I am currently developing games for my company in Unity3d for iOS. I would like to start making games for myself but the initial investment for unity3d or unreal engine is way to high for me(for unity i would have to pay 1500$ for the engine itself and another 1500$ just for the iOS porting system). I like unity3d very much because it is way easier to organize your world, from lights and environment placement to physics, shaders, and mapping.
Is there a game engine with an editing graphical tool out there that requires no taxes for publishing your games? The game engine would also have to be able to port to iOS and/or W8; also i am interested in game engines that have substatial support both from the community and from the development team.
i got my eyes set on Irrlicht Engine but i don't think it has a graphical environment tool.
I haven't worked with Torque but in your case it might be worth to look at: Torque 3D
Another one is Bork3D but a look at their web site makes me thinking that they stop their business.
In general I would recommend to first think about your business plans, then make a pros/cons listing and finally decide what to use. What I mean is: If you think you have some good ideas and talking to other people reveals that they agree with you, you should seriously take into consideration, whether it is worth to invest some money your tools. If you dream of being an independent developer and earn enough money to live comfortably, this should be your goal to reach. And if on the other hand you're experienced Unity dev, so it might save you 100s of hours and lessen the project risks when you are taking what is proved.
Related
I want to design a VR shopping app using unreal engine. In this app, you're in a virtual mall and you can choose which store you want to go to. If you find something you like and checkout then the bill will be on your credit card and the items will actually be shipped to your address just like a normal shopping app.
Can this be done? If yes, is 6 months enough time for me to learn how to do this from scratch?
Is unreal engine the best choice to create this app with?
Can I create this app without needing controllers? My Samsung Gear VR doesn’t have any controllers and it only has a click as well as forward and backward buttons.
Alright, I will make the answer clear as possible .
Can this be done? , yes it can be done and quite straight forward to anyone who have enough experience with unreal engine.
6 Months? , it depends on how dedicated are you to learn the engine, but I would say its possible if you are talking care of learning unreal engine as its your full time job , bec I've build my main building for my university within only 8 days .
Here is the link you can start Unreal engine Acadamey, look for beginner courses before started something higher.
Is unreal engine the best choice to create this app with?, unreal engine and unity both are awesome to deliver such product, but learning unity without programming skills could be quite annoying for beginner like you .
Can I create this app without needing controllers? , You can develop the idea without controller, but since its VR based, you should develop it while using the full set bec VR is quite expensive and you need to optimize everything to run smoothly, so developing it without VR kit you will have much troubles when you convert your final product to VR support if your game is not optimized from beginning for VR.
Hope that clear some points for you, keep in mind there is no highway to learn something, if you love what you doing you will spend all your time enjoying learning it.
Best of luck
I want to start game development and thought to work on a gaming engine like Unreal Engine or Unity Engine and thought of building a real life game around me. Is it legal to build a game on a real city architecture? I live in India.
Consult with a competent lawyer in your area to avoid a lawsuit (an example can be found in the link below).
Note: "Is it legal" questions are not best suited to the stack overflow format.
https://gamedev.stackexchange.com/questions/50856/can-you-use-well-known-buildings-in-your-game
Does anyone know of another good game SDK/Engine for the ipad or iphone other than CORONA?
Have a look at Cocos2d
Well since you didn't mention you need it to be free, I'd cast unity into consideration.
It's as powerful as it is expensive ;)
The above answers are great possibilities. I highly recommend unity as it just came out with its newest release that offers a gajillion wonderful features like batch rendering, beast lighting, etc. Its also ridiculously easy to program (im surprised there isn't a 'make this game for me' button in it). The price is worth it. By clicking a button, you can publish your game to pc, Mac, web, iPhone, iPad, xbox, wii, ps3, or android, depending on whether you purchased the license for each. It' bloody magic. Keep in mind that you need to buy the unity pro license before you buy the iOS license. One does not work without the other. It'll be a total of around 3 grand USD, but again totally worth it. Community is rad and helpful too.
If you're going the free route and have some coding chops, I'd run with openFrameworks. It's a c++ wrapper of the iphone sdk and has a very low learning curve. OpenFrameworks was created for artists who wanted to make interactive installations and art games but couldn't get really deep into objective c. Check out zach gage's work (stfj). He made bit pilot, unify, synthpond, and sonic wire sculptor all in open frameworks. He's also releasing his best yet very soon for the iPad. My own company is using oF (openFrameworks) for it's new game releasing this coming Saturday. Try it out. I guarantee you'll find something you love about it.
