Morfit 3D is offering free tools, a free game engine, free tech support, free promotion, and free distribution (downloading from the looks of it). The catch is: 1) What you develope is freeware (no charge, given away) 2) What you develope will be marketed and distributed by them, it will have ads placed in the game using a propriatary add-in called Adjunct(tm), and will be distributed by them with a 33% ad profit per game per download, with monthly checks. You keep ownership of the game and its contents (excluding the game engine and ads, of course) during the entire process. All of this info is from their site, so correct me where my memory fails. I guess the final questions are: is the tools and graphics engine any good, and is it worth the $0.02 (not so popular game) to $2 (very, very, very popular game) per download to have ads in your game?

sounds like a good way for most people to get started. Nothing wrong with not making money off of it.

That was my initial impression, firahs. I''ll probably download it tonight and see what it does/can do.

IMHO, it''s a very cool engine. Easy to use, and even a newbie could figure it out (there''s a free book!). I could probably make a decent racing game using it...





"Real game developers don't change the rules. Real game developers don't break the rules. Real game developers make the rules!"
"I have a dream... that I would make the coolest RPG ever!!!" - DarkMage139

Their 2D demo art could use some work, and I have troubles getting any of the demo''s to work properly with 3D acceleration. ''Secret Mission'' looks interesting (I had to use the world builder to look around at it) if only it didn''t wander off into lala land after it gets to about 1 data block(?) away from loading.

I''ve not started going over the source to the demo''s yet nor into the documentation, but they look small (Secret Mission weighs in at 170k zipped). They also appear to have just recently started supporting full screen (Morfit 3.5beta). I can''t help but think that by v4.0, it will be one killer of a game engine.

The terrain builder tool could be a bit more intuitive. They went the extra mile to avoid jargon in the interface. Unfortunately, I have learned enough jargon to be easily confused by a lack there of . The world builder looks nice as well, but needs more feedback (I am probably really missing something) as to what moving through the world is actually doing. I don''t know if the world builder supports modes (edit/view) just by looking at it. I guess I''ll have to refer to that Spanish guy ''Manual''. Just looking at a tool without even looking at the documentation for it, and saying it sucks, isn''t fair at all, so I''ll be diving into the references once I find them (yeah, its not too dificult to do, just click on the ''Help'' menu option).

It is also interesting to see that some of the demo''s were done with no coding - they just created them in world builder and run them from a generic world loader. Something nice about world builder is that you can edit your worlds as text if it suits your fancy. It is such a nice touch.

My enthusiasm is only cut short by the 2d texture mapping in the demos - they are better than what I could probably do, but not much. Morfit is trying to sell itself with these demo''s so would it be a good idea to beef up the eye candy?

Speaking of eye candy, if you have time, download the ''mirrors'' demo and check out the cool reflections. I keep feeling like I have my underware on backwards when I play around in the demo - the effect is cool, the castle is cool, but the rest kind of makes me shudder....

I''ll post more in this thread as I find out. Expect a plefora of me eating crow as I complain about something, and an hour later, say that I was wrong and this is how you do it.

I am also picking up a copy of PowerRender 3.x next month, so expect a thread my views on that as I work with it. With any luck, expect my first go at something resembling a game emerging from the thread. As it is, I am just doing the logical design of the game on paperwork.

"Real men don''t use manuals.. in public."

To be fair, there is another player in the 'add and ad' to your game market player - Adaboy (http://www.adaboy.com/). Although they don't offer a too suite, they do offer mechanisms to place ads in games. A mechanism that you have to sign a NDA to use. A quick tour of the site revealed that there is no mention of your percentage take on the ad fees (Morfit is 33%, with ad prices based on game distribution/download numbers). They promise you a cut, but as to how much is yet to be seen.

Some other tid bits:

- intergration of the Adaboy patented technology is estimated to be 4 to 10 hours in the post alpha stage.
- they never want to see your source code - it is yours to keep
- appear to target online only game distribution, but I'd have to re-read the details to make sure
- the advertiser may customize their adds to fit your game environment and may even have ads featuring your characters (unsettling thought)

Just pointing out another way to avoid the publisher game for small game developers.

How much does one get on a percentage based per game contract with one of the big boys, on average? How much does an engine comparable to Morfit cost to buy, on average?

Edited by - Whirlwind on May 18, 2000 2:36:47 PM