I had this awesome idea in my head for an open world survival game, but after doing some research I quickly saw that I am absolutely not ready to partake such a large project. So I want to start smaller with other games that I can use to familiarize myself with the engine and developing. I will make a few games that I can incorporate into an open world survival but before I do that, I want to make sure the engine I use will be able to do it. So years from now, when I feel comfortable enough to start it and I have a group of people I met along the way to help out, I don’t start the project and realize that this engine can’t handle a game like this.
So again, just want to know if unity is a good option for this. I’ve played around with it quite a bit so I’m not too bad with it but still learning a lot. Also, I would like to reiterate that I understand it is a large project and people with much more experience than me wouldn’t touch it. I am not going to be starting this project for years to come. Just want to know if the engine can handle it. I’ve seen how ruthless you guys can be to new people with ideas like this lol.
Rust, 7 days to die, The Forest, etc. are all using Unity I think. It mainly depends more of the teams skills and experience to be capable of finishing such a huge game.
All engines have their pros and cons and workflows differ a bit. You could use both for a while and see which one you like more.
We’re mostly ruthless towards the people who try to jump into an absolutely absurd project before they’ve taken their very first steps as a game developer. It’d basically be like an infant wanting to run a marathon. You don’t seem to have that problem though.
Yes. With enough effort there really isn’t anything Unity can’t do. That applies to just about every major game engine on the market too. You will have to work around certain limitations like floating point numbers having a limit to how high they can go before the physics system starts to fall apart but that’s a problem with other engines too.
So it depends on how large an open world your wanting to build, if you want to go large check out Unreal if you plan on a modest island/region <10 km* then Unity should be good.
However you need to check out the in built tools and asset stores and workflow for all of the engines then compare and contrast the results.
As you will need to fill the landscape with stuff that makes it interesting enough to be fun to survive in.
Unity:
Advantages: Quick and Easy to Learn.
Disadvantages: Poor Out of the Box Terrain System Toolkit.
Note: Unity have recently added the Pro Builder tools so hard/flat/building type elements should be a lot easier to work with in Unity.
Yes, it is. Rust and Subnautica are prime success examples. To do this you need to learn how it is abstractly done, then apply that in your engine of choice. In the end it matters very little which engine you use if your motivation to succeed is high enough.
The engine can do it, but it takes experience with optimising the heck out of things. But that’s true for any engine. I’ve seen UE with previous generation console-style areas struggle, so bad asset management, optimisation, culling etc. can destroy any game.
The major engines are very capable now, so the only determining factors should be:
1.Can you enjoy using the built-in tools?
2.Is the community decent enough?
3.Are there more YouTube tutorials than you think you can get through in a month?
All three definitely apply to UE and Unity. Both also support many popular 3rd-party tools/asset libraries, like the Substance family and SpeedTree, which are advanced subjects which could boost your productivity.
Open world 3D game can be made with Unity. However, you have a bigger problem. You say that you have “this awesome idea in your head”. This means that you don’t even have documentation. Without documentation you can’t even choose an engine intelligently. Focus on fleshing out your idea on paper. Don’t write any code. Just write documentation like a manager. Do also financial analysis in MS Excel. You will quickly realize that the game you want to make requires a solid 20+ man team to execute properly.
Pointing towards an existing title that was very successful with those visuals sounds great in theory until you realize it’s literally the only title that was very successful with them. There have been numerous titles since then with those graphics and just about every single one has never left obscurity.
