i have to buy a game engine, but which one?

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1

i love blender GE becuase of its graphical authoring system. you know,… those logic bricky thingies. i can quickly do ALOT with them. but now ive been givin a large budget to get a good high quality game engine. but i cant seem to find one that has a workflow style in the same spirt as using GE. its always crap that looks alot like this:

http://www.conitec.com/images/sed_1.jpg

what the hell is that? ^ ^ ^ i see no models to animate, no levels to build, no lighting to set up… wtf? its letters. i have to make a game with this? im a student artist not a geek, no fair… :frowning: now dont get me wrong, im willing to learn more code and plan to, but if i have to code and compile every and even the simplest tasks, ill never finish my short game project. (im forced to work alone on this one). i need something SOMEWHAT simple to understand, (like my beloved BGE). but i dont want it to make a game for me, and i dont want to have to use miles of code for simple tasks that could be strung together in GE in 55 seconds…

so here lies the question. is there a good comercial engine that is in the same spirt as blender? i listed a few that i found and my impressions of them.

-C4 engine

http://www.terathon.com/c4engine/features.php

now it looks neat visually, but i cant really get a feel of how programing my game entities would be. i downloaded a trial and all it gave my was a somewhat impressive looking game. but this gave me a little hope.

-cry2 engine
http://www.cryengine2.com/
this says and looks like an artist could work with it. but guess what :slight_smile: im a student and im 99% sure they wont give me a licence, even though i plan to destroy my game after i finish it (the game has to be made for a school project i have 2 years to work on). plus its probably VERY expensive, and im sure i cant exceed 3000 dollars or so. but if i did get my hands on that beautiful engine, or the unreal engine… man im learning as much code as i possibly can, even if i dont need it. dammit, if only… :frowning:

-vicious engine
http://www.viciousengine.com/index.php

this one is hard to tell… it doesnt say much but looks good…

okay this one even says its like blender and has the blender symbol present in many places of their website. and you can even make wii games… how delightful… :eyebrowlift2: but, it looks a little too weak for some reason. something just (and correct me if im wrong) tells me you can make only little bity game projects like you would find on the internet. it doesnt look like you can make a full blown project with it. plus im going to have to buy and learn how to use a mac…

-unigine
http://unigine.com/

oh man this one just, looks, COOL! its like… made for the artist… but im not sure about price or programing… especially the programing. but if it comes down to me having to do every single task in code, even things for “move the cube forward” i guess ill get this one…

-leadwerks engine
http://leadwerks.thegamecreators.com/index.php

i dont even know… getting desperate…

well thats the fruits of my reasearch… if any of you guys have any recomendations or perhaps can shed some light on the engines please i beg for your assistance. as you know, these things cost alot and i just dont want to be throwing money away with guess work. and hey if you know an even better one not listed, please tell me.

thanks.

2

The BGE is oversimplified, and less powerful compared to many of those engines listed. To create a short game using a C++ engine, it is necessary to have a proficient coder. If you don’t want to learn how to code C++, which is a pretty hard language to get your head around, especially quickly, then it pretty much means that you are going to have to use BGE.

Also I can tell that you are going to be running into serious difficulties if you are actually suggesting using the Cry2 Engine. That is an extremely complicated engine which requires a very proficient C++ coder to make even the simplest thing in, and they do not give private licenses… to buy a license for Cry2 would probably be around 50k or so.

Before you make a game (with an engine besides BGE), learn what you have to know, which includes around 2 years of C++ experience even if you work your hardest to learn it. My advice to you is download the Apricot build off of Graphicall and make your game in that, it will be much faster for you.

The rule of thumb in the realm of game-makers is "If you don’t have a programmer (or know how to program decently well), the project will fail, no exceptions.

3

check out endi’s and my thread in the game WIP section, the BGE, when used with good models/ textures and some carefull plan can look very good, give good performance and also make it alot easier to concept and nail down game ideas, i mean you can just do something tinkering and press P and test the game instantly. i think the BGE would be best, but if you do need to use a seperate engine, why not use crystal space, do all the things in blender, export to crystal space.

if you dont want to do that, try using http://www.3dgamestudio.com/
some scripting involved though, but i guess 2 years should be enough time if you can get all the art assets done in maybe a few months and concentrate the rest of the time on the scripting.

Edit: latest commercial deal is £111 or i think they do a less featured version for £59

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If you don’t want to learn how to code C++, which is a pretty hard language to get your head around, especially quickly, then it pretty much means that you are going to have to use BGE.

sigh
thats what i thought. im willing to learn, but i just dont have time since im the only one working on the project.
but really? i kinda find it hard to belive that blender is the only software in the world that thought of a graphical authoring system. i think the vicious engine uses a point and click coder system which i have a slight idea of how it works but im not quite sure. the engines im realyl really serious about is unigene, vicious, and C4. are they really all c++ ?

5

That’s right - you have find a balance of your time and what you need to achieve. Since money isn’t an option, or since you have a budget that appears to be greater than the National Debt, you have many more options. Good luck with your project.

