CS though is it's cross-platform portability (Between Windows, Linux, and MacOSX-- and probably, with some minor effort, any system with OpenGL). The developers are also very comitted to supporting both Windows and Linux equally well.

A great framework for programmable shaders is almost ready too-- very exciting.

The main downside of all these features and useful infrastructure is that the API can be hard to understand. A full reference is available, but not everything is explained. There aren't enough tutorial/how to documents which are still up to date to the latest changes. To learn CS you need to be prepared to look at the code for the example programs and play around with it a bit. (Though the development and user community is very helpful).

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Up there with the greats

Posted by: dingobloo at Sep 23, 2004

although crystalspace does come with a number of excellent exporters, creating content is a problem at times, with many developers making their own exporters in order to get the desired result. That aside, crystalspace is the perfect blend of bleeding edge technology and stability where the help is unparalleled from the various developers who frequent the irc channels and mailing lists. The framework is more geared towards large projects who plan to use the engine for some time instead of a 10 minute demo.

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obis rate

Posted by: obi at Oct 1, 2004

Features: i didn't saw everything, but those things which i do was suitable for my needs (exept some features conected with cal3d, but it was cal3d fault)
Ease of Use: good, but my grandma wouldn't take care of it :)
Stability & Performance: realy good, i was using cvs, and
some errors occured almost b/c of me
Support: i can't complain but sometimes it was hard to get some help when jorrit was not watching :) (but there are exeptions)

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A really good approch

Posted by: surfdargent at Oct 1, 2004

I'm quite new to CS (only 2 months using it) and had looked at everything that could look like a 3D engine before jumping in.
I have to say that I first was quite afraid by the complexity of the API and by the number of classes. But once you got in the engine seems a lot more accessible. The API is huge but very well done. Docs are quite complete but short. It certainly lacks a few tutorials but as already said devs are a great help always answering the little newbie question you might have.
Today I find CS to be the most modular, stable and feature rich engine, and not that hard to use.

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Great 3D engine

Posted by: tomsah at Oct 1, 2004

I use Crystal Space for a year now. What I like is the relative simplicity for doing things with the engine (using CEL). Also, the mailing list and irc are very active and most of my questions were answered in an hour or two. Also, the documentation with the engine is quite complete. The only one thing I miss is a nice and pretty map available with the engine to do my testing.

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A very actively developed engine

Posted by: danbogdanov at Oct 1, 2004

I've been following the development for 4 years now. The engine has changed tremendously. I have experimented with Crystal Space and it has provided me with everything I need. It is SO flexible. Unfortunately it is too complex for the less experienced programmer - but hey - what is?

Good work in any case!

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A mature 3d engine with several additional features

Posted by: groton at Oct 1, 2004

Crystal Space is very good. It has very good 3D renderer (with both HW/SW rendering) and 3D engine, supporting latest graphics boards too, and besides it has several additional classes which allow you to write applications easily: in fact with Crystal Space you have a Cal3d plugin, an ODE plugin, more than one collision plugin (OPCODE and RAPID), input/output console, support for all images format, several sound supports and so on.

There is also a -*-GREAT-*- support in the #CrystalSpace channel on irc (freenode) and in the its mailing list. And using C.E.L. writing an app is very easy 'cause half of the work of writing the entities classes is already done.

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Very nice engine

Posted by: aarobber at Oct 1, 2004

I've been working with this engine for just over a year now (mostly as part of the Planeshift project).

At first, it can be very intimidating and difficult to use, but after working with it for about a month or so, you really get a feeling for how things are done in CS. After that point, Crystal Space becomes a breeze to work with.

I've done some experimenting with both Ogre and Irrlicht, but have found them lacking in either the performance or completeness of key areas.

Overall, if you're willing to work past the initial challenges of learning the API, then Crystal Space is a great choice with a great team of developpers and an unbelievable project manager (even if he is a bit too thorough at times).

- Andrew Robberts

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Perfect 3D SDK

Posted by: Boyan at Oct 2, 2004

CrystalSpace has very good structured API. May be really not very easy to use for less experienced programmers, but for me and my friend CS is an example for prefect 3D SDK.
It is getting better and better...

