Which game engine should I choose?
If you read some posts and discussions about deciding which game engine to use, it feels like asking “PS4 or Xbox One?”. Instead of good pros and cons you usually just get some kind of flame-war. Just to be clear up front: of course there are a lot more game engines out there, I linked some of them at the bottom of this post.
Right now I just want to use Unity or/and Unreal Engine, because I want to get better in understanding these two toolkits. In the past you had to pay large fees to develop with Unreal Engine. On the other hand the free Unity 4 version was lacking a lot of features of the pro version.
Unreal Engine 4
The market opened up a lot for small indie developers and small studios. Why I personally would consider UE4:
- Unreal Engine 4 is free to use (*wohooo* not even the $19/month anymore)
- Fair royalty: Epic takes 5% gross from sold games and only if you generate more than $3000 per quarter
- Easy visual scripting with Blueprints
- Dem Graphix!!! (but Unity surely got a lot closer recently)
- con: getting into C++ looks rather complicated as I haven’t worked with that yet
Unity 5
I already explored Unity 4 a bit some time ago while Unreal Engine 4 wasn’t released yet.
- The new free version has many features of the pro version (not like v4)
- Easy to start with – C# as coding language suits very well with my 20 years of PHP knowledge
- Good toolsets for 2D Games
- Mobile development and export looks easier and more compatible with Unity
- Many tutorials and a great (cheap) asset store
- con: if you need the whole pro package, you have to pay $1500 for each platform module
So what?
Oh well, you can see my problems with choosing one or the other engine. Researching some posts about the advantages (see links below), it is more a questions of choosing the right tool for the current problem. Getting used to both “leading” engines sounds really awesome.
So for my GameDev Journey I will try getting a start in both engines. I might even try to build the same learning projects with both engines. Who needs sleep anyway? ;-)
Useful Articles which Game Engines to choose from
Have a look at some of the posts I considered while checking out both engines. They have a more in depth view of advantages and problems you might face while trying to choose:
- The Best Free Tools for Making Your Own Video Game (Lifehacker)
- Which Game Engine Should I Choose?
- What are the main pros and cons of Unity 3D and Unreal Engine?
- Unity Vs Unreal Engine 4: Which Game Engine Comes Out On Top?
- Reddit of “Unity Vs Unreal Engine 4” Article
Official Game Engine Sites
There are many more out there but I think these are a good start for looking into. Most of them have some sort of compensation or need a pro version for commercial use. But licensing is a subject on its own. I might cover that in another post…
