Unigine

[Bjoern]

EDIT: Got some info from diesel. Unigine 0.4 will provide customaizable controls so i guess it could be interesting for me then again. so long i prototyp my stuff with truevision, hey its a race. i take the engine which is faster ready to fullfill my needs :-P
as i got licenses for both ^^

Well well, i spent the bucks, and as far i use Uningine i more regret it every day.
All experience are made with 0.33 so i hope and im sure with 0.4 there are a lot of changes !

Let me explain:
The engine, great, the features great, the support is really  great (they answered every dumb question i asked wihtin a day per email so thats ok)

Pluses:
- Great physics with density for water and objects etc.
- Easy to use GUI system
- Graphics are cool (shaders, water, PRT, HDR)
- OpenGL and Linux
- Scripting is easy and fine
- Easy API with some lacks (see below)
- Sound

All in all a nearly complete SDK, but with some Major Problems:

- absolut bad documentation. you got that whats on the homepage under documentation, and even this is from version 0.32 so some features are not written there. Example EditLine is a GUI object to edit text, no comment on this in the docu :-( You mostly have the function calls and the parameters but no description what this function do (at least not for the functions that are not in the tutorial), or to blend out the watermark, no docu, only a question to the support helped..

- no skyboxes, ok minor problem as you can build you own, but its a little annoying.

- if you want to make a game which uses exessivly the mouse.. like an RTS, forget it.
  if you press the left mouse button, the mousecursor hides and the cameramove function starts, if you press the right button, its coming in friont and you can use the mouse for example for ingame guis, like in doom3 etc. So great feature for a shooter, cappy feature for an RTS or strategy game. And its HARDCODED in the engine and can only be changed if you buy the source code.

- Only exporters for 3dsMax 6+ or Maja, ok you can use .3ds files without problem and    lwo files so not a problem i guess (just using static meshes and 3ds files)

- New Functions for the script interpreter can only be implemented  without parameters
  otherwise you have to use the Consolesystem to send Data to the c++ Programm,   bnut works fine so far. will be changed in 0.4 as far as i know

- and some more i bet i find out the longer i use it.

Conclusion:

If you want to make a Shooter based game, great choice and good engine with really interessing features like ingame GUI etc. If you want to make an RTS or a game where you need the left mouse button for anything else but starting camera control, you need the source version..and that means lot of bucks.

well i guess im back for now to truevision as i want to make an rts and the easyness of tv3d is everytime amazing (btw.  the math library alone is worth the bucks for a license)

but i still have a look on unigine 0.4 and i really hope they make it better (alone the mousefunctions  :shock: was a "no go" for me) with the binary version. Source good and fine, but for an indie like myself far to expensive...

i wish them best luck for unigine as they are on the right way, but far away from the easyness of programming that truevision has, even in c++ ;-)

[Diesel]

2Bjoern: we have discussed some of the mentioned above questions by e-mail, and we are grateful to you for your feedback.
Yes, you are right about Unigine and first-preson shooters since binary version was designed with FPS in mind. Unigine can be easily adopted to RTS requirements, but it requires source license. Well, we have taken into account this case during Unigine v0.4 development. Thank you one more time for the feedback.

[Bjoern]

@Diesel: And im sure you make the best of it and im sure that Unigine 0.4 will become very interesting for me again for my project.

2 Everybody else: I just can say again, if you like to make a shooter, just have an eye on it...

[BieX]

Diesel,
One thing a like about TV3D is you can dl a full trial version of the engine with not time limit. Do you think it would be possible to have that option with Unigine? This engine looks great and that would help a lot.

Regards

We are planning to do so with the next version.

My personal advice is: Dont go for free trials..
There are too many downsides with trial engines, one being reverse engineering,
and I would certainly not purchase it - knowing that there is a trial that somebody
 probably has reverse engineered.. I would be more happy to see code samples
and tutorials, then considering purchasing the engine, that way I would feel more
comfortable.

I did purchase TV tho, because of its ease-of-use, but if the team wont change their licensing system I might as well disappear.

[AriusMyst]

TV does not have a trial version. It has a freeware license. 6.2 just feels like a trial because 6.5 has been in its closed beta phase for so long.

Biex, I think the team is working on signed binaries for licensed users which should make licensed builds more secure.

[BieX]

TV does not have a trial version. It has a freeware license. 6.2 just feels like a trial because 6.5 has been in its closed beta phase for so long.