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yet another user...

Posted by: pinniped at Oct 2, 2004

CrystalSpace has excellent documentation for such a large project and tools are constantly being developed to make programming easier -- for example, the csApplicationFramework within CrystalSpace itself, and CEL which is a separate project. If you need advise or have questions about the internals, you can catch developers and users on the IRC channels.

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Powerful engine

Posted by: ice at Oct 4, 2004

Crystal Space has a multitude of features which allow you to exploit the latest hardware to the fullest. But what is more impressive is the flexibility of Crystal Space and the way it degrades to cater to older hardware gracefully.

Crystal Space is not as easy to use as it could be. It certainly has a steep learning curve, but once you begin to work with it more often, it becomes easier to use. Hopefully in the future, they will focus more on helping the game developer. At present, the CEL project is a great complement to CS, providing an entity layer that makes setting up a game relatively easy.

Crystal Space performs very well with optimized code in critical areas. In addition, Crystal Space comes with Bugplug, which helps make debugging easier.

Crystal Space has a manual, and public API documentation, but they lack up-to-date information, examples and tutorials. But the support found on IRC in #CrystalSpace is marvelous, and the developers are extremely helpful. Crystal Space is led by Jorrit, who is a very dedicated project leader and maintainer.

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Crystal space

Posted by: Thenior at Oct 13, 2004

I am a extreme noob to Linux and CS. The people on the CS channel were more then helpful, walking me through each step. Not only that, the engine can pump out graphics that are comparable to Quake. I wonder what will happen in a year?

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getting better and better!

Posted by: HangDude at Oct 24, 2004

I've been working with Crystal Space for about 2 years now and i must say now that the new renderer is getting into a more stable state everything starts to fit into a big picture.
CEL also really helps developing the game logic itself although it is a bif focused on fps games.
one thing i really love about it is the build system & the SCF... bot work together so well and make it really easy to add new plugins to CS..

phil

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Nice

Posted by: SomeDude at Nov 10, 2004

Crystal Space is the best free game library out there. It is also better then most commercial engine out there. If you cobine Crystal Space with Crystal Entity Layer you will rock the world.

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Most complete game development SDK

Posted by: kheru at Nov 26, 2004

Well not much of a words, MUT SEE IT WITH YOUR OWN EYES.
For start try to compile Crystal Core Project and than judge.

I'm new to 3D graphics. I was using only OpenGL. It was not the way the game is to be made.

I was looking for something that makes use of all OGL features (as much as possible) and to encapsulate them in a game based (like MMORPG) philozophy.

And i have foud it :)

Thou due i'm a begginer i dont know the other engines, but irrlicht, ogre, and small amount of others.

It is strongly recommended (from my point of view) that one can say something about 3D (like about OpenGL) before starting to make ones project of dreams.

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An Ode to Crystalspace

Posted by: viksit at Mar 16, 2005

I first got started on 3D graphics in 1999 or there abouts. I was working on a robotics simulation at the time, and I was looking for something which would help me create one with the best possible physics, as well as rendering, with minimum effort.

I considered a lot of options, and gave most of them a try before junking them and selecting CS. I've been involved with CS since 2000-01, and have spent countless hours on the IRC channel :) - That supports my rating on the support questions, since practically all the developers are in there at some point in the 24 hour workday.

My experiments with CS have now morphed into those with physics engines (ODE), game making, using CEL, making terrains and models using blender, trying my hand out at the python and java bindings, and so on. What I've seen has really impressed me, since the sheer number of features available on CS surpass (imho) most of the other platforms around - Sound, a Windowing system, terrain support, integration with ODE, plugins for cal3d, a built in video recorder, to name just a few of the available perks! The new renderer which was integrated into the release has totally revamped the way CS looks and works.

When compared to other engines I've explored (OpenSceneGraph, OGRE, ..), I would rate CS higher in terms of learnability, as well as flexbility. In my opinion, another 6 months of work on this engine (from Release 0.98 to 1.0) should put things into a clearer perspective, and bring out through the upcoming technology demo the various features of the engine.

