Unreal vs Cryengine vs Source vs id Tech vs Frostbite

[Red Hawk]

Which of these high-profile game engines is the best? Edit: Best overall in looks, development flexibility, and performance.

 

[Red Storm]

Best at what? Looks? Games made with them? Ability to run on slower machines?

My vote goes to Source, because from Source we got Portal, Portal 2, Team Fortress 2, and Half-Life 2. Show me a lineup that can top that.

Also Source is very PC friendly, no stupid gimmicks or faults like no AA or something.

 

[Red Hawk]

Looks, flexibility, and performance. Quality of gameplay has more to do with the game designers than the engine itself. But, on the topic of lineups, Unreal Engine has:

Batman: Arkham series
Bioshock Series
Mass Effect series
I would say Alpha Protocol but that's not quite universally praised

 

[AstroManLuca]

An engine is an engine to me. I rarely notice the good points. Usually only the bad ones stand out.

Source: Long loading times, games look somewhat dated
Unreal: "Skin"Everything looks too much like plastic
id Tech: Not many games use id Tech 4 but hey Doom 3 looked good and still holds up reasonably well given its age. id Tech 3 is pretty old but the Call of Duty games use it and they look alright.
Cryengine: Original knocked my socks off when it was new. Cryengine 2 (Crysis) was not as impressive as everyone made it out to be, but still ran like crap. Textures are too low res. Obviously that's not the engine's fault but the point is if a 2007 game is going to bring a 2009 system to its knees it should have decent textures.
Frostbite: I can never seem to get a consistently high framerate in BC2, even with most of the settings reduced. Love the game anyway but COD's idTech 3 is much smoother and more consistent.

In terms of which ones have the most good games, I think Unreal wins.

 

[Skurge]

Yeah, best in what way?

 

[gothamhunter]

I hate the Unreal engine. My biggest complaint with The Last Remnant is that it uses that crappy engine. Same with LO on the 360 (I know, not a PC game). If I wanted characters that looked like plastic I'd play Legos.

 

[ArchAngel777]

Unreal Engine is obviously the best overall as a package as most developers choose their engine. I have heard that Epic has excellent support and a relatively flexable engine.

Cryengine is my favorite though.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Always been a fan of Carmack engines and their support for OpenGL.

 

[Dankk]

Unreal engine for flexibility, Source engine for efficiency, and Frostbite 2.0 engine for "destructible environments, fuck yeah." I actually voted for Frostbite.

Always been a fan of Carmack engines and their support for OpenGL.

Oh, agreed. id Tech for OpenGL.

 

[Aikouka]

My major gripe about Unreal Engine 3.0 is the lack of built-in anti-aliasing! :\ I don't really have a great opinion on the others though.

 

[KaOTiK]

I think the new id Tech Rage engine with the megatextures could be really really great. For the art side it would be amazing not having to deal with tiling textures and doing lots of tricks with them.

UE is nice, but I swear 90% of the games that use it you can just look at and tell it uses the UE, it just has this look to it.

 

[darkewaffle]

Source just plays the best, though I did have a very good experience with BFBC2 so Frostbite has a lot going for it as well.

 

[Texashiker]

Unreal for its large outdoor environments, Borderlands for example.

Valve for the physics

Id tech - if there was a game that used Id tech that I enjoyed playing, it might be worth mentioning. As it stands, all of the games I have played that used Id tech are terrible.

I have to throw an honorable mention to the X-Ray Engine used by S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. The environment that STALKER created blows just about all of the others away.

 

[Bill Brasky]

Source is how old? And you want to compare it to brand new engines?

I wouldn't have the foggiest idea how the engines compare in development flexibility. I just voted frostbite because BC2 looks better than the other games I've played. *shrug*

 

[sigurros81]

Are the folks on these forums actually qualified to answer the question of "Which of these engines is best?".

All of the engines you've listed got great games built with them.

 

[wuliheron]

In the long run the Id Tech 6 engine will leave the others in the dust. Right now the Id Tech 5 allows for almost infinite textures and details in a game and incredible draw distances. Its so flexible it can play Rage on an iPhone and still look great. The Id Tech 6 engine will take this to the next level allowing ray traced geometry that nobody else will be able to create and that will make current geometry look like as outdated as the sprites for a 2d scroller.

 

[Laminator]

Are the folks on these forums actually qualified to answer the question of "Which of these engines is best?".

Absolutely not. As of the time of this post, people appear to be voting based on their enjoyment of the games that are made with each engine.

All of the engines you've listed got great games built with them.

Agreed!

 

[Texashiker]

Source is how old? And you want to compare it to brand new engines?

Half-Life 2 was released in November 2004. So your looking at a game engine that is 6 1/2 years old.

Rumor has it that Valve is working on a new game engine, and that its going to be released with Half-Life 3.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Art direction, music, story, gampelay all matter much more than the engine they're created on.

Fire up Vampire: Bloodlines and be amazed by the art and music. Character models could look much better since it's an alpha version of Source that predates Half-Life 2 but it's still an amazing game.

I suspect the 2011/2012 versions of id, Unreal and possibly Source will all be good enough if the designers hold up their end.

 

[KingstonU]

Half-Life 2 was released in November 2004. So your looking at a game engine that is 6 1/2 years old.

Rumor has it that Valve is working on a new game engine, and that its going to be released with Half-Life 3.

Half-Life 3 has about as much chance of being released as Duke Nukem Forever. Wait a minute...

 

[KingstonU]

Also I remember a lot of publicity was being released selling the features Cryengine to game developpers, but then I never seen it used in any game besides Crytek's own Crysis and Crysis: Warhead.

Wonder why that is? Was it too expensive? Compare that to UE3 which was released around the same time, but was very very widely adopted by many developers.

 

[Aikouka]

This is an interesting blurb about id Tech 5:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id_Tech_5

At QuakeCon 2010, id CEO Todd Hollenshead announced that while id Tech 5 will be licensed to third parties, games using the engine will be required to be published by id Software's sister company Bethesda Softworks.

I wonder if that will make the engine less popular in some situations. Such as how some companies may be owned by larger houses such as EA, and EA may usually serve as their publisher. If they have to use EA, then they cannot use id Tech 5. Not really sure how it all works.

 

[Red Hawk]

It's their attempt at trying to grow as a publisher rather than a simple middleware licenser.

 

[Aikouka]

One thing to consider is that while most people here may not have intimate knowledge of the engine itself, it isn't impossible to access the editors for creating content. That's how they create the custom Borderlands levels.

It's their attempt at trying to grow as a publisher rather than a simple middleware licenser.

It's not id's attempt at anything though... it's their parent company's attempt to grow as a publisher.

I just wonder if it will cause more people to choose another engine because their parent company wants to publish the game. Doesn't matter how fancy the tools are if the licensing terms are unreasonable for you .

 

[CPA]

Serious Engine 3