With all these cheap game engines, anyone here making games?

Paul98

Diamond Member
Jan 31, 2010
3,732
199
106
Unreal engine 4 just came out, and it's 20 bucks a month, +5% royalty, Cryengine 4 dropped to 10 bucks a month. Some of the slightly older engines free, Unity free obviously being free, Torque3d Open source.

Anyone here creating games or giving these products a try?
 

Rakehellion

Lifer
Jan 15, 2013
12,181
35
91
Game engines are cheap, artists, programmers, and sound engineers aren't.

I played around with Unreal Engine 3 when it was free, but I've just been using the engine I wrote myself because it's simpler.
 

DaveSimmons

Elite Member
Aug 12, 2001
40,730
670
126
I've meant to for ages, but after a day spent developing programs for work I find I'd rather watch a movie, read a book, or play someone else's finished game.
 

mmntech

Lifer
Sep 20, 2007
17,501
12
0
I've messed around with RPG Maker VX ACE. Started a small experimental project but didn't get far in it. Had more fun designing the scenery but got lost in the mechanics stuff.
 

xantub

Senior member
Feb 12, 2014
717
1
46
I'm sure a lot of indies are getting into it.
I'm also sure 90%+ of them will abandon their attempt before it's complete.

Problem is, everybody has their own idea of 'the perfect game'. They start making it, and then eventually reality falls and they realize why 'the perfect game' hasn't been made.

Fact is, it's a lot of work. Going from idea to implementation usually follows the 80/20 rule, you make 80% of the work in 20% of the time (that's the fun part), then most drop when they realize they need to spend 4x that time to finish the game. And then let's not even talk about QA.
 

brandonb

Diamond Member
Oct 17, 2006
3,731
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Not interested in 3rd party game engines. They typically take me more time to figure out than to just write my own and tailor it around my needs. I also have fun programming them. Much more than the game itself. I think of it "Can I really do this?"

Like right now. I'm working on a new game engine. It's DX11, multi threaded, has physics, MMO style network library, UI, everything I wanted to do 10 years ago but DX9 didn't allow me. Focusing all about performance. Even on my crappy 3 year old laptop with an Nvidia 460m in it, I'm pulling in over 2000 fps. Granted my demo scene with cubes and crap dancing around with a single texture isn't going to tax the hardware. But I'm getting to the point I can start working on an actual game.

And I've maybe put in about 200 hours into the project so far. Honestly, it's going so well I don't understand why people just don't write their own engines all the time.

But as someone else mentioned. It's really the assets which prevent people from developing games. All that 3d art, sound effects, music. Which are engine independent is really what stops production on indi games.
 

Markbnj

Elite Member <br>Moderator Emeritus
Moderator
Sep 16, 2005
15,682
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www.markbetz.net
The "game engine" part of a game has been obtainable at reasonable cost for a long time now. What isn't available at reasonable cost are assets: models, animations, textures, sounds, etc. There are some repositories of free models and other assets, and some libraries you can purchase for relatively low cost, but nothing like what you need to deliver a polished game. I wrote a popular backgammon game for Windows in 1992, and back then graphics and sound was still the main problem. It was the only part I couldn't supply myself. I've had dozens of ideas for games since, but the need to recruit and manage people who could deliver assets always stopped me.
 

lamedude

Golden Member
Jan 14, 2011
1,206
10
81
Shame there isn't a public domain as far as video games are concerned. If we could recycle assets from older games more of them could at least get past the cool idea phase.
 

BladeVenom

Lifer
Jun 2, 2005
13,365
16
0
Shame there isn't a public domain as far as video games are concerned. If we could recycle assets from older games more of them could at least get past the cool idea phase.

I agree. But people do seem to like reinventing the wheel, so to speak.
 

JamesV

Platinum Member
Jul 9, 2011
2,002
2
76
I find the best bet is to make a mod or total conversion for another game, that already has an editor and all the game assets for you to use. If your proof of concept mod is fun to play, and has a lot of players, then porting it to another engine is simply a technical exercise... the gameplay is the important part.

What most people think would be a great game rests on the idea that it 'sounds cool', and little or no planning goes to the actual gameplay. A game of Vampires versus Werewolves sounds cool, but without thinking through in your head how it will play, you are almost guaranteed to make a dud. Took me a year to make a mod for Tribes (the original), adding all kinds of things like Medics that could heal (far before AAA titles had them), but I designed it as I coded it, and in the end it flopped.

Started hating programming after I had a job doing it, so haven't been doing much, but these low cost engines are enticing me to start again.