Cheers!

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Great!

Posted by: Kalzraq at May 29, 2006

This engine is really really good. Comes with loads of features, seems rock stable, the support is brilliant (the guys in IRC rock!), and it isn't _that_ difficult to use. (I read documentation :D) 5/5, keep it going guys!

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Only good if you are mazokhist

Posted by: at Jan 30, 2008

First of all, I am an experienced C++ developer. Usually I can learn how to use a new library (basics, of course) in several hours. I have tried CS two times (with 2 or 3 years interval). And both times it was a gread dissapoinment.
It's programming model is simply terrible. Simply look at tutorials on their site - they preffer do everything in hard way. Of course, game programming is very very hard task, but is 3d engine supposed to make it easier, or harder?
Here are guys, that are delighted with having CS setup in few days. :) OMG.
On my opinion - if you are tipical mazokhist, if you like to spend days on tasks that may be done in hours, with other engines - then, go forth. Else don't even bother with this messy and very badly realized engine.

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The Best 3D SDK

Posted by: kornerr at Jun 16, 2006

CS just rulez. It has everything to start creating a game.
And we did start! We develop an Open Source RPG (http://osrpgcreation.sf.net) using CS.
And the best thing about CS is an EXCELLENT SUPPORT!
Thank you guys for that 3D SDK! Keep on developing it!
THANKS A LOT!!!

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Use this if you know c++......

Posted by: Voltare at Jun 24, 2005

This is not only a game engine......apparently some are writing apps with it as well.......there are tutorials for everything from making shooters to making what's called " sausages"? with it.......a freeware 3d mmorpg is being made with it, which looks great( they're implementing gameplay elements now, apparently).....only prob with it is....gigantic file size, and weird style of downloading it......
For the average Hobbyist, like me, don't start with this engine, if you don't know c++. I still may use it to make my 3d single player rpg creator because it has tons of features and even a basic level editor made with it.stability is good, i believe it even runs on low end machines......all in all....a good engine, hard to use( c++ is hard...heh)good features, and good support....

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Crystal Space is great

Posted by: Jon at Aug 1, 2005

Allthough I don't have much experience of 3D engines Crystal Space appears to got it all. There are well documented classes and plug-ins for almost everything!

I want to thank the people at #crystalspace for doing a great job! They are moving the project forward in a true free software spirit and helps people out in a most kind and patient way.

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Most promising!

Posted by: DaHoC at Aug 27, 2005

This is more than just a game engine, it is a general 3D SDK, so you can do alot more with it. It is being developed heavily at the moment (100% activity on sourceforge) and it is a bit hard to learn. But since you get good support it definately is worth it, your possibilities are enormous! Check it out

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Great engine!

Posted by: xardias at Aug 27, 2005

This engine is really great! It includes tons of features and has a very modular design. This makes it a bit hard to do you first steps with this engine, but its worth it.
Especially the support in the IRC channel and on the forums is really great.
Im looking forward to 1.0 release of this engine!

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an Engine .....What else,But a Decent one

Posted by: cr04 at Aug 27, 2005

good set of features
CS looks better than Ogre3d,irrlicht,
everything you could need for Gdevelopment
but you will need to know how to program,
CS has binding access,has all available features like other engines,Very decent.....
Open source,Good license issues,because its free.....
how generous !!!!
all great file formats available...

go with this for any project/Games/VR/Others
you wont go wrong......

huge Thumbs up.....
i give it 8/10
i dont need to tell you why because you can see for yourself...

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Big Bad Engine

Posted by: eye776 at Sep 26, 2005

A very well crafted engine, however it is not the one to start with. As for the requirements... It needs serious horsepower to be compiled. I didn't manage to compile it on my Duron 1300 Mhz, so I had to go to a friend with 2400 Mhz, and it barely compiled (took 2 damn hours!!!)

So if you have the knowdlege, I recommend it. Just remember, once you start compiling there may be no other way out than resetting the system.

