what engines is everyone here using. are you using an engine? Im just curious to see what others are doing for their apps
No engine. Custom written code only. I'll never buy a packaged kit because you are at the mercy of whatever performance deficiencies or bugs the engine/kit has. If you write something yourself from scratch it can be improved or modified as needed... Some may say I suffer from "not invented here" syndrome, but after over 25 years of programming experience I've learned not to trust the code of others unless I can see it to review myself...
I wrote custom 2d/3d but I did a lot of research to see if the current offerings had any major feature I was missing. This is just my opinion but I ranked them: 1) Unity http://unity3d.com/ 2) iTorque http://www.garagegames.com/products/consoles 3) Sio2 http://www.sio2interactive.com/HOME/HOME.html 4) Cocos2d (2d only) http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/ 5) Oolong (using the term engine loosely here) http://oolongengine.com/ 6) ShiVa (not really an engine but more of an editor or authoring tool) http://www.stonetrip.com/shiva/
I agree with CommanderData. I never use anything external, an 'engine' as such should be game specific, not completely generic. Write re-usable code sure, but never outside the scope of what you need. Modify it on specific requirements.
I'm using Unity3D as well. The Unity forum has a thread with 22 pages released of apps. http://forum.unity3d.com/viewtopic.php?t=15524 I agree coding your own application specific engine is fine for small apps but a using a mature engine can let you concentrate on creating games instead of technology.
Personally, I wouldn't use anything other than Unity, for 3D games at least (and some kinds of 2D games). Game dev is hard enough without reinventing the wheel for the 1,000th time, never mind the fact that my attempts to do so would almost certainly fall short of what's already been done, aside from taking much longer. Many of the AAA dev houses, at least on computers and consoles, use pre-existing engines (Unreal engine, etc.) for a good reason. As iPhone gaming matures, I expect engines will be used more and more. --Eric
Quoted for truth. I would much rather spend my time writing the "fun parts" rather than a file system or a memory manager for the 10th time.
Re-Ranked.. 1) Unity ( authoring tool ) http://unity3d.com/ 2) ShiVa ( authoring tool ) Looks on par with Unity actually but only runs on windows http://www.stonetrip.com/shiva/[/QUOTE] 3) iTorque ( authoring tool ) ( I really don't like any of the Torque... but they do evolve quickly so they are worth taking a look at ) http://www.garagegames.com/products/consoles --- These are engines... aka no tools all code etc. 3D 1) Sio2 - Lost of good 3D games done with this fast. http://www.sio2interactive.com/HOME/HOME.html -- 2D 1) Cocos2d (2d only) ( theres a lot of products made with this pretty quickly ) http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/ -- 1) Oolong ( mostly a collection of open source libs and ported power VR samples Theres some neat tech in here but im not sure it counts as an engine so much as a lot of tools you can use http://oolongengine.com/ 2) SDL - Simple DirectMedia Layer is a cross-platform multimedia library Version 1.3 ... is out for iphone or in SVN(?) Any how you need a commercial license which you can probably get for 500$. SDL is a nice crossplatform lib to base an engine on. Runs on Mac/ Win/ Linux/ Iphone/ DS? / PSP? and a lot of other platforms. It tends to get ported everywhere basically. http://www.libsdl.org/
Opps I forgot. I use my own engine... BANG 2D runs on Mac, Win, Linux, Iphone, Wii Lets me develop on the Mac and then simply do drop a MOD / DATA folder on each platform. Art is scaled down at run time etc. I do contracting in Unity and enjoy it a lot. There as some reason not to use Unity on iphone... Lack of source code, Lack of total control, High memory usage on iphone. Not really geared towards 2D. ( I have no idea why they never added simple 2D editors.. shrug ) I recommend Unity to most developers. I spent a year working with Torque based engines and gave up in disgust. -- Tho I need to evaluate the Iphone version -- Generally I steer people away from them.
In a previous post someone said that sio2 doesn't come with any tool, which is partly wrong. It includes a blender(free 3d modeling software) exporter which export your whole scene into a .sio2 file which can be loaded in few lines of code. This makes it super easy to get your whole 3D scene on your iphone with lights and physic and much more cool stuff. Also it's open source so you can modify the source code the way you want
For me is Unity the way to go, not least because I've spent a lot of money for the licence. Seriously, Unity is great for the rapid development of 3D games. One of the main reasons I'm using it is because I can code in C# and don't have to spent time learning language nr. 100. Once, a long time ago, when I was much younger, I had the ambition to code every singe line myself. Even the boring stuff. But I changed that point of view because the most fun is developing the game itself, not the engine. And to be honest, what matters in the end is the return of invest in the shortest possible timeframe - at least for any developer who wants to earn some money with his work. So a 2 month longer development cycle means the loss of the earnings of two month. That can be a lot of money. Just my opinion.
Thanks for that opinion AxelF. I have a question tho: How easy is it to learn unity? And can you use it for 2D games? Like drawn games, not 3d games in a sideview. If it is a hassle, what else could I use for that?
Unity is very intuitive to use because of the great visual editor. Take a look at the Unity website, there are some real nice step-by-step tutorials with a lot of screenshots. I cant say if Unity is the perfect solution for 2D games, but for sure it is a good one. E.g. Zombieville USA is made with Unity and a lot of other 2D games. But you need some very basic 3D knowledge to understand how the 2D works in Unity. (in fact it is 3D too) And as written before, If you are more into C#, AS or Javascript it can be a good alternative.
The problem there is I don't know any of the scripting languages used and in tutorials it seems to heavily rely on that, if you find any at all. I didn't find anything for unity with 2d games. Does anyone have other things to recommend? I would love to be able to just do a 2d game and maybe learn the language used for it too.
We are using cocos2d for our current game, which is obviously a 2d game. I've found the engine to be very useful and much speedier than doing things by hand. Furthermore it is open source so you can tinker with it as you please which is always nice. It is constantly undergoing changes but does suffer from a rather severe lack of documentation! Which can at times be quite frustrating. There is a forum though which seems to be quite active so help is at hand. We looked into Unity3D but at this point in time have no intention to make 3D games for the iPhone. We looked into the evaluation version and found that it wasn't particularly suited to 2D development and certainly not worth the price tag if all you're looking at doing is 2D stuff. That's my 2 cents worth anyway
I used Cocos-2d for Road Rage Ahead. I agree the documentation is lacking, but the example files pretty much showed me everything I needed to know. The forums definitely have helped a lot also. My first two games were just my own code, and now that I have used Cocos-2d I don't think I'll go back.
