Hi, I’ve been having great fun during the last couple of years with Unity, and I’m not stopping now, I was just thinking about realizing a project on a different Game Engine so to explore different solutions. The main reason why I stuck with Unity is because this community is simply stunning, hardly I have some scripting problem it hasn’t already been asked before on Unity Answers. Also, the Documentation is great and Unity Learn is better than going to the movies.
I would either pick UDK vs CryENGINE, but I can’t really decide myself for the following reasons:
-I would go for UDK because it looks better documented(and this is vital, to me), but I don’t really like that I should use UnrealScript, which is not a general-purose programming language(worth mentioning: I am not a professional game developer, but instead a student who finds programming videogames a good way to learn and practice coding)
-I would go for CryENGINE because I can get my hands dirty with C++, which I would really love to work with, but the community looks rather weak and I hate the idea of getting stuck somewhere without any documentation or forum that helps me understanding what’s wrong.
I bet a lot of you guys have either tried one of them or both, and I’m looking forward to read if my thoughts about these engines are right, what you think about this discussion in general, and what your tip would be.
UDK is fine for free projects, I guess, but I wouldn’t use it for commercial ones as licensing isn’t best fit for indies (royalties are 25% of your incomings, which is pretty big for people who are selling their first game or whose games weren’t much popular). CryENGINE while less documented and harder to use (c++ which means such fun things like memory leaks or segfaults) can achieve great things in terms of visual, although you need then artist who know his/her shit.
If I were you, I’d give myself 6 month to evaluate both engines. For first 3 I’d use UDK to complete some simple game, then next 3 I’d spend with CryENGINE and see which one is better for you.
Also, please take a look at Godot engine. It is quite Unity-like in terms of workflow and have active community (no answers-like site, but active forums and IRC channel).
You can also have a look at JMonkeyEngine. It is Java, but very well-written (unless you both your code, same game would work as fast both in Unity and JME). It’s api is similar to Unity’s and since it is Java, it would run on all systems with available JRE (it is based on LWJGL, but is full-fledged engine with shaders, physics, scene management, etc.). Also has answers-like site although certain members on it are rude.
//edit: Forgot to mention - Godot uses language called GDScript, but it is very similar to Boo and Python so if you programmed in either, you’ll find your way.
But the 25% royalties only happen after you earn $50,000 on their site the even went into detail that it’s $50,000 earnings that you/your studio actually gets. So if you put it on a platform like steam that takes a cut, the amount of Valve takes from sales doesn’t count towards it. From you game with UDK with $100 to get the license to sell right?
I believe CryEngine has a similar royalty fee percentage but it starts as soon as you start selling the game, but CryTek is a bit harder to get in contact with for questions on all that stuff.
If you don’t want to use Unity I would say that UDK is a good choice but a lot depends on what sort of game you are making as well, but UDK is extremely artist friendly.
I’ve been through this over and over with publishers and financiers and investors and it seemed a hard choice at one point. But from our perspective it became really simple.
If you have the millions of dollars to leverage so the CryTek will give you a license, use Unreal 4.
If you’re a medium sized indie dev with 250 - 500K, use Unreal 4.
If your a small team Use Unity, for however much I complain about it if you’re willing to roll up your sleeves it can look much better than UDK.
If you don’t want royalty costs, use Unity.
You can’t publish anything in CryEngine. So that’s UDK or Unity, and this topic has been covered many times. Both do different things for you, and you’re free to evaluate both yourself.
But no, you’re not releasing anything with CryEngine. You’ll probably be able to use it for hobbyist purposes and learning.
As I said, you need to provide them with a show reel worthy of the the engine and that usually includes AAA developments, I know a small amount of non AAA studio’s that got a license and I know a fair few that didn’t… After so much work, would you risk it?
Personally I have no love or loyalty to any engine, there just tools to make a game. Just make sure it’s the right so you can get what you need to out there, I’d love to see more success stories…
I actually thought that it was a strong plus for UDK and CryENGINE to be royalty-based. This is because I’m a student and doing this for fun mostly, so I like the idea of paying nothing(or kind of) for the full Game Engine, and instead, have my published game incomes subject to royalties, while in Unity Pro you need to pay quite some money per developer for the license (again, this is a student point of view!)
Wow that sucks, I thought that it applied to source-code license seekers, but I’m reading right now some stories about it creeps. Thanks for the warning!
I won’t currently bet any peny on CryEngine3. As much as good as It looks you won’t get too far with. Licencing it’s just impossible, crappy documentation to start with (unless you already have an in-depth crazy CryEngine knowledge), lackustre import pipeline, impossible to create custom shaders/post-effects to name a few.
We’ve been using Unreal Engine 4 for several months now and if Epic ever make an UDK version of UE4 (I hope so), that would be the way to go for Indies trying to get very next gen advanced/flexible/powerful AAA tools with easy of use.
What I see in the future is a battle between UE4 and Unity (CryEngine being already outweighted by their licensing blackhole).
It depends.
Whether and how much this hurts is a curve like the uncanny valley.
If you make a small game only a few people buy, they don’t take any cuts.
If you make a huge game a lot of people buy, they’ll take a lot but it won’t hurt you.
The painful part lies in between. When you make a medium sized game that doesn’t quite sell enough to make you stop caring about their royalties.
Well UE4 really have taken notice of who the indies flocked to :), I can’t say too much for obvious reasons. But I can see Unreal 4 being a big competitor as you already know… It’s a beautiful engine.
As for CE, fully agree with every point. I recon you’d be better off making an engine yourself.
Leadwerks is great, it’s similar to Unity. Has nav mesh, badass shaders, some awesome post effects and the engine is easy to use. Lua and C++ scripting is also a huge plus. Don’t even get me started on the particle system. Totally a badass engine.
What I was most excited about reading about UE4 is that they dropped completely UnrealScript, but I guess that having a UDK based on UE4 will take quite some time.
…that’s also amazing about how many game engines are coming out of this thread, game engines I never heard of between one F5 and the other, I’m taking a look at all of them
What I noticed, though, is that nobody mentioned Source. Is there something really bad with it?
Interesting. I read CryEngines licensing information and it sounded to me that if you made some decent progress on your game, and then applied for a license as an Indie developer, they would pretty much give you a license in every case. They made it sound like if you claimed to be an Indie developer they would take that into consideration as to how much to charge you for the license (as quite a few engines are doing now).
Are you guys sure CryEngine is pretty much a deadend right from the start? I was under the impression it was a little more difficult than other SDK’s, but not so difficult that no one should consider it?
Indeed,
CE it’s only good for studios that have an already in-depth knowledge of it. Studios that already have their pipeline set for it. But starting a new project from scratch, I won’t bet anything to it (even if I got the license for free). Unity already provides me multiple ways to create what ever shiny thingy is hardcoded on CE, so I don’t really care about the graphics capabilities of it. What I was looking for in CE was a better pipeline and editor workflow which won’t come any sooner/further in the future.
To be honest, In overall I can’t see anything better than Unity right now. Sure, it has it’s flaws and lacks very important core features but still your best bang for the money. At least until UE4 see the daylight (which I’m loving quite a lot).
