Is scenegraph APIs suitable for 3d shoot’emup games?
Lets say I want a strongbow game 
I move around and shoot arrows to a static and moving objects (animals, target plates,…)
Do commercial 3d 1st/3rd person games (doom, battlefields, etc…) use scenegraph apis?
Yes they do. Doom3 has a simplistic and pratical scene graph. Same with Half-Life 2.
“Simplistic and practical scene graph”
Is it something very proprietary and customized scenegraph system?
A scenegraph is very useful tool when creating any type of game. We used AgentFX which is scenegraph when we created Megacrops. However you must make sure that the system you use has support for better culling than frutsum culling since it pratically useless when working with large world such as game levels. The system need to support portals, octrees or bsp/pvs and similar. You also need robust collision routines that can handle sweep test on large world.
Cheers
// Tomas
[quote]“Simplistic and practical scene graph”
Is it something very proprietary and customized scenegraph system?
[/quote]
Yes and no. The documentation for moders gives some detail on the structure of both scene-graphs. Check Doom3 site or the Half-Life 2 site for documentation. The scenegraph used in those games is fine-tuned for their type of games they are not usable for bigger worlds.
Tomas in the post above gave some good advice for how to work with bigger worlds. I think that any of the most well know java gaming apis (jME, Xith and Agency9), will be able to provide a scenegraph with the same caracteristics as those in the games you mentioned.
[quote]Tomas in the post above gave some good advice for how to work with bigger worlds. I think that any of the most well know java gaming apis (jME, Xith and Agency9), will be able to provide a scenegraph with the same caracteristics as those in the games you mentioned.
[/quote]
Actually, I would bet only Agency9’s SG does anything beyond frustum culling. The other SG’s are more generic, where Agency9’s is designed to be able to handle FPS style games.
Ok, thx. Now I know what to look for. I study Xith3d and JME more detailed about the culling systems they provide out of the box.
AgenFX is another one, but I tried a demo once (some car c demo), but it did not work in my machine. And megacorps demo at their site is way beyond my hardware support.
Celeron500/Matrox G400/Win2k
Megacorps requires shader support, this is however not needed by AgentFX. We have set OpenGL 1.2 as minimum requirement so it might be using routines not supported by your graphic card Matrox G400.
Cheers
// Tomas 