Good question. For very specific gaming needs, PhoneGap is worth a look. But considering it's JavaScript/ HTML/ CSS, it will not be as fast as the (IMO terrific) Corona. But if your game is in any way more page-related than sprite-animation related, give it a look. I created most of the games at VersusPad.com using PhoneGap, but now switched to Corona.
I'm looking to get into (as everyone else) the iPhone game development business. I've been programming for a while but have only recently forayed into the Mac development world, although since I've been working with Java for a while learning Objective-C wasn't that big of a deal other than learning memory allocation.
From this, you can safely assume I am not looking for a "teach me basic programming" engine, I want a fully fleshed out engine that can create commercial quality games.
Some of the things I'm interested in:
Good documentation - tutorials and demos - APIs a must
Good support - responses in 3-4 days, not likely to shut down tomorrow, English speaking reps
Extensionable engine - reasonably easy to add new bits to the engine or heavily modify it without having to change 1000 different classes
Working engine - especially since I'm doing iPhone apps which aren't that complicated, I expect most features (animation, networking code, basic collision detection, etc.) to be built in
Reasonable cost - this is somewhat subjective so I'll define: I expect not to have to pay more than $1000 a year for upgrades. The initial cost may be up to $1500 (all required packs included), but if it's more than $1000, I don't expect upgrades to cost more than $500. Upgrades are defined as full version releases, not "content" or "add-ons".
Likely to continue regular updates - I appreciate some companies quality test their code, but I also appreciate companies that release code more than once every 3 years. I expect an upgrade or update (free or pay) every 6 months to a year
Integration with XCode - running the engine with XCode or a full featured IDE is a huge plus. Ease of importing libraries factors in here.
I appreciate all responses, especially those from the voice of experience that would impact iPhone development with a specific engine or experiences with support. If you have a comment about why something is bad (like documentation) please explain what makes it bad and also what a "good" example would be and why that is a better choice.
I will of course be developing on a Mac, so compatability is a must.
Update: It seems the two engines that offer the most are the Unity and Torque engine. Aside from price differences, can someone explain the ease of use of the engines in comparison?
I did a mini-survey of what was out there back in January and wrote up a post about it. Not much has changed since then so I'll just refer you to that post:
http://ramin.firoozye.com/2009/01/02/building-games-for-the-iphone-and-other-platforms/
I think the only real option at the moment is the Unity game engine.
http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing
The downside is it's probably outside of your budget. It would run $1,400 for the Pro Engine plus $1,499 for the iPhone stuff.
You could go with an indi license and the basic iPhone which would run you about $399.
I don't use Unity, yet, but at some point hope to be able to justify the cost.
You might be interested in cocos2d iPhone. It was originally written as a python 2d engine, then was ported to the iPhone. Although it may not hit every bullet point you mentioned, it is worth consideration. There is plenty of documentation on the site, as well as several examples that come with the download.
Constantly updated list of tools, engines and so forth: http://iphonedevdepot.com/
I have a Flash game that I'd like to port over to the iPhone but I don't have the time nor the patience to do it myself, I also have a limited budget.
Can anyone recommend a place to put out a tender for an iPhone developer to port my game?
You could wait for the beta of Flash CS 5, and use that to compile your Flash straight to iPhone....
If your game has an existing community and content around it, try to partner with an experienced iPhone developer. They would port the game, you would provide the content and the community, and the revenue gets split. I am in the middle of this process with my online game (http://robozzle.com).
Alternatively, you could try to contract the job to a developer you found on a site like http://elance.com/ or http://rentacoder.com/. But, iPhone games aren't quick to develop, so you'll be looking to spend a considerable amount of money that way.
I would recommend trying one of the many freelancer sites out there such as http://www.ifreelance.com/
They tend to be able to hook you up with relatively low cost developers. A google search for 'freelance software' will give you numerous good results.
You can post job offers right here on SO: http://jobs.stackoverflow.com/
Furthermore, you could take a look at http://www.mobileorchard.com (free)
You might want to try Game Salad, a game construction kit. It looks similar to Flash game creation.