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[Tacitus_Umbra]

Hello, I'm trying to find an engine for making games in 3D. I have read the article on engines and wished to use either Unreal Engine or CryEngine. I'm poor and can't afford any other engines, which is the reason for these two. I've no issues with providing a cut of what I make. Although while reading the license agreements, both seem particularly limiting as to what I could make in terms of content (this is the impression I have and may be mistaken). So, I've decided to throw this out there. What would you suggest for a game that's mostly for stealth.

Thank you for your time in reading this.

[battlerager]

Unity is the most popular 3d engine, as far as I know. It's good! As for the two you mentioned, what do you mean by being limited in content? What kind of stuff you CAN make with it, or what you are ALLOWED to make with it? In terms of capability, all 3 should be able to pretty much do anything you want, stealth included.

[DarKKendO]

I've been using Unity for a few years and find it extremely easy to work with. There's also a huge bank of Unity resources/tutorials out there so when I was starting I never found myself stuck for too long.

[Tacitus_Umbra]

While reading the license, there's a section on what's not permissible. This game in particular is planned out to be in a post-WW3 setting.They reserve the right to terminate my license if they find some content objectionable, though something as subjective as that isn't specified precisely. Here is my problem. I would have a setting that's objectionable and my work would be lost. Given the climate today of political correctness, it seems iffy when my game is planned to be pumped with philosophy.

[Layl]

While reading the license, there's a section on what's not permissible. This game in particular is planned out to be in a post-WW3 setting.They reserve the right to terminate my license if they find some content objectionable, though something as subjective as that isn't specified precisely. Here is my problem. I would have a setting that's objectionable and my work would be lost. Given the climate today of political correctness, it seems iffy when my game is planned to be pumped with philosophy.

I was unaware they have this in the license but Unity has proven to be very unwilling to terminate anything. It's very unlikely that it will cause problems for you. Rather this probably is more meant to address things like extremist propaganda in game form.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

That's really interesting that these engines have a content clause and a little unnerving. I don't like how they can just break a contract based on their tastes. Can you post the relevant excerpts from the EULA to show where you saw this?



Unreal is probably the first engine I've ever been consistently impressed with after decades playing with countless engines. I'm still waiting to find something deep that will change my opinion but as it stands now it's just insane how right they got everything. I guess 20 years development and 4 major retries makes all the difference.

[Tacitus_Umbra]

I must apologize. While returning to the License Agreement by Epic, I did not see what I mentioned above. I may have been confused, having read it somewhere else, and cause this mistake. I apologize to anyone who I may have startled with this information regarding the License Agreement. Disinformation is not my goal and I am embarrassed.

From the engines I've gone over, Unreal vs Unity vs CryEngine all have ups and downs. Unreal seems interesting considering their Market, though Cryengine seems the most powerful and prettiness is definitely something I'd like to give people in my games. But I've read Unreal is easier to toy with than Cryengine.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Is Cryengine even considered visually the stronger engine still? Last time I checked their lighting was completely dynamic which while cool doesn't add up to a really nice lightmass bake (assuming a large portion of your game is not in motion).

[Tacitus_Umbra]

It's what I've read. I have no idea. Still new to this. :3
I'll give it a shot and am researching these engines while still writing and designing most of the game's mechanics and whatnot. Though the current EULA for Cryengine mentions no License, just a monthly fee of 10$, so in the long run it's economically better. Unreal asks for a 5% cut after 3000$ are made, which seems like not much but in the larger numbers that 5% also gets bigger.Unreal has the market though, which is nice and is simpler to use than Cryengine from what i've read. Take all this with a grain of salt though. I'm still a noob.

[Fallsburg]

I think it's exactly as you stated:
If your environments are going to be heavily dynamic (or procedurally generated) then CryEngine is probably a better choice (for lighting)
Else Unreal is probably the prettiest

Unity is still a step below (but most indies won't get to the point where it would actually matter)

[oahda]

What happened to that ShiVa engine? Is it still around? Have any of you even heard of it?

[Layl]

I may come off flat and a bit mean in saying this, but if you don't yet have the knowledge of how the engines differ in functionality, the differences aren't going to matter and you should go with one that's really easy to get started with instead. Which is probably Unity. As well I would advice you to prototype your mechanics in it before continuing on the design doc, just so you're sure those mechanics really work well

[Mittens]

Use Unity if you are a one man team or sort of new to game development.
Use Unreal if you feel experienced and have more than 1 team member to help you

[moomat]

The initial choice as to what engine/framework you want to use when you start a project can be a really complex and deep choice.

Although Unreal, CryEngine and Unity (also Source, btw) each have their own merits and peculiarities, you should be aware that there truly there are thousands of possible choices in terms of like...an API or a framework or a full-on 3d game integrated development environment.

Personally, I am just a little averse to Unity because that's like what everyone uses, and I guess it's just in my nature to not take the path that everyone else is on, haha.

We're writing our game, Junk E.T., inside of the Libgdx framework. We came to that decision after quite a lot of deliberation regarding the nature of our game, what tools we needed and a variety of other factors. Our game is a 2d game, and as such any of the "common" 3d engines would probably have been overkill for what we were doing (people use Unity for 2d games, but I somewhat question why all of Unity is required to do 2d games). Furthermore, while researching tools and thinking about future implementation needs, we had found Spine, a 2d skeletal animation system, which allowed us to do some really cool stuff with animations. Spine was authored by one of the guys behind Libgdx, and as such it was relatively easy to implement the Spine runtime in Libgdx. It was also appealing to us that Libgdx had some magic to it which allows seemless ports between PC, iOS and Android platforms.

At the time of our development process when we were just getting started, we also evaluated and considered SDL 2 (C++) and a few others, along with some of the other 2d skeletal animation systems out there, and basically after a period of time it became clear to us that Libgdx was the best candidate for us.

So, my advice would be to not so much think of it like: Step #1: Decide to make a game. Step #2 Pick a game engine. Step #3 Start writing code. Rather, start writing prototype code in a few different systems, read about them in greater detail if they're interesting to you, and make the decision based on what's right for your game, as opposed to just using what everyone else seems to be using (*cough* Unity) or even what other people advise you to use, as you might find that in your particular case a given engine just isn't right for the game you're trying to make.

[Tacitus_Umbra]

Thanks for the advice on that. Truth be told I've little idea how to write code and only picked up the basics of a few languages over the summer(Java,Python,VBasic, HTML, C++). That was sort of my thought process though. Wanted to make a stealth 3D game (Resident Evil+Deus Ex= my game) and was looking for something simple, yet powerful with lights and shadows. There's a design doc and I put stuff in there regularly, even if I might not use it in the end product. Programming aside, I'm one person but I'm not necessarily rushing this project. I saw Unity but there was something a little off when I looked at the demos and games in the art. It seemed plastic. Unreal and Cryengine were more to my tastes in terms of graphical quality and Unreal seemed simpler with the art, programming in C++, and the Blueprint scripting. Since I've no history with any actual games, I thought that would be a good engine to learn with.I like to read up a lot before actually choosing something.

I've read that an engine might hamper a 2D game depending on what's required, although this isn't related to my current project and therefore hasn't been researched as much. I do intend to do something with 2D in the future, but nothing platform because there seems to be a million of those out there at the moment.

[gemudezaina]

Use Unity if you are a one man team or sort of new to game development.
Use Unreal if you feel experienced and have more than 1 team member to help you

I really like Mittens advice!

However I would like to add, if you know C#, use Unity.  If you know C++ use Unreal.

[InfiniteStateMachine]

Unreal C++ is practically C# :D