best 3d engine

HI,

if anyone can help me out on this one, it would be great, i've not done any vb programming for a few months now, been learning java meanwhile, but now i'm ready to get back to vb for a while and want to write a simple game.

I am looking for the best 3d engine to use, the game will be a cross between final fantasy and diablo. so no real fancy graphics are needed, and the engine can be an isometric engine as long as 3d figures are supported.

please write back to me on this as its quite urgent, thank a lot!

I find it amusing that you chose the word "simple". Creating a game similar to what you want is nowhere near simple, even with a pre made engine (take a look at Rune). As to finding an siometric 3D engine written in VB that is open source, i have a feeling you probably wont find one. You should write your own, or go that extra mile, and write in Java. Besides, its no fun wading through someone elses engine, youll lose all interest.

Z.

java is interpreted, so how fast would this be for a 3d engine? have you got any hints to get me started writting this in java, i could always use java3d from sun?

Java can be fast enough if you do it right. If you want to know about how different languages stack up for games programming, go ask in www.gamedev.net forums. There's more of a variety of languages there, people here mostly use VB. I think.... but maybe I'm wrong.

I've seen some pretty darned impressive stuff done in Java with good framerates.

Well speaking of isometric engines :
http://www.ur.co.nz/madb.htm

i think java would be a good way to go then. i don't even have to use java3d for this, as java2d will do it, if i use a simple isometric engine at first and then extend it, it should do the job just fine. any ideas?

are any of you able to point me in the right direction for bitmap blitting using java? i'll need things like being able to AND masks onto the canvas and then XORing the actual images to them, just the usual graphics stuff.

thanks ^(..)^

If no-one here can help you with the java stuff I suggest you head on over to http://www.javaranch.com/
They helped me big-time when I was trying to write a game in java.

Top notch coders !