Like all good things in this world, Crystal Space was created just to see if it could be done. That was a few years ago. Today Crystal Space is a very capable 3D engine with people from all over the globe contributing. It's an example of open source at its best, and a great engine in its own right.

Crystal Space has always had an elusive appeal for me. Much like Linux, Crystal Space wasn't only a piece of software, but somehow a sub culture with a distinctive geek appeal. Crystal Space wasn't created by a bunch of rocket scientists from some multimillion dollar company, but by regular people with an interest in 3D graphics. Without a doubt talented people, but still people you could talk too directly on a message board because their only interest is to see the code used, for whatever reason.

That said though, it took a while for me to actually sit down and learn CS. CS isn't for the faint of heart, as simply creating an application to open a window requires quite a bit of code covering a number of funky aspects like plugins, interfaces and reference counting. It is easy to get discouraged when you first try to understand CS, but good things come to those who, well, sit at a computer for a couple of hours :).

Crystal Space offers developers an engine with features comparing to the best engines available on the net. If you want to do it in 3D, chances are that CS can do it. Indoor, outdoor, Windows, Linux, C++, Python… Crystal Space has been extended to cover pretty much everything you could want. Crystal Space also offers the most comprehensive platform support of any 3D engine I have seen, supporting DOS (DJGPP), Unix (X Windows, OpenGL), GNU/Linux (X Windows, SVGALIB, SDL, and OpenGL) Macintosh (also with OpenGL), Windows 32-bit (DirectDraw, Direct3D (in progress), and OpenGL), BeOS (also with OpenGL), NextStep, OpenStep, Rhapsody, and OS/2 (also with OpenGL).

Unfortunately there are a lack of demos that really show off Crystal Space in all its glory. You have a good selection of demos supplied with the engine itself, but these are designed more as tutorials for CS's individual features (and even then the example code isn't commented very well, so you'll have to work out for yourself what is going on most of the time). There are some promising CS projects in development though, so check out the CS projects page for a glimpse of what is to come.

Documentation isn't bad, but it isn't comprehensive either. CS provides a number of good introductory tutorials to ease you into the engine, and you'll find functional documentation on most of the important aspects of the system. There are a number of sections that aren't documented at all though, or the documentation isn't up to date. CS also provides a complete API map for those that need it.

CS's tools come in the form of converters. You can make a level using Worldcraft, and then convert it to CS's map format using a supplied tool. You can also export models from Studio Max using the Cal3D plugin, and then convert the Cal3D file to the CS mesh format. While these tools work, it is a round about solution. It would be nice to see some native CS exporters for the more popular modelling packages. However you can get what you need into CS without too much trouble, it just mightn't be as convenient as other engines.

Crystal Space is a good all round engine suitable for most games. To learn Crystal Space a good level of familiarity with C++ is definitely recommended as the code is sometimes hard to follow and quite involved for even the simpler aspects, and with comments being scarce you're on your own for anything beyond the basics. Once you familiarise yourself with Crystal Space you'll find it quite powerful though, and it is being improved all the time.