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Excellent engine (unless you are a beginner)

Posted by: latentdisposition at Oct 10, 2005

Crystal Space is an excellent engine with loads of features. It's only real problem is that it is not aimed at a beginner. If you are just starting out you may want to check out another engine. Whether a beginner or an experienced user you will find plenty of documentation for the engine included. Support is excellent both in forums and especially in IRC. It does not come with pre-compiled binaries (unless you get the version intended for artists only) but compilation is fairly easy if you follow the manual. While not yet totally complete, the new renderer is very stable out of cvs. If you want a feature complete ,stable and fast game engine Crystal Space is definately an excellent choice.

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A very powerful yet easy to use engine

Posted by: finalfantasyfanatic at Nov 26, 2005

This engine is very good. It has several features and is very stable. It is very easy to setup and has a nice community.

Features - Very complete, has several modern features

Ease of use - Easy to setup, easy to program

Stability & Performance - A very quick engine, never crashed

Support - Has a very nice community with several projects embedded in Crystal Space.

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Wow! Who could ask for more

Posted by: snicko at Feb 24, 2006

The title says it all. This engine is excellent(my standards are quite low by the way). Whilst ogre is easier to use (i think) this has many more features. You do need some basic knowledge but the community is always willing to help and you get a reply within a three days at most (usually!) Combine this with the Crystal Core game which, when finished, will contain extensive, effecient code for people to use and learn from in their own projects, and you have an excellent, comprehensive package. And... It's FREE!

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CrystalSpace is the Ace of Space!

Posted by: andydude at Apr 9, 2006

CrystalSpace is THE most well thought-out 3D and game engine available. It is extensible, it provides all the functionality required to make a full standalone application, and it is abstract enough to manipulate unknowns the way OOP was designed for.

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Best free 3D SDK out there.

Posted by: Xordan at May 23, 2006

Crystalspace has nearly everything you would want and is continually adding more advanced features, both generally and on request from projects using it. Within a few years Crystalspace will surely be able to compete with some of the top non-free engines. It has already attracted the attention of some commercial games in development, and has been used by released commercial games already.

Although not easy to use for the beginner, if you are making a project and you have experience in this area, Crystalspace is well structured in most areas and is quite simple to use. And of course, ease of use is improving over time as the documentation is expanded.

Crystalspace is _very_ stable. Usually you can work with the very cutting edge version from SVN and there are rarely any problems with memory leakage and/or crashing. For performance; things can and are being improved but for what there is at the moment 5/5 is the most accurate rating.

Support is excellent. The devs and users of Crystalspace are both very friendly and helpful, on forums, IRC and the various mailing lists.

Rounding up; I don't see any close competition against Crystalspace from the free engines if you know what you're doing when you start a project. Certainally this isn't for beginners, but I don't think Crystalspace is aimed at beginners, so for the target audience I have to give 5/5 all round.

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Great features and support

Posted by: nevyndarkdawn at May 24, 2006

Been using crystalspace for a few months now and I've been very impressed with the feature set. It's still very much under active development and the support from the community is very good. Takes a while to get into but it's worth the effort.

Nevyn.

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A great open source engine

Posted by: kiper at Jun 28, 2006

A really powerful SDK; open source, with LGPL, which means you can get it for free and your projects are not limited to be open source, making this engine a really good choice for a big wide of purposes.

The features list is big and some of them are shown in the demos, as bumpmap textures, realistic physics and so on.

The support is very good. With the forum, mailing list and the IRC chat you can usually get the answer to the problems.

It is possible to create applications using easy to understand codes as XML and Python instead of going deep in C++, which can help to people who knows only a little bit about programing.

