Game Engines Comparison

For me to find the best game engine that would compliment my work, I am going to research into the 3 we have on the university computers.
It is my first time using a game engine and so will have to learn a fair amount to create my piece, and that's why it's important for me to make sure I get the most effective  game engine for my scene.

UDK
Unreal Engine 3

On their website http://www.unrealengine.com/udk/ the first thing I find is information on what it is, who would use it and why choose it.
What: "This is a free edition of Unreal Engine 3 that provides tool for creating high-quality games and app, movies and advanced 3D visualizations and simulations."
Who: "Anyone. Everyone You." it's being used "by game developers, researchers, television studios, machinima directors, artists and students"
Why: "Only UDK has the power, flexibility and track record of Unreal Engine 3."

Platforms it's compatible with include:
Adobe Flash
 

Epic Citadel (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/udk/epic_citadel/> Accessed 27th October 2012

 Apple iOS Devices

Infinity Blade Dungeons (2011) [YouTube video] Available at <http://infinitybladegame.com/dungeons/> Accessed 28th October 2012

Unreal Technology News (2011) Games Developer Page 13

 Google Android

Dungeon Defenders (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/dungeon_defenders/> Accessed 27th October 2012

Microsoft Xbox 360

 Batman Arkham City (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/batman_arkham_city//> Accessed 27th October 2012

Sony PlayStation 3

 Dishonored (2012) [YouTube video] Available at <http://www.dishonored.com/#/home> Accessed 27th October 2012

Sony PlayStation-Vita

(First Vita Game with Unreal Engine)

 Doctor Who (2012) Spong [YouTube video] Available at <http://spong.com/article/26410/Doctor-Who-The-Eternity-Clock-First-Vita-Game-with-Unreal-Engine> Accessed 27th October 2012

 Windows PC

Gaudiosi, John. Tera (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/tera/> Accessed 27th October 2012

 Nintendo Wii U
  (Highly anticipated)

Gaudiosi, John. Mass Effect 3 (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/mass_effect_3/> Accessed 27th October 2012

 And is now MAC iOS compatible. Unreal technology News by Mark Rein, Games Developer, MAR 2011, Page 12

 I wanted to look at specific visualizations that people have created using UDK and compare them to find which one would work for me. This Architectural Visualization was created by Luigi Russo, a university student in Italy's University of Naples.

Russo, Luigi (2012) Architectural Visualization. Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/en/showcase/visualization/architectural_visualization_1/> Accessed 27th October 2012

This show I can create easily indoor scenes.

The Cowboys Stadium show me that I can create something working as large as I can as long as it has low poly objects.

Gaudiosi, John. Cowboys Stadium (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/en/showcase/visualization/cowboys_stadium/> Accessed 27th October 2012

Now I wanted to look at other artist's scenes that have used UDK, especially when looking around in 1st person.

Frick, Tor. Amazing One Texture Environment (2012) Unreal Engine Available at <http://www.unrealengine.com/showcase/udk/amazing_one_texture_environment/> Accessed 27th October 2012

KRZYSZTOF TEPER

Krzysztof Teper (2010) [WiP_1] UDK Scene: Dark Carnival [YouTube Video] Available at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5It5v_8c0k4> Accessed 28th October 2012

Teper, Krzysztof  (2011-2012) Karmic Flow, Environment Art Portfolio, Available at <http://www.krzysztofteper.com/gallery/karmic/img2.jpg> Accessed 28th October 2012

Teper, Krzysztof (2011-2012)Abandoned Pumping Station, Environment Art Portfolio Available at <http://www.krzysztofteper.com/gallery/pcftest/img3.jpg> Accessed 28th October 2012

DAMIAN LAZARSKI

DamianLazarski (2011) Oasis - UDK [YouTube video] Available at  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OS9zPvvHNA&feature=related> Accessed 28th October 2012

Lazarski, Damian (Unknown) Medieval Cellar, Environment Artist Available at  <http://www.damianlazarski.com/med_cellar.html> Accessed 28th Ocotober 2012

STEPHEN DALZELL

MrStephenDalzell  (2011) Back to the Future 3D Environment UDK [YouTube video] Availble at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUndvEZ0L44&feature=related> Accessed 28th October 2012

I have also found some articles which talk about games and the UDK engine: e-journal http://gamedeveloper.texterity.com/gamedeveloper/

Unreal Technology News by Mark Rein, Games Developer Game, Career Guide, Fall 2011.

