The Best Game Engines 113
SlappingOysters writes "IGN has taken a look at the most impressive middleware solutions for the next generation of gaming, giving a detailed analysis of which engines are performing the best and which have the most exciting futures. It runs through the technical strengths of each engine, as well as how that translates into actual gameplay. It also runs through which software has and will be using each engine."
Re:And Valve is no where? (Score:4, Interesting)
Source isn't really that good. Or rather, it's Graphics aren't that good... and that won't make for a lovely 'next gen' video
I love Source, it's piss-easy to create content for, and there are shitload of 3rd party applications to speed up creation (Packrat, VTFEdit, and Milkshape from goldSRC - although Milkshape tended to SLOW creation at times :D)
You get Source-only modeling tools in the shape of XSI Softimage, for free, which is awesome.
Things like this is why Source is the biggest Modding platform ever, but that's also hurting it slightly in the main stream. All these amatuers creating sub-standard mods are giving Source a bad image (I can think of no mods that live up to Valves standards) and one of the few Commercial Source games released - Vampire Bloodlines - was riddled with bugs, and made a right mess of the lauded Source Facial Animation system leaving us well within the uncanny valley.
Sin: Episodes was slightly better, and completly ignored (just as Sin 1 was overshadowed by the original Half-life) and all their dev team left for other jobs leaving the whole thing in limbo.
Three of the most popular online games have been made in Source (Counter Strike Source, TF2 and L4D) and one of the most innovative and fun games in recent times (Portal) - most have been made by teams that started independant but became part of Valve.
The curse of Source - Merge with Valve or Fail miserably.
BGE (Score:1, Interesting)
Blender Game Engine is showing promise
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pc9JWYuUa2o [youtube.com]
Re:And Valve is no where? (Score:1, Interesting)
personally, I think the realism in valve's titles does more for them than the oversaturated bloomy blur fests common with many UT3 (and other) engine titles. That half-realism (zombies in the real world) IS the fantasy. The realism plays a critical role. Do you want your HL3 to be suitably scary/forboding/apocalyptic or do you want HL3: my little pony's palette poopfest?
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:And Valve is no where? (Score:3, Interesting)
I expected to see a lot more games using the Source engine. Those games you mention have a great feel to them. I won't go so far as to say the movements feel "natural" but they don't get in the way.
But the first time I played Far Cry, I was astounded. I'm not smart enough to know how much of the way the enemies work, or how the environment looks and feels, and how the physics of the games world work are because of the "engine" but there was something dramatically different in Far Cry. Compared to Far Cry, games like the (excellent) Fallout 3 or the so-so Call of Juarez (something called " "Chrome 4" engine) feel like you're interacting with the world through a Thai puppet.
Whenever I play a game that really looks and feels and plays great, like Far Cry, I always expect that there will be a whole series of games based on that engine, which makes me happy because I think I'll be able to play all these games on my computer, which is at the low end of what you'd call a "gaming" computer. However, it never seems to work out that way. Far Cry was followed by the (also excellent) Far Cry 2, which had a remarkable story, milieu and character development, but sure didn't feel like the same engine. Plus, of course, it required an upgraded computer.
You would think that a smart gaming company, after having used a particular engine to make a successful game, would want to put out a few more games using the same engine/with the same system requirements, in order to sell to all the customers who loved the first game but aren't going to replace their computer more than once every 3 years. Hell, it seems to me like once you get a great engine, a great story, great characters and a team in place that made those things, you'd just knock out a few sequels.
There only seems to be a game series that have followed that approach - the Half-Life franchise and Civilization. Each new game is based on its predecessor, works and feels the same, but with advances.
Speaking of Unreal. Why in the world has it been so many years without a new installment? Here's a demonstrably great setup, popular with a built-in fan base, and then half a decade goes by without a new Unreal game.
I guess all these companies are out searching for the next super-blockbuster, but it seems to me like they're leaving a fair amount of money on the table.
I also wished there wasn't such a focus on online gaming, but that's just me, I guess. I don't put in the amount of time many gamers do, so I never get as good as most gamers. So, when I go online to play, I usually last a few seconds and I'm blown away before I can even start to have fun. Thus, I stick to single-player games, like Bio-Shock, Half-Life 2, etc. I'm happy that these companies can be so successful with online games, but I wish they'd give people like me a little more to work with when we play single-player. I'd actually buy Left 4 Dead, for example, if it just had some single-player fun. There seem to be more and more games that are either primarily online games, or have just a couple of hours of single-player content. For me, those just aren't worth buying.
Nothing even related to idTech? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm surprised that the only engine on this list to derive from the Quake family is the Call of Duty engine. I'm not enough of a game engine expert to disagree with any given choice, but it's very, very surprising to me to see one of the major families of engines basically ignored. At the very least, some discussion of its omission seems in order.