[casual_games] Re: Game engine recommendations

[Steven Davis]

Josiah -

Given your description, I would think that Macromedia's Director would be your best bet. It has a widely used plug-in for browsers (Shockwave) and is relatively easy to develop for, especially for this type of application. Macromedia has not done much to support Director for a couple of years, but it is still a widely used, solid tool with a strong developer community. So, you can hire Director developers and hardcore programmers for Lingo (its programming language), if you need them.

The other engine that I have become quite intrigued with is Panda3D (http://www.panda3d.org/) - the engine Disney developed for ToonTown Live and released as open source (without GPL, so you can tweek it and still make money). It is very easy to work with as it is fully scriptable in Python.

If the textures and everything is really lightweight (no heavy animation or interactivity), you could probably do something clever with AJAX style Javascript programing and have the logic all on the server (also depending on number of cocurrent users, however)... Google does it.

There are other options like Virtuools, but I suspect they are a bit of a sledge hammer (especially based on price). 

An important question that affects your approach is your business model. If this is a "modeling" app for clothes or something, ease of installation and use dominate other concerns... leading towards Director/Shockwave. If this is a "sold" application, then you want something that can be protected by DRM or other techniques, in which case your engine choice and system design may be different. 

Steve

Steven B. Davis
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