Biex, I think the team is working on signed binaries for licensed users which should make licensed builds more secure.

The freeware TV3D acts as a commerical product, cause it has a logo on its display..I never said that TV has a trial version (well, it used to have some years back if i remember correctly).

I'm happy to hear that there will be some signed binaries.. I would appreciate the product even more if I saw some baked-in license for each user, and not having to input the license information when compiling. Cause all the license information that you input are easily accessible by looking into the memory of the executable. ..
Another option is to use a virtual machine for the licensing procedure.

EDIT

Oops..I guess it was powerrender that had a trial version

[AriusMyst]

TV does not have a trial version. It has a freeware license. 6.2 just feels like a trial because 6.5 has been in its closed beta phase for so long.

Biex, I think the team is working on signed binaries for licensed users which should make licensed builds more secure.

The freeware TV3D acts as a commerical product, cause it has a logo on its display..I never said that TV has a trial version (well, it used to have some years back if i remember correctly).

I was referring to Constas' comment man .

[BieX]

alright my mistake

[Diesel]

Regarding the Unigine v0.4: we have updated screenshots gallery - http://unigine.com/screenshots/
Plus we have public development log: http://unigine.com/devlog/

[Diesel]

If someone is interested: Unigine v0.4 is available for downloading - http://unigine.com/download/

[gadzfilm]

Hi

Prices Unigine before 29 February are :
Binary:$9985 or $2495 + $7490
Source:$19985 or $4995 + $14990

But Prices after 29th February 2008 are :
Binary: $50 000
Source: $75 000

I wanted to buy this engine,but when I seen prices after 29 February I will not buy

[Hypnotron]

Wow.  Well they've certainly added alot of features such as built in world paging, lod system, seemless indoor outdoor rendering, scene serialization, etc.  It's clearly a game framework whereas tv3d is mostly just a renderer (editor, gui, sound, etc).

TV3D seems to be falling behind technologically speaking but the low price point, flexible language options and overall ease of use keep it attractive to those who don't mind putting in a couple of years (or more) of development to build their own framework.

[newborn]

TV3D and Unigine are also targetted two very different markets: one is targetting hobbyist, the other targets small/medium companies. Its like Microsoft's VS Express and VS Pro version...

There are many complete gaming solutions out there, but the price point is getting more and more rediculous. Last time I checked, Unreal engine price was about the same as a nice house. Same goes for Quake engine and Crytek engine.

I think we are getting near a certain point of saturation where the 3D engines are offering about same technologies for approx. the same price.

[sybixsus]

There are so many high quality engines available at prices which are Indie friendly that I can't see any reason Indies would be interested in engines that command this sort of price. It's not as though you could make a game which took full advantage of an engine like this anyway, because quite aside from the price of the engine, you'd need such a huge quantity of high quality artwork, that you'd need another $50k-100 for the artist(s).

With Indie engines like TV, S2 Engine, Shiva, Unity, Blade3D, LawMaker, etc all available for <$1000 ( depending on the version you want ) I think there's never been a better time to be a hobbyist developer looking for a high quality engine.

[BlindSide]

Personally, I don't think you pay for graphical features in an engine anymore. Not now.. in the past, certain special effects used to be limited to a single ground-breaking engine (such as coloured lightmaps, or BSP culling) which would put that engine head-and-shoulders above others.

But that isn't the case anymore. Shaders are becoming so popular; and more and more people are beginning to learn how to use them, that shader-based effects can no longer reasonably be used as a selling point - congrats; you can do normal mapping? So can everyone else. Shadows? So can everyone else. Additionally, because shaders are so modular, if your engine allows full texture and shader support, then you (as a developer) are not handicapped no matter what engine you use. Just write a custom shader.

No, I think what people pay for now are support, tools, and infrastructure. The Unreal Engine site spends very little time on technological specs, and instead showcases all the developer tools it provides. Same goes for the Offset Engine.

This is where the price difference seems to come in. Engines that are around the $100 - $300 mark tend to focus on integrated shader effects, clean design, and rapid development. SDK's that are >$1000 mark focus on development tools for artists, code maintainance, resource management, etc.

