Choosing a game engine

A game engine or game platform is a development environment with settings, configurations, and ready-made tools that greatly simplifies the production process in different programming languages. It may include a graphics rendering engine that is compatible with various import formats, a physics engine that simulates the laws of physics in a virtual world, artificial intelligence, a sound engine, and many other useful features.

Despite the fact that today there are many game engines, it is simply impossible to choose the best or the worst among them. Rather, each technology is designed to solve specific problems, and the final choice depends on the specifics of a particular project.

Most often, the appropriate gaming platform is determined by technical specialists, since this issue requires deep knowledge and understanding of the context. In this article we are talking about the most common engines and their features, which will help you figure out the details yourself and make the best choice for the future game.

Unity is a multi-platform engine that spans many gaming platforms and operating systems. It creates mobile games, projects for PC and consoles, such as PlayStation and Xbox. It contains many components for working with graphics, object physics, sound and templates, which greatly simplifies the production process.

An interesting fact: according to statistics, more than 50% of mobile games run on Unity. Equally important, it is suitable for developing games of various genres, including shooters, RPGs, racing, platformers, and more. That is, this engine is universal.

(Ua) Двигун має велику бібліотеку ассетів і плагінів, які можна імпортувати та експортувати, додаючи в проєкт цілі заготівлі рівнів, персонажів, патернів поведінки штучного інтелекту та інших елементів. І це навіть без програмування, що значно прискорює випуск гри. Багато асет розповсюджуються безкоштовно.

Unity підтримує два движки для відтворення графіки: DirectX, який використовується в Windows та інтерфейсах із закритим кодом, і OpenGL – для всіх інших платформ.

In addition, it works with almost all rendering effects, including innovative real-time ray tracing technology. The forces of the engine can implement the physics of solids and tissues, complex animations and collisions between objects.

Another important advantage of Unity is that while the project brings the publisher a profit of less than $100,000 per year, the engine is completely free.

UE was created for first-person shooters, but the capabilities of the engine have grown rapidly, and now AAA-level projects of various genres are being developed on it – MMORPG, fighting games, role-playing, stealth and many others.

Unreal Engine is so good that some publishers are even abandoning their own engines in favor of it. For example, recently the CD Projekt RED studio, which created the legendary The Witcher, announced that the fourth game of the franchise is being developed on UE instead of the “native” REDengine. They explained this choice by the fact that it will allow creating a virtual world in the shortest possible time and save the studio from a large number of technical problems.

The Unreal Engine is based on the C++ programming language, which makes it possible to create games on it for various platforms, including:

• Windows;
• Mac OS;
• Linux;
• Xbox;
• PlayStation.

Recently, mobile platforms have become one of the priority areas for game development at UE, and developers have the opportunity to create projects for iOS and Android as well.

It is important that thanks to the use of a modular system of dependent components, it is possible to transfer the game from one platform to another in a relatively short time, which is important for developing projects.

Among the main advantages that distinguish the engine from other technologies, it is worth highlighting three:

• A complete set of tools out of the box. To get started, simply install and run the development environment – all the necessary functions will already be in the UE.
• Using C++. The language gives programmers the ability to manually manage memory allocation, which allows them to “squeeze the maximum” out of the hardware and maximize the performance of the project in the final stage.

• Visual scripting. Thanks to the use of the Blueprints Visual Scripting system, you can create games or individual elements even without programming, which significantly speeds up the release of the game.

In addition, the engine has many assets, and allows you to control not only the mechanics, but also the graphics of the game.

Since 2015, Unreal Engine has become shareware. As long as the project’s income does not exceed $3,000 per quarter, there is no need to pay, otherwise the publisher must pay a royalty of 5%.

The engine was created by the German company Crytek for the popular shooter Far Cry, and had a huge impact on the game development industry in the open world, and was the first to make it possible to freely move across a vast territory without downloading data.

CryEngine supports many advanced technologies, including DirectX 12, Vulkan API, VR, C# scripting, real-time pixel-by-pixel lighting, specular surfaces, fog, detailed textures, and realistic physics. Thus, it makes it possible to create projects with almost photorealistic graphics. With the right approach, projects created on it exceed in quality even games on Unreal Engine 4 or Unity.

Thanks to the functional realtime renderer, CryEngine gives developers the opportunity to instantly test the newly created level or scene, which is very convenient and eliminates the appearance of global bugs.

Another important advantage of the engine is its proprietary ray tracing technology. It runs on AMD and Nvidia graphics cards and does not require the power of RTX graphics chips.

The CryEngine website has a large library of proven and reliable assets that can be used in the development of new projects to increase the speed of production.

AVADA MEDIA works with these and many other game engines. We will help you choose the best technology for your project, which will fully satisfy its needs. If you have any questions, please contact us by filling out the form below.