So, being the curious new guy that I am, I’ve been looking around at other game engines. My list of what I’ve tried, and why I did (or didn’t) choose it.
UDK - I loved this for the time I used it. It was powerful, produced beautiful graphics*, and was really a pretty amazing engine. Why did I not choose? Too focused on FPS.
CryEngine 3 - I loved this more than UDK. GORGEOUS graphics*, and has, in basic, an amazing editor. Why did I not choose? Too focused on FPS, and pretty bad performance on my Computer.
GameCore - Didn’t try this out much. The graphics* were alright, but the performance was saddening.
DXStudio - Downloaded, opened, removed. The frontend just didn’t seem intuitive enough for me.
(Long Ago) Reality Factory - It was nice, but it was a beginning engine. I didn’t see much potential and all good engines at that time (yes, I did look at Unity) costed money.
Unity - Oh. My. Lawd. I love everything about this engine. I can use a Pythonic language (Boo), and it isn’t focused on FPS. I can produce non-FPS games with ease, and everything about this engine is nice. I love it. I really do. <3
I’m installing Shiva 3D. I have a feeling I won’t like it though… Ogre3D? Nah. DarkBasic I did, didn’t like it. And sae with Irrlicht. Just something about DarkBasic and Irrlicht I didn’t like. XD Those were long ago, before Unity was free.
You should go check out Conitec 3D Game Studio (3DGS)! The Grand-daddio of Indie Game Engines! (Since 1995!)
I almost bought 3DGS few years back, but luckily I didn’t (I didn’t know about Unity back then, I was conflicted whether to choose Torque or that…I eventually went with Leadwerks which is in my opinion still a fantastic engine far superior to C4 engine! )
The forum there is really sad place to be now, its what a dying game engine forum looks like. Users are now saying goodbyes to each other now which is really sad (and joining Unity!! )
Still those exceptions dont change the fact that engine itself is built arround FPS genre. Many things that you will find out of box are centred around FPS genre, and let that be just simple assets, camera scripts, level editor, BPS brushes, starting test vew+camera+weapons. Basically if you are beginner you need to spend quite some time to convert this FPS base to clean base before starting working on genre that is either RTS or anything else. Then there is huge limitation about animated characters and limitation about character skeleton, which still has to be one of the two UE3 based skeletons if you want your characters to share animations, which is strong restriction if you want to recreate Mount and blade, maybe Skyrim with decent battles or RTS game. Forget it you will most likely be in trouble. Ratio between FPS and other genres on UDK or UE3 games isnt hugely leaning towards first one just for decoration but actually with good reason (s).
3D GameStudio (3DGS) WED editor also using BSP brush and like UDK, it has strong perception that 3DGS is a FPS game tool, that is mostly due to the FPS template in A5. But I didn’t use the 3DGS template and I create a prototype like AngryBots using A6 c-script and later port to A7 lite-C without any template. But I stop using A7 because there is no mobile platform, it is a dead end product.
I evaluated Shiva3D but unfortunately I don’t like LUA and can’t stand for its weird terrain editor. To continue my game making venture, I bought the Unity Pro, iOS Pro, Android Pro, before Epic Games announce they release UDK for free.
I just start my trial on UDK 2 days ago, maybe 1 or 2 months later I will conclude Unity or UDK fit my need. Even my current project is not very big, but I feel that UDK is more robust if the project growth larger, it is important for me to secure future development, it is not only about the money invest in learning an engine, but the time and experience gain when I using it.
In fact, based on my 2 nights learning, UDK seems has more Editor functions than Unity, overall the Unreal Editor looks more like 3DGS than Unity, and I understood why people feel it is an FPS engine. However, Matinee is really nice for camera animation (for my rail shooter). And I surprise there is a graphical programming Kismet included, if I want something like that in Unity, I need to purchase another expensive plug-in. In addition, I even more surprise when I found the editor is 64-bit and support DirectX-11 rendering.
I think each engine has its limitation or restriction, since there are so many conflict arguments about UDK, I will spare my time to learn more about it.
The UDK is no longer really that FPS-centric; it’s the mod-oriented tutorials on the web that are, and the fact that there are multiple example projects in the UDK package with the default one being the deathmatch demo.
There is another example project included however, which starts the user with just a camera and a very simple courtyard, which does not include any deathmatch code. That one doesn’t actually have much code at all IIRC.
For some things, the tools that come with the UDK make the workflow faster, but other things that requires lots of UnrealScript debugging still make iteration times much slower than Unity. It also has its own share of weird graphical glitches; it’s not quite the graphical panacea most make it out to be.
It does not seem to me that Leadwerks is going to die, it is a small but enthusiastic comunity
Anyway , also in my opinion Leadwerks is a fantastic engine, the most user friendly engine around
The point is that from my experience it is too slow
Is there a Unity pro owner so kind to make the following test ( it takes a few minutes) ?
I would like to be sure before shelling out 1500 usd for the pro version
a rotating cube
a terrain
diffused and bump textures
two lights
shadows enabled
I will compare the Unity and Leadwerks fps
I have a middleware desk top, about 1 year old
Thanks in advance
I evaluated Shiva3D before coming full-force on Unity (one year and a half ago), but I really hated the way coding worked in there - my memory sucks, but I remember it was very clumsy
alterus With only guessing here i think that small pack of enthusiastic forum members wont save Leadwerks, company needs new blood to gain income or get some really successful developers purchasing source code license, and neither of those is probably going to happen judging from their forum, gallery or recruitment posts.
I would personally say Unity is way more user friendly that Leadwerks, especially in terms of coding and asset workflow.
As for performance, you wont get any decent objective results from comparing simple asset scene with Unity and doing the same with Leadwerks. By defaults its like comparing simple assets thrown in UDK and Unity and then comparing frame rate. On medium-end computers there will be wast difference and winning by Unity. Leadwerks requires good graphic card just like UDK and there is something going on behind its lighting that is putting some performance loss from start on, dont know what it is, or if there are actually some sort of post effects which i didnt know to turn off (didnt looked that way).
Where Leadwerks gains a lot is in huge scenes with instanced assets, especially they are really good at trees, probably you noticed on their site video with hundreds of thousands of trees on terrain with quite good performance. I would say its really no point going to Leadwerks, stick with Unity its better.
I was talking about Conitec 3D Game Studio (3DGS).
Over at 3DGS forum, everyone is saying goodbyes to each other.
Anyway, Leadwerk is heading that way too anyway. It has a small but very dedicated hardcore fans, but LE just can’t compare to Unity on ease of use and features. And you really need to know how to program to get anything out of it. Its quite a pity really because it really is a very capable engine under $200.
EDIT: It looks like Leadwerks 3 is going to be following Unity’s path - its finally going to get an editor front-end and mobile support. The problem for Josh (Leadwerk owner and developer) is still going to be the lack of manpower and funding though. So new features and platform support will be slow to come. The same criticism goes for Shiva - they have a tiny team (of 10 people I heard) compare to Unity’s team of over 100.
I liked Unity’s workflow which is simpler than UDK’s or CryEngine’s. Also, it’s scripting environment is accessible. In UDK you have to close and reopen the editor to see any changes and if you’re new to programming it will be alot.
Cos they clearly do appeal to customers. And what’s with the hostility?
