This page provides answers to the most frequently asked questions related to licensing the Ca3D-Engine.

For FAQs about other aspects of the Ca3D-Engine, please refer to the main Support menu above.

In order to provide a first impression on what coding with the Ca3D-Engine is like,

• the Ca3D-Engine demo downloads for Windows and Linux come with the full source code for the DeathMatch sample game,
• the Ca3DE Libraries documentation is available online, and
• we've prepared a C++ sample source code page that shows you real source code examples from the Ca3D-Engine core code.

No. The Ca3D-Engine source code is only available under license, and all licensees are required to keep the source code confidential. You may modify the source code for use in your own products as much as you want, but you may not redistribute your modifications to anyone who is not a licensee.

Yes, fast and well-designed networking code is built into the Ca3D-Engine.

Yes, Ca3DE works on all i686-based (desktop) Linux systems that come with libc6. In other words, Ca3DE works on all contemporary Linux distributions like Debian, ubuntu, kubuntu, (open)SuSE, Red Hat, Gentoo, Fedora etc. as smooth as under Windows.

Due to the flexible and modular architecture of the Ca3DE rendering system, the Ca3D-Engine runs on a much wider range of graphics hardware than most other engines: Older systems that only support OpenGL 1.2 are supported as well as the latest hardware with programmable pixel-shaders and dynamic lighting effects.

Thanks to the Ca3D-Engine material system, this flexibility is transparent to the users: You define a material once, and it works on every available hardware, with automatic reduction of features when the hardware does not support them.

The secret behind the graphical power of the Ca3D-Engine is that it is able to combine Radiosity lighting techniques with dynamic per-pixel lighting - a unique feature that allows Ca3DE to work on the broadest range of hardware and still provide exceptionally fast and realistically looking results.

There are no inherent limits build into the Ca3D-Engine. It's framerate and performance mostly depends on the graphics hardware, and is in turn generally dependent on graphics processors fill rate on most modern architectures.

Ca3DE employs precomputation of potentially visible objects and level-of-detail techniques in order to automatically reduce the number of relevant polygons as much as possible per frame, but the framerate also depends on level design, number of types of light sources and shadows, the materials employed, etc.

We're happy to review your levels and give you performance and tuning tips.

Compiling all Ca3D-Engine source code is kept very simple and identical on all supported platforms. Here is an overview:

• On Windows, you need Microsoft Visual C++ 8 (2005) or 9 (2008). Good news is that the Ca3D-Engine source code has been kept so clean and portable that the free Express Editions are fully suitable for the job and come with everything that is needed.
• On Linux, you need g++ 4.2 or newer.

On all systems, you also need “scons”, which automatically handles the whole build process in a single simple command-line call: scons -Q

For more details on building Ca3DE, please see chapter “At the Core: The C++ Source Code” in the Wiki.

Yes, students can purchase a Ca3D-Engine Standard License at up to 50% discount. Moreover, licenses are available for universities and institutions that wish to use the Ca3D-Engine as a teaching tool. Please refer to the Licensing Overview for more details.

For all license types, your access to the latest Ca3D-Engine source code downloads and your access to the forums and documentation does never expire, at no additional cost.

You need a Professional License rather than a Standard license if one or both of these conditions are met:

• You have a publisher and the publisher is or has ever been a member of the “Entertainment Software Association” (ESA) or the “Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association” (ELSPA). The current member list of the ESA is available here, and the current member list of the ELSPA is available here.
• You are developing for a game console such as PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, or Wii.

Note that you can start with a Standard License for each of your programmers and later upgrade to a Professional License for the difference in cost.

You need an Applications License rather than a Standard license if one or both of these conditions are met:

• You are developing a product that is sold for $80 (USD) or more.
• You are developing a product for company-internal use that is made available to at least 50 people.

Note that you can start with a Standard License for each of your programmers and later upgrade to an Applications License for the difference in cost.