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Anonymous
August 28, 2013

What engine to choose

I feel very inspired to create an original board game for the Rift with lots of 3D animations, etc. However I need an engine to do this as I want to see results fast.

There are three engines I have in mind - Unity, UDK and CryENGINE. Are there any others?

CryENGINE is my first pick before UDK and last Unity. Unity is last simply because I have to pay upfront. The other two are free until you actually start making money. And if you release anything for free they will also stay free.

CryENGINE is my first choice because I get the latest engine for free while UDKs latest version is still kept for licensing only. And the latest version of CryENGINE also have native Oculus support as to the UDK needing its own build.

Why I even have Unity in my list is because it is a clean game engine, not created for a specific title in mind. While CryENGINE and UDK are made for 1st person shooter games. As you can see when starting an almost clean level you still get the first person view with a gun ready to use.

So my question is this. While CryENGINE and UDK are 1st person shooter engines. How hard/easy will it be to create a 3rd person board game with these egines? Can they be reworked to be any game type even far away from the 1st person shooter genre they initially are?

Any thoughts as to what game engine to choose if I want to create games other than 1st person games? (Actually, the board game will be a 1st person game, not just a move-around-and-shoot game)

    21 replies

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    Anonymous
    November 24, 2013
    "aguilar92" wrote:
    Which engine did you end up going with I can't decide either myself. Which do you guys think is the best free engine? I've been using torque but I cant seem to find many tutorials.

    Actually I haven't decided yet. I'm in no hurry. I have one Oculus Rift project I want to do for PC and one (non OR for now) I want to do for mobile. Looking into Project Anarchy for that. And I will most likely do the mobile project first, waiting for more news/options for the PC engines. If Unity had a licensing option like UDK and CryENGINE I would probably use that for both.
    "KrisRedbeard" wrote:
    It will be nice when (if?) we can put Unreal Engine 4 into the list of possibilities.
    • C++ source.

    • Blueprint visual scripting system.

    • Native Rift support.

    • Nextgen visuals.

    This is most likely why I will go for UDK3 in the wait for a possible UDK4.
    unity2k
    Up and Coming
    November 24, 2013
    "Ruudscorner" wrote:
    This is most likely why I will go for UDK3 in the wait for a possible UDK4.


    We are presently developing in UDK3 with the hope of UDK4 finding us in the not too distant future. Does anyone know the criteria for Epic choosing who get's to work with UE4 already? I see that Hourences and at least a few others are already building projects.
    GeekOffGrid
    Participant
    January 9, 2014
    Are there any alternatives to Unity for Mac? I'm a complete beginner - I've never published any games - and I'm afraid that 4 months of Unity Pro will only be enough time to get my feet wet, and I doubt I'd be making enough headway at that point to pay for pro. It seems all the other viable options I've found don't include support for Mac.
    GeekOffGrid
    Participant
    January 9, 2014
    I guess I should add to that: I'd prefer to learn on the engine that I'd be using a year down the road, instead of switching in the middle of a project. (I've already gone through the basic Unity tutorial and all was well until I tried to import the Rift package)
    Afuerg
    Up and Coming
    January 9, 2014
    @lookdad
    Why not try Unitys free version until you learned it? It misses some features, but you can still achieve alot with it.
    GeekOffGrid
    Participant
    January 9, 2014
    "Afuerg" wrote:
    @lookdad
    Why not try Unitys free version until you learned it? It misses some features, but you can still achieve alot with it.

    I'd be happy with it if I could implement the Rift, but that's only possible with Pro
    cybereality
    Inspiring
    January 9, 2014
    OGRE works on Mac, but it's nowhere close to as feature-rich or easy to use as Unity. It's basically just a rendering engine, no sounds or physics, etc. But it is free / open-source, and works on OSX.
    AMD Ryzen 7 1800X | MSI X370 Titanium | G.Skill 16GB DDR4 3200 | EVGA SuperNOVA 1000 | Corsair Hydro H110i Gigabyte RX Vega 64 x2 | Samsung 960 Evo M.2 500GB | Seagate FireCuda SSHD 2TB | Phanteks ENTHOO EVOLV
    Afuerg
    Up and Coming
    January 9, 2014
    "lookdad" wrote:
    "Afuerg" wrote:
    @lookdad
    Why not try Unitys free version until you learned it? It misses some features, but you can still achieve alot with it.

    I'd be happy with it if I could implement the Rift, but that's only possible with Pro

    You can use the Rift with Unity Free according to this Thread.
    GeekOffGrid
    Participant
    January 10, 2014
    @cybereality thanks - I'll check OGRE out

    @afuerg The info at the beginning of the thread has been removed as it violated Unity's user agreement, but I'm looking into some of the links posted later on. Thanks!
    AI80
    New Participant
    February 1, 2015
    How do I get Oculus Rift to work in other game engines than Unity?
    Since Oculus Rift only have this ready for Unity.
    Was wondering because I have noticed Unity is quite bad when I import things from Sketchup and ArchiCad.
    Alot of details gets lost. Sadly... so I want to try a different engine if possible
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