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[Mikademus]

Added summaries of Unreal3/UDK, Marmalade (AirPlay) and Shiva3D to the table in the first post:

Name	Licence/Price	Supported Platforms	Scope, Intent and useage	Pros	Cons
=====	=====	=====	=====	=====	=====
Unreal 3/UDK	Commercial •   Free for non-commercial •   25% of all revenue > $50000	Windows, iOS	Complete game system.	•   Extreme edge-cuttingness. •   Generous licence for small-income projects.	Principally Windows only. Draconic licence.
-----	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----
Marmalade (Previously AirPlay SDK)	Commercial •   Basic $149/seat/year •   Normal $499/seat/year •   Pro $3499/seat/year	“Supported” •   iOS (3.0 and above) •   Android (1.5 and above) •   Symbian (Symbian^3 and S60 5th Edition) •   bada (all versions) •   webOS (1.4.1 and above) “Beta” •   Windows desktop (full-screen and windowed applications) •   OSX desktop (full-screen and windowed applications) •   Windows Mobile 6.x •   Symbian S60 3rd Edition •   Mobile Linux, generic implementation	Complete game solution.	•   One-click publish to supported platforms. •   Use same C++ code to generate applications for all platforms.	•   Expensive licence over time. •   Focuses almost exclusively on mobile platforms.
-----	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----
Shiva3D	Commercial •   Basic €169 •   Advanced €1499	•   Win/OSX/Linux •   iOS, Android, HP WebOS •   Airplay SDK (Marmalade) •   Wii	Complete game solution.	Supports wide array of platforms.	•   Basic version somewhat feature-crippled. •   “Publishes to AirPlay”, which doesn’t exist anymore: licence issues?

There is also short discussions of the additions and I've updated the conclusions. Panda3D is still my overall recommendation, but Marmalade and Shiva3D are the two highest recommended systems for everyhandheldever and desktop/smartphone development, respectively.

I would like to add more open source game engine solutions to the comparison. Please tell me of any you know!

[increpare]

I'm finding the tables rather difficult to scan - think it's a formatting thing.  You know that you can insert tables in bbcode right?  (there're buttons for it and everything above the emoticons)

[ One thing that I think would be useful would be a link to some notable games made with each engine. ]

[rivon]

I just remembered - Delta3D. It has everything - 2D, 3D, physics, networking, terrain, entity system (just the entities are named Actors), audio, messaging + components, Python scripting, editor for the scenes and everything else. It's all very high-level. The bad thing is it has really a lot of dependencies. By the way it's open-source under the LGPL license, though in it's core it is composed of many smaller libraries and they have various licenses. I don't know if any one of them uses GPL so I'm not sure about commercial uses.

[Geeze]

Heres a quite big database of 3d engines
http://www.devmaster.net/engines/

[rivon]

Also, Blender Game engine...

[Mikademus]

I'm finding the tables rather difficult to scan - think it's a formatting thing.  You know that you can insert tables in bbcode right?  (there're buttons for it and everything above the emoticons)

(One thing that I think would be useful would be a link to some notable games made with each engine.)

Actually, the tables ARE done with bbcode tables The problem is that we can't easily colour them by row or column, or even the table in it's entirety, which makes a massive table like this a bit messy I have tried to make it easier to scan by the lines between each item.

Perhaps we can get some admin with suitable power to install an SMF extension to allow more advanced table formatting? Perhaps this one? Even better, this SMF mod allows many bbcode tags to have CSS style attributes.


@Rivon: Thanks for the heads-up, I will look up Delta3D! About the Blender Game Engine, I actually have already looked it up, but it still appears immature and very much under development. It also only has a very small info page under the Blender main site without much information.

Heres a quite big database of 3d engines
http://www.devmaster.net/engines/

I make a distinction between "Game Engines" and 3D engines. Nonetheless, I will scan the database to see if there are some complete game engine systems there to be included in this, perhaps more specialised(?), list.

[Geeze]

Oops my bad. Forgot word game from there. Theyre all. 3d GAME engines

[Mikademus]

@Geeze: I've gone through the list, or more truthfully, am doing so now.

Devmaster's list is a list of engines where some of the entries are "game engines", as per my definition in this thread, that is, systems integrating at least graphics, audio, physics, network, i/o, gui, scripting and multi-platform support.

However, one can add a purely graphics engine to that list if one wanted to, and many of the entiries are. To exemplify my point, I just did a search (as well as can be done in the advanced search form of the site) for all engines that fulfil my criteria for an integrated "game engine" and got nine results out of some 300 items in the database:

• V3X 3D (added 2004, never updated)
• Unreal Engine 2 (added 2004, never updated)
• Torque (added 2004, updated 2007)
• ShiVa3D (added 2007, updated 2010)
• Panda3D (added 2004, updated 2011)
• NeoEngine (added 2004, updated 2005)
• Mobex 3D (added 2005, never updated)
• Gryps Engine (added 2005, never updated)
• Antiryad Rx (added 2004, updated 2005)

Notice the absence of Unity, UDK or Marmalade (Unity is in the database, but doesn't show up when delimiting terms).  

Perhaps you would agree with me on two accounts: First, a graphics engine is not necessarily the same as a game engine, and thus not all engines in the devmaster list are game engines, depending on your definition. Secondly, the results of the search are horribly outdated and perhaps irrelevant: are the systems alive and developed? Have their licences changed? Etc etc.

What I am after in making this list are current game engine systems that may be of interest to Indie developers. The devmaster list offers too particular search options and not enough generic or module options and has too obsolete entries or data, and so isn't really helpful for this purpose.