It lacks a little bit in the documentation, which is not explaining everything and it is not up to date in all aspects. Also needs more and clear "getting started" step by step tutorials and more HowTo to explain some basic things and make it more accesible.
Anyway, with CrystalSpace, Crystal Entity Layer, the celtutorial and the open source games made with the engine as crystalcore, ecksdee, tunnelfighter, automanic and so on, it is relatively easy to get into this SDK, specially using blender as modelling software, which is really good supported with a great exporter for CrystalSpace (crystalblend). Once into it, the results are better and better each day ;)

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Great idea

Posted by: WoOdSpEaK StUdIoS at Oct 1, 2006

I have used Crystal Space (CS) at various times (mostly a year or so ago) and I am quite impressed.

Do not expect the fluencey, brilliance or symplicity of the Torque system, or even that of the rendering engine "Ogre", but do expect a good 3d engine with roots in C++ and a great collision detection system.

Many open source engines end up as dissapointing, well, piles of crap, but not CS. Great support, first class lighting systems, but it lets itself down with its physics, giving the user something close to the ragdoll system rather than what you can squeeze out of the Halo 2 game. This is not surprising, as I said, it is open-source, but I still find it slightly dissapointing in some areas (I found it dificult to import my pre-amartured .x files without fiddling a lot).

With the AEGX Physics Chip now available, I am hoping to see a lot of updates in this engine to take care of the new possibilities. DarkBasic, that most annoying of engines, is leading the pack in that district, but I think it's about time some of the open source engines caught on.

Overal, this is an impressive system that is simple to use and great for indie developers, but if your looking for something that will really rock the socks of your players, you're searching in all the wrong spaces.

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Please delete.

Posted by: noerrorsfound at Dec 4, 2006

Please delete.

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A little over a month and I love CS more and more!

Posted by: Chris.y2k.r1 at Aug 25, 2007

The more I get into this engine, the more I like it. It has everyone I need and the few 'nice' things to have are planned for release in the near future. What do U mean you ask? For example, imposters, while they are not currently a part of CS, they are being developed as we speak. In general, the great guys at CS will implement anything as long as it makes sense. It's amazing how much has already been implemented. Basically, if you can think of it, "It's in there!".

The engine is a little tough to learn how to use, but anything with this level of control is going to take some time to get to know. That doesn't mean it's hard to learn, it's not - it just requires some commitment.

CS & ChR1s 4ever!

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CrystalSpace

Posted by: barf0r0 at Aug 14, 2007

I think CS (CrystalSpace) is one of the most important game engines.
You can easily develop a game with CS and it's plugins (like blender2crystal).
If you need support or tutorials for CS you can get it from the great community forum: http://www.crystalspace3d.org/forum/index.php

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Terrible.

Posted by: pro-rsoft at Dec 27, 2007

I've tried using this engine for a long time but I didn't manage to get any good results in it.
The engine is a MESS. It crashes quite often, its complex to use, and you never get the results you would like to.
Its documentation is long not what I would like to, and its development speeds are bad.
It doesn't have much features to offer either, compared to other engines.

I could never get a nice scene with CS anyway because it lacked rendering support for some cards.

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Genius

Posted by: agro at Mar 22, 2008

This is the most powerful opensource game engine, try it and youl be shore!

Apricote is coming - be ready! =)
It will be a megagame i think, youl se, i am teling

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engine good, support I don't know

Posted by: necroside at Jul 25, 2008

The engine seems fine, I've worked with previous versions of it and it's awesome, the problem I have is that I need help compiling on Linux but I can't register into the forums, so I don't have support at all, I've tried for three days and nothing, so I decided to quit and try another engine on Linux, if you can't register (as I can't) you can try elsewhere for info, but the info I need is somehow for people who had some time on the engine. But if you can register you can be sure is one of the best free engines (if not the best) out there.

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NO SUPPORT??? Wrong

Posted by: Rayk_HST at Jan 12, 2009

@ Necroside

You wrote. "I can't register into the forums, so I don't have support at all."

Have you ever read the Community page from the Crystalspace Side?I think not.

http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Community

There are a IRC Channel too.

IRC Channel

If you have a quick code-related question or just want to chat about your project then you can visit the #CrystalSpace IRC channel at FreeNode.net. If you have a more art-related question then you can visit #CrystalSpace-arts on the same IRC network.

You become Support on this Channel every Day.

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