Page: C3

"We had some initial worries that using only what was available in UDK might limit us artistically, but overall the artists have been very happy with the ease and power of UDK. It enables our small team to create triple-A quality visuals." - Khang Le (Art director at Adhesive Games)

I found a small tutorial on make a third-person game in UDK, Test Drive the Unreal Engine, Games Developer, Annual Game Career Guide 2012, Page 24-30

(Games Developer P29)

Games Developer Product News:

"Unlike mods, games created with UDK provide a standalone experience, with no additional software requirement." - This is important for me as I really don't have any previous experience with game engines.

(Games Developer JAN 2010 P36)

It is quite clear that an artist can do a lot in UDK though I don't need everything it's nice to know that if the possibility arose I could add to me work.

Unity
Unity 3

Their website: http://unity3d.com/
Claims this about their product, "Unity is a feature rich, fully integrated development engine for the creation of interactive 3D content. It provides complete, out-of-the-box functionality to assemble high-quality, high-performing content and publish to multiple platforms. Unity helps indie developers and designers, small and major studios, multinational corporations, students and hobbyists to drastically reduce the time, effort and cost of making games."

The specs Unity are proud of including:

Rendering http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/rendering

The "state of the art" rendering includes 100 shaders and introducing surface shaders which is "a new simplified way to author shaders for multiple devices and rendering paths."
These shaders, along with other files are "batched" together to increase performance and minimizes draw calls. 
The rendering engine has been rewritten so it's 50% faster than before and the final product can be seen on mobile devices, at a quick rate because of their levels of details whether far or close to an object.

Unity (2012) Rendering, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/rendering> Accessed 28th October 2012

Lighting http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/lighting

 In Unity 3 they rewrote lighting, and included deferred lighting which are faster and therefor more can be used. These soft and hard realtime shadows is also faster and works well with the sun-shaft and lens effects newly added.

Lightmapping has also been improved, "With Unity 3 we've integrated the world's best lightmapper, Beast." Therefore scenes can be directly created in Unity. The light probes at realism and life on scenes which allows baking of light on objects.

To have a flowing image Unity also supports dual lightmapping so one light can be "used for far away stuff" and the other "contains only bounce light". So you don't need huge lightmaps for online gaming, and the setting can be adjusted to fit any computer.

To avoid more time loss, their UV mapping unwraps its self and can be baked once done in the background, allows artists to continue their work in the mean time.

Unity (2012) Lighting, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/lighting> Accessed 28th October 2012

Terrains http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/terrains

To "sculpt like a master" there are more refined tools like "carve, raise, lower and sweeping mountains.

The trees, bushes, rocks and grass objects can all be painted using brushes and automatically billboard distant foliage to allow larger backgrounds. This amount of detail in terrain is quick to render "at configurable distances foliage rendering transitions to billboards for maximum performance".These brushes are extremely detailed and can be combined with normal brushes and so creating a varied piece. This can be realistic as the lightmapper beast is fully integrate with the terrain.

There is also a system for specifically creating trees: (integrated tree authoring tool)

Mixing procedural generation process and freehand placement allows different parts of a tree to look different. Unity will also automatically map, bake and add texture to these leaves and twigs to make a realistic tree, as well as ambient occlusion and wind factors. The tree can then be set up in Unity editor, and to add branches and leaves "with realtime previewing in the editor". - Shame I wont be making lots of trees, but maybe I should create a small one seeing as it's an interesting process.

Unity (2012) Terrains, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/terrains> Accessed 28th October 2012

Substances http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/substances

"Unity features native support for Allegorithmic Substances." Allegorithmic Substances are "Substances are Smart Textures, perfectly suited to game developers, 3D designers and architects." (http://www.allegorithmic.com/) It's basically objects with multiple outputs for textures etc. which you can tweak in Unity. I probably wouldn't get this software and so wont be applicable to me.

To cut on download/stream time, Unity also allows substances, that only "weigh a few kb" instead of bitmaps, which all can be completely modified and built on, to "generate infinite variations of complete materials on the fly with an easy-to-use API." 

Unity (2012) Substances, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/substances> Accessed 28th October 2012

Physics http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/physics

Containing the NVIDIA PhysX next-gen physics engine mean that this programme is very powerful. It has 2 types of cloth, one being  "Fully physically simulated Interactive Cloth" which can interact fully with it's environment. And the other being "Skinned Cloth, is an optimized solution for garments on animated characters." This can be clothing on characters that require high detail.

There is also a "soft body" tool which allows you to for example to create semi-deflated beach ball that interacts again with it's environment. To create an even more realistic scene, there is "Rigidbody physics ... receive forces and torque to make your objects move in a realistic way with no scripting required. For realistic characters, there is "ragdoll wizard"which is a tweak-able character animation able in seconds.

The more mechanical side have also been adjusted, with the bolts, hinges, springs etc are all fully customizable and breakable. This allows easier and faster creation of racing cars with "Wheel Collider that accurately simulates the traction model of real car tires."