6

Generally speaking, you must know C++ to find a engine better than the BGE. If you don’t know C++ and you try to go with other engines, you will be worse off than if you would have just stayed with the BGE.

7

My suggestion is that you take that $3000, and buy a really really kick butt rig and probably Mudbox or Zbrush and some education material to go with it because blender GE is awesome. It’s the real thing. I got CryEngine2 right here, I play and mod on Ultra High settings (higher than Very High) - and it’s my opinion that blender GE is excellent. It’s great in every department, provided the Bullet Physics 2.70 intergration, except for its lack of “syntax free scripting” i.e. Flowgraphs =)

that’s just my opinion

Generally speaking, you must know C++ to find a engine better than the BGE. If you don’t know C++ and you try to go with other engines, you will be worse off than if you would have just stayed with the BGE.

You don’t need to know C++ in order to make a game (as in, really advanced full conversion mod) in Crysis, they have Flowgraphs =) - of course it could help but it isn’t necessary

8

The BGE is why I want to go into Gamedev in the first place. If I had to use something like XNA, i would’ve given up years ago. Even the python in blender is a lot more organized with easily understandable classes. If you don’t have to buy a program, stick with apricot and spend the money on the heaviest machine you can find. How can you make a game completely form code? sure you model in a separate program, but (pardon my language) Placement would be a bitch! you would have to sort of guess and check in order to get the character lined up to the starting position, and a walk cycle? you’d have to bounce back and fourth between so many different programs to try and get things lined up! This is why I want to be part of the animation team and leave the coding to those who find looking at a bunch of text all day interesting.

9

get a copy of unreal tournament 2 collectors edition. it comes with the unreal engine and a tutorial disk. it also has a logic bricks like system. you can try it before you buy it. infact you’ll own it but you cant go comercial with it before buying the licens.

10

Yes and you can use the Source engine if you get a PC game by Valve, although in terms of ease I imagine Unreal is easier to develop for.

even though i plan to destroy my game after i finish it
Then don’t buy a commercial license, honestly. Work with mod tools. Valve loves it’s modding community and Epic has some very fine tools, as well as Crytek- although I dont believe Crytek allows you to modify the engine like Valve does. Correct me if I’m wrong, someone? UnrealEd has an excellent set of video tutorials. for example, this one of Kismet, their visual scripting interface http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/144801.html

The BGE is why I want to go into Gamedev in the first place. If I had to use something like XNA, i would’ve given up years ago. Even the python in blender is a lot more organized with easily understandable classes. If you don’t have to buy a program, stick with apricot and spend the money on the heaviest machine you can find. How can you make a game completely form code? sure you model in a separate program, but (pardon my language) Placement would be a bitch! you would have to sort of guess and check in order to get the character lined up to the starting position, and a walk cycle? you’d have to bounce back and fourth between so many different programs to try and get things lined up! This is why I want to be part of the animation team and leave the coding to those who find looking at a bunch of text all day interesting.
Fortunately that isn’t how coding works! :eyebrowlift: And XNA is easy, seriously :spin: I’m currently using it to make a Subspace style game and I’ve not even started with art yet, outside of colored placeholder squares:D

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yeah, I like to make things pretty, not function properly, so I never really took the time to try and figure XNA out.

12

Unfortunately this is why there are no good games anymore :spin:

13

have you looked into quest3d and virtools? they have visual scripting i think.

i never heard of unigine and vicious but all the others you have listed require you to be a programmer.

14

Why don’t you take the money that you would spend on a new GE and pay a coder to work on improving the blender game engine?

15

== instant hero

better yet, you say you doing it for school right? Get your school and all your classmates to chip in too!! They could all save money!!!

16

There’s a game engine called Visual3d.net, last time i checked it was still in beta phase, but it looks quite cool, u might want to check it
http://www.visual3d.net/Home/tabid/36/Default.aspx

17

Those last two posts… best idea I heard yet…

18

take that above post about Paying a coder and put some of the rest of your budget towards something like music. Last time I had a budget for a project I spen it all on music and found “free” ways to do the rest.

19

Unity is quite nice,
and the company who makes it, have done
some large games with it too.

But i’m no expert, you might be right

20

What are you actually wanting to do? Will this game be an FPS with racing parts or are you looking at building an RPG game? Or even an RTS?

Before you buy or even look at game engines you must know what your project is. There’s no point in buying a license for say id Tech 4, if you want to create an RTS game.

Many of these engines are pre-built for specific styles of gaming mainly FPS, to modify them to suit another style of gaming would require proficient knowledge in C/C++ programming.

On that note have you checked out the Open Source engines?

ioquake3:

Xreal project:
http://xreal.sourceforge.net/xrealwiki

Crystal Space:
http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Main_Page

Sauerbraten:
http://sauerbraten.org/

irrlicht:
http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/

Delta3D:
http://www.delta3d.org/index.php?topic=projects