[Edit]

I might have been a bit harsh on the devmaster list. There are plenty of new and updated engines in the list. The problems is rather with searching: the search function is clumsy and particularistic. Since it is impossible to delimit a search to engines having all the features I require (in whatever shape that might be), to find interesting things in the database I had to resort to reading the "recently updated engines list" - cumbersome and suboptimal!. Perhaps this could be addressed by categorising the entries into classes of engines, but I suspect the format of the database is set, which leads back to why a list like mine is relevant. Dixi.

[BrianSlipBit]

I know it's overkill, but I don't see CryEngine 3 anywhere on the lists.  If you're going to include UDK, which is essentially UE3 without the source, then it's probably fair to include CryEngine 3 as well--if for nothing else other than completeness.

[Mikademus]

I know it's overkill, but I don't see CryEngine 3 anywhere on the lists.  If you're going to include UDK, which is essentially UE3 without the source, then it's probably fair to include CryEngine 3 as well--if for nothing else other than completeness.

Yeah, I looked up CryEngine3 and as for licensing they say "contact us", even for indie licenses As for supported platforms, the site says nothing about it though teh intartubes indicates that it supports Win/Xbox360/PS3. I suppose I could add it though... Also, thanks for the heads-up on that UDK is UE3 w/o source, that info will go in the list!

[biomechanic]

It's Unity, not Unity3D (that's just the website's url) and I don't think it supports Linux.

You could include links to the engines' websites and, as increpare said, notable games.

[increpare]

It's Unity, not Unity3D (that's just the website's url) and I don't think it supports Linux.

It doesn't support linux, though the next version will, I believe

[Mikademus]

Would have added CryEngine3 and the Esenthel Engine to the list, but I've apparently hit some limit with SMF's table capacity, or it might just be a momentary snag. When I can edit the first page table I will fix the Unity misspelling issue, too.

Another two commercial game engines:

Name	Licence/Price	Supported Platforms	Scope, Intent and useage	Pros	Cons
=====	=====	=====	=====	=====	=====
CryEngine3	"Contact us"	Windows Engine supports Xbox360 and PS3, +$$$?	Complete game system.	Extreme edge-pushing gfx. AAA focus.	$$$
-----	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----
Esenthel Engine	Commercial (licences are per-product, not per-year or per-seat) •   Free •   Personal: 150$ •   Company: 750$ •   Pro: 4,000+6,000$	•   Windows, Mac •   iPhone	Complete game solution. MMO-oriented?		Restricted source access even for pro licence. Non-standard scripting languge (Esenthel Script). Licence is per-product, which is an issue when making many smaller products. There is only one developer! Sub-standard (non-existing?) API documentation.

Increpare, does Unity have publishing to Xbox360 and PS3? There is nothing about that on the licence page.

[Edit]

Fixed now, was temporary. Added CryEngine3 and Esenthel Engine. Fixed misspelling of Unity. Added Unreal3 source info.

[biomechanic]

At the bottom: http://unity3d.com/unity/publishing/

For Wii/X360/PS3 you need to be an approved developer with the console's manufacturer and buy a separate, individually priced license from UT.

[rivon]

Also, take a look at Crystal Space engine + it's addon Crystal Entity Layer. The engine alone has 2D, 3D, audio, physics, file system handling and probably something more. CEL adds entity system, AI, additional physics and a few other things.

Edit: BTW it's open-source.

[NandoSoft]

Thanks for the job done on creating the list

If sometime in the future my team decides to go 3d I will use panda 3d for the engine


Thanks

[Mikademus]

Thanks for the job done on creating the list

If sometime in the future my team decides to go 3d I will use panda 3d for the engine


Thanks

And thanks for the thanks! I will keep it updated, so look again if and when the time comes. Nonetheless, I don't think it is possible to go wrong with choosing Panda3D.

[Mikademus]

Added Torque 3D and Crystal Space 3D with Crystal Entity Layer to the list:

Name	Licence/Price	Supported Platforms	Scope, Intent and useage	Pros	Cons
=====	=====	=====	=====	=====	=====
Torque 3D	•   Professional licence $99 •   Additional asset, genre foundation framework, and time saving editors from $9 to $299 a piece.	Win, OSX, Web, Xbox360, Wii	Complete game solution.	•   Full source access in licence. •   Extensive documentation.	•   No iOS support. •   Additional and 3rd party tools and genre foundation frameworks costs extra.
-----	-----	-----	-----	-----	-----
Crystal Space 3D + Crystal Entity Layer	Free LGPL	Windows, Mac, Linux (x86, PPC, ARM & SPARC CPUs)	With the Crystal Entity Layer  a complete game system except for networking.	Python scripting.	•   No integrated networking. •   Inconsistent code naming conventions. •   CEL is still under development.

[tametick]

How about flash? Coupled with flixel or flashpunk it makes for a very productive 2d environment.

Or are we only talking 3d?

[Mikademus]

I have focused on 3D so far, but there's nothing wrong including 2D in this list as long as it is a "game engine" in the sense of the definition in the first post. Come to think of it, 2D is already in the list in that at least PolyCode, Unity and Marmelade can do 2D as well as 3D. Perhaps it might deserve special mentions since more people here do 2D than 3D.

Anyway, wouldn't it be a bit redundant to include Flash? Do you think there is anyone who would look up this list that would not already know of Flash? Also, I thought Flash was basically a language with a particular focus on graphics. Can it do physics and networking out of the box, or are there Flash-based frameworks that provides all trappings of a full game engine?