game engine suggestions

AHarvey

AHarvey

AHarvey

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Hi all,

A friend and his work mates want to start some indie game development and are after an indie game engine.

Either free or paid for engines or even professional engines that are now free/cheap to use.

Any suggestions?
 
Thanks for the list Rroff.

As for experience, they've been designing and making levels/mods for halflife 1 for years and all work in various areas of web design (both graphics and programming).

Chances are it'll now develop in to anything but they'd like to start somewhere. :)
 
Another recommendation for Unity.

Admittedly it was a couple of years ago but for a project in work I spent a month or two comparing things like Unity, UDK, Cryengine, etc and Unity definitely won out in terms of ease of use for people that aren't massively experienced with the coding side of game engines. The editor also shares a lot of shortcut and interface similarities with Maya so if you've ever done anything in that you'll feel at home quite quickly (it's far less complicated to use than Maya though, obviously).

edit: Unity also supports game scripting in javascript (or a subset of it at least) so if they're web developers that's another nice point.
 
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I've used Unity and I would very much recommend it. Currently using CryEngine 3 but I really think it is not as flexible as Unity for an Indie developer. Unity is proven across the genres and the different devices you may want to produce for. A lot of things have been fixed with the more recent release as before you were limited by no available material editor etc but now you can get all that kind of stuff.
 
As a Linux user i have to advise against Unity. No idea where this 'ease of porting between platforms' myth comes from.

id Tech 4 may be a little more involved, but it's capabilities far exceed pretty much all other open source offerings, plus there is a market open here in that i haven't even heard of any plans for projects to use it since it's source release.
 
PermaBanned said:
As a Linux user i have to advise against Unity. No idea where this 'ease of porting between platforms' myth comes from.

id Tech 4 may be a little more involved, but it's capabilities far exceed pretty much all other open source offerings, plus there is a market open here in that i haven't even heard of any plans for projects to use it since it's source release.
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I don't really think that linux should be a chief concern in this situation. I often start to think that when considering a project and then have to stop myself. At the end of the day, it's a *very* small part of the market for 99% of games and as such you shouldn't let support for it rule out potentially easier to work with solutions.

Tech4 is a nice choice and something I'd like to work with but it doesn't sound like it'll be suitable for the people the OP has in mind as they are only 'light' coders and have mostly worked with level editors in the past. I guess Radiant (assuming that's still what T4 uses?) is nice as editors go but it's not really a full on development suite in the same way as the Unity, UDK, etc things are.

dmcg said:
I would say flash it's very easy to learn and would be your best bet imo
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Not a terrible suggestion if they want to do something 2d. 3d engined stuff isn't quite so easy or ubiquitous though afaik?

Woden said:
The Source engine.
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Want to post any reasoning? As far as I'm aware Hammer (info may be out of date here...) is pretty nasty to work with. I'm also not sure what the licensing terms are for SE stuff - free mods are fine but selling commercial games may require paying a hefty license fee.
 
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FrenchTart said:
I don't really think that linux should be a chief concern in this situation. I often start to think that when considering a project and then have to stop myself. At the end of the day, it's a *very* small part of the market for 99% of games and as such you shouldn't let support for it rule out potentially easier to work with solutions.

Tech4 is a nice choice and something I'd like to work with but it doesn't sound like it'll be suitable for the people the OP has in mind as they are only 'light' coders and have mostly worked with level editors in the past. I guess Radiant (assuming that's still what T4 uses?) is nice as editors go but it's not really a full on development suite in the same way as the Unity, UDK, etc things are.
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1% of the Indie game market? Humble Bundle would disagree.

That may be, but without knowing more we're just musing really. Maybe they're beginner programmers who are looking for an easy way to do what they want. Maybe they're beginner programmers who are looking for a good learning experience to turn them into good programmers. Maybe it's misinformation and they're already quite experienced. It's worth covering all avenues.
 
Cross platform considerations on a first entry into game development is most likely to detract a lot of effort away from the main product tbh... and if my experience is anything to go by its gonna be hard enough to stay motivated and focused on the core game...

tbh I foresee this being a situation with one talented programmer, maybe 1-2 people with some rudimentary level design or some decent art skills but no practical application of them into a game context and the rest lots of great sounding ideas that have absolutely no hope of becoming a reality in a computer game and after awhile just pettering away to nothing.
 
Rroff said:
Cross platform considerations on a first entry into game development is most likely to detract a lot of effort away from the main product tbh... and if my experience is anything to go by its gonna be hard enough to stay motivated and focused on the core game...

tbh I foresee this being a situation with one talented programmer, maybe 1-2 people with some rudimentary level design or some decent art skills but no practical application of them into a game context and the rest lots of great sounding ideas that have absolutely no hope of becoming a reality in a computer game and after awhile just pettering away to nothing.
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The first point there is exactly what I'm referring to. As you say, they need to stay focused.

Sadly your second point is probably right too but there's no harm in them trying. At the very least it'll give them experience that may help with future projects.
 
FrenchTart said:
Want to post any reasoning? As far as I'm aware Hammer (info may be out of date here...) is pretty nasty to work with. I'm also not sure what the licensing terms are for SE stuff - free mods are fine but selling commercial games may require paying a hefty license fee.
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The OP mentioned that the guys had a lot of experience making levels for the 1st half life, and the map editor hasn't changed much since then. So they are already familiar with it.
I don't know about pricing to be honest, but the engine itself is reportedly really nice to work with.
 
PermaBanned said:
As a Linux user i have to advise against Unity. No idea where this 'ease of porting between platforms' myth comes from.
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Well I certainly didn't find it to be a myth. But each to their own. Unfortunately though as pointed out such things are a bit like fireworks. They both start off with a big band and end up fizzling away to nothing.
 
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