This is a good thing though, in my opinion. Because most $100 - $300 engines are offering pretty much the same stuff, just with a different name and a different approach, indy devs are getting better, more competative, more complete products. It is VERY difficult, I believe, to enter the indy engine dev market now. There are a number of well-established engines around, who have a several-year track record, who have loyal communities, etc etc. The only way they vary is in the design philosophy - Tourqe is geared towards FPS games, TV is about as open-ended as it gets, but is very quick to get going with. Ogre is open-sourced, and technologically the most advanced engine around (and has a great community), however it's meant for more advanced programmers and can be a bit tedius. TV offers multi-language support, Ogre offers multi-platform support, Tourqe offers a billion different versions.

I don't think indy dev's have ever had it as good as they do now; and as indy engines strive to incorporate more and more of the SDK graphical features (which is getting easier and easier due to shaders), I don't think graphic quality from a technological standpoint is going to be the reason when it comes to a difference in price tag.

I say all this as I'm developing a start-up indy game SDK.

[Hypnotron]

There are so many high quality engines available at prices which are Indie friendly that I can't see any reason Indies would be interested in engines that command this sort of price. It's not as though you could make a game which took full advantage of an engine like this anyway, because quite aside from the price of the engine, you'd need such a huge quality of high quality artwork, that you'd need another $50k-100 for the artist(s).

With Indie engines like TV, S2 Engine, Shiva, Unity, Blade3D, LawMaker, etc all available for <$1000 ( depending on the version you want ) I think there's never been a better time to be a hobbyist developer looking for a high quality engine.

On your first point, regardless of which engine you use you're still going to need the same art work. 

On your second point, clearly not all engines are created equally.  You've listed a few and but unless you've personally evaluated each one for a significant period of time,  then I don't think it's saying much to say there's all these good engines to choose from.  One thing is for certain, "high quality" engines are proven engines that have been used to ship commercial games.

That said, indie and hobbyist developers are constantly underestimating both the time it will take to build their own tools and a game framework around TV3D or some of the other low end packages and the time it will take to create and design the world/levels/content.  Assuming a modern FPS or 3rd person adventure game like Hitman you're looking at 2 years to build the tools and game framework and then another 2 years designing your world and art and actual gameplay related coding. 

So you're looking at 4 years with TV3D.  How much is a year of time worth to you?  How much is it worth to you to limit the risk of yoru game's technology not seeming dated by the time you actually complete it? 

There is allot of consideration that goes into selecting an engine but $20k or whatever for a source license for an engine that's going to save you 2+ years of development is a bargain by any measure.

 

[sybixsus]

On your first point, regardless of which engine you use you're still going to need the same art work.

Well, no actually. If the engine you're using doesn't use specular maps or normal maps, then there won't be much point in paying someone to make them. Since a high poly sculpted version used to create the normal map is actually a very expensive part, that's a lot of difference. If the engine you're using handles skinned animation in software ( several still do ) then there's no point in having 5,000 poly models made because your engine can't handle them. Again, a significant saving in just asking for a 800 or 1,000 poly model instead. Not as much of a difference as the normal map, but still significant.

But that wasn't my point in the first place. My point was that you have to make a lot more money back when you've invested $50k in an engine. You won't do that with amateurish graphics, so you have to massively increase your art budget as well, making the amount you need to break even considerably higher still. After all, if you make $50,000 net from the sales, you just got a profit of zero, because that's how much the engine cost.

If you've only invested $300 in an engine, it's a completely different story. You don't need huge numbers to break even. If your game only makes $25k, and it only took a year to develop, that's decent numbers. Since you don't need to make such huge numbers, a genre game of the kind that SpiderWeb or MDickie makes is a perfectly sensible way to go, and you only need to look at their games to see that they sell despite some pretty nasty graphics. I don't imagine either would be in business if they licensed Unigine though.

On your second point, clearly not all engines are created equally.  You've listed a few and but unless you've personally evaluated each one for a significant period of time,

That's correct, I have.

Assuming a modern FPS or 3rd person adventure game like Hitman

If you're assuming that you're going to be successful as an independent developer making those types of games, I think underestimating and undervaluing your time are the least of your problems.

There is allot of consideration that goes into selecting an engine but $20k or whatever for a source license for an engine that's going to save you 2+ years of development is a bargain by any measure.

You've never made a game with a $20k 3d engines, have you?

[Hypnotron]

meh.  i've deleted this post and will pm you privately sybixus

[Leon_]

Lol, crysis like godrays! It's inspiring to see such effects in more and more games today.

[ovek]

wow thats awesome