Develop's guide to the best game engines concludes
Unreal Engine 3
Developer: Epic
Platforms: PC, Mac, Xbox 360, PS3
Browser support: No
Cost: Available on request
Published titles: Mass Effect (Bioware), The Last Remnant (Square Enix), Lost Odyssey (Mistwalker), The Wheelman (Midway)
Titles in development: Alpha Protocol (Obsidian), DC Universe Online (SOE), Alien Breed (Team 17)
Middleware integrations: Fonix, SpeedTree, GameSpy, Scaleform GFx, PhysX, Illuminate Labs, Umbra, morpheme, nFringe, HumanIK, Kynapse, Bink, ProFX, AI.implant, Quazal, DigiMask, Game-Link, Wwise, Enlighten
To be honest, Epic’s monster behemoth doesn’t really need any introduction at all. Now almost an industry standard in its third incarnation, Unreal Engine 3’s domination of the full-engine middleware sector is hard to argue against.
Still, the main criticism levelled against it – usually by its competitors, we should say – is that the engine is geared towards first- (or third-) person shooters. Nevertheless, customers have managed to extend and rip apart the engine to power everything from Japanese-style RPGs to open-world action-racing games like The Wheelman.
One of the emerging usage groups is for MMO development. In order to give the engine a better standing against dedicated MMO solutions like HeroEngine and BigWorld, and emerging threats like CryENGINE, Epic has tasked its China office with the development of Atlas, its persistent world server technology and MMO creation and management toolset.
Another new feature is Unreal Lightmass, a new global illumination solver that can produce lightmaps with smooth bounced lighting without the need to use any third-party technology. Generation of the lightmaps can also be farmed out by the new Swarm distributed processing solution to use idle CPUs locally and across networks.
The new Unreal Master Control Program is a new service-orientated architecture based on the Gears of War 2 persistent stat tracking system. It allows developers to track online populations and even domain-specific data mining such as level-based heat maps to quickly identify chokepoints and problem areas in multiplayer maps.
Finally, Epic has enhanced asset management by introducing the new Content Browser, which allows users to tag assets and then find them easily with search filters, allowing users to locate, preview and manage assets regardless of whether they’re loaded or not.
Contact: 620 Crossroads Blvd, Cary, NC 27518, United States
E-mail: licensing@epicgames.com
Web: www.epicgames.com
hmmm..., which one i have to use? this one or unity3d ? Please reply...
Hi Sanderson,
Depending on your needs and knowledge you can make a choice. If you're new to 3D development and want to create your first game then I think you should choose Unity. Unity has a free version available and there are tons of example projects all over the internet. If you are a bit more experienced (which I guess you're not, since you ask what to choose), then you could decide to use the unreal or the crysis engine. These are much more powerfull, but also cost A LOT.
I'm not sure about cryengine, but I know Unreal engine is free for educational use. If you don't make any money from it, you can use it however you want. Cryengine may be similar in their licensing system.
what is best for mobile application unity3d or unreal
which one is easier to use? unity or unreal
Unity is a million times easier to use but doesn't have all the eye candy. It's also missing things like navigation systems for AI and the multiplayer networking is less automated then UDK. If you want to make a simple single player game, definately use Unity. UDK is very very hard to script.
I would like to inform everyone that the Unreal Development Platform (UDK) is totally free.
It includes the latest editor and AAA Unreal 3 game engine at no cost.
You can use the engine for free and if you choose to sell your game, Epic only wants 25% of your money, ONCE you pass 50 000 dollars.
And are you making that kind of money, I guess it doesen´t matter anymore.
The UDK is the best AAA development platform out there, and it is totally free, just go and download www.udk.com!
wounderful games
hel;lbreed games
I have never tried UDK but unity is not at all easy. Honestly, I am looking for a GUI game engine
with which u can create good games by simple drag and drop rather than extensive programming. Kinda tedious to learn those programming languages.(I only know a bit of Java). So in a nutshell i am not that happy with unity.
Pros:almost free, i like the completed unity games on net,nice graphics in the demo games.
Only ~500 mb download.
Cons:Lack of free assets,prefabs,textures cant do anything without external modelling softwares and programming knowledge
You want to make a decent game without coding at all? Lol! Stick to playin em bro.
I use 3drad for Windows games (as well as embedded in browser) with no programming required (max 10% scripting). See vhearttech.com for my work. Graphics may not be at the level of Cry or Unity or UDK. For Android I code it in Java. Anything I can do in 6 hours in 3drad (10% scripting) will take me 6 weeks to do in Java (70% programming - abstract opengles) and will take me 3 weeks in Unity or UDK (40% scripting).
