I'm trying to pick between the Oolong and SIO2 iPhone game engines for my first game programming project. I have some Cocoa experience and many years of C++ including relatively low level 2D graphics and developing Quicktime plugins but only minor OpenGL exposure. Which engine would be easiest to learn and most productive for someone with my background and limited time?
Both include the Bullet physics engine. I lean towards Oolong because of its C++ source and optimisation for the PowerVR graphics. However, the Lua interpreter and additional sound goodies in