Unity (2012) Physics, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/physics> Accessed 28th October 2012

Pathfinding http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/pathfinding

This new built-in pathfinding bring scenes to life with automatic navigation mesh (NavMesh) which processes boundaries, bakes your navigation data into an editor and "let Unity's high-performance path-finding and crowd simulation take over at runtime."

Unity (2012) Pathfinding, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/pathfinding> Accessed 28th October 2012

Audio http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/audio

With some of "the worlds most strongest tools through FMOD" increases smooth workflow as they "are driven by attenuation curves in the inspector." And to lower distribution size the tracker files formats include: "MOD, IT, S3M and XM" with additional "Ogg Theora video and Ogg Vorbis audio files can be streamed from the net." which then can all be checked with the live preview turned on. 

To add effects on incoming sounds, there are a selection of audio filters (effecting things like listener distance) - which also can be changed with the High/Low pass filter to make music seem like it's going pass a character. To add grit and emphasis on sounds that are too clear, there is also distortion effects that can be used, as well as chorus filters doing the opposite. The perfect sounds are when they have been considered in their environment, which is why reverb is a very useful tool, including reverb filters and zones, as well as echoing of sounds.

Unity (2012) Audio, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/audio> Accessed 28th October 2012

Programming http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/programming

Although I wont be touching much, if any, programming I still wanted to look at what Unity 3 can achieve.

The three scripting languages Unity supports "JavaScript, C#, and a dialect of Python named Boo." are all very fast as the ease of scripting language is paired with compilation to native code. As there is no writing glue codes, it it easy to drag and drop, pick out colours etc. and with the game logic running on ".NET platform, Mono." with Unity handling all Hookup automatically.

The flexible and easy system of naming, moving clipping, changing, attaching tags, and hierarchies are all simple to do, along with their "co-routines" which are 3 lines of code performance.

All problems can easily be checked by the games "debugger" finding breaking points etc. as well as profiling, which allows the user to get a per-frame stats, show where and how much time they are spending on and why. This can then be adjusted to fit perfectly.

Unity (2012) Programming, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/programming> Accessed 28th October 2012

Networking http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/networking

This is for designers that wish to post their games online, which I don't intend to do yet. it is just here to easily allow high score charts, single-player publishing and real-time interaction.

Unity handles, state synchronisation, real time networking, remote call procedures, backend connectivity which all can be sorted out with a slight change to the coding of your game.

Web browser integration has seamless communication to the web player so you can get "javascript communication and full AJAX capabilities."

Although I thought this was an engine solely for MMO's it seems they don't have the technology to create fully immersive MMO's though highly recommend some that are compatible. 

Electrotank Universe Platform - http://www.electrotank.com/technology-overview.html

Photon Socket Server - http://www.exitgames.com/Photon
Smartfox Server - http://www.smartfoxserver.com/products/

Unity (2012) Networking, Available at <http://unity3d.com/unity/engine/networking> Accessed 28th October 2012

This leads me to believe that unity is more for environment, but also allows a lot of sculpting inside the programme which I don't know if I will be needing, but still is useful to have in case. The company seem to be all about speed, performance, combining, saving space, download speed. All aiming to be for online games. This seems good for me, as I am creating a 1st person environment, though not really a game.

These are a selection of games that have been created in unity :

Unity3D (2012) Unite 2012 : Game Showreel [YouTube video] Available at  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cI50qQm5OiM> Accessed 28th October 2012

From this showreel 3 games took my interest.

Dreampainters - Their gritty environments are really nice

Anna (2012) Dreampainters Blogspot Available at <http://dreampainters-anna.blogspot.co.uk/p/screenshots.html> Accessed 28th October 2012

Mothhead - It has a really nice look the game with interesting character and scenery.

With Massive Blacks amazing 3D model gallery:

Massive Black (2012) Model Gallery Available at <http://www.massiveblack.com/MBwebolution/thirdd/4/> Accessed 28th October 2012

Republique - Again with nice realistic simple environment. And an interesting story.

touchgameplay (2012) Official République Trailer [YouTube video] Availble at  <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emt01IYhQ-Q> Accessed 28th October 2012

From these findings game engines, I can establish a little about each one and choose what I want to use.

At the moment I am veering towards UDK as there seems to be a lot more out there for help. Which If I am starting something new I will need a lot of.

TRY OUT

I have decided to try out both of these engines for a first impression. This will help me decide which one I initially feel comfortable using.

UDK

I have looked at UDK, I will try this tutorial of importing an object from Maya to UDK using a textured sphere. http://liamoluo.com/2009/12/howto-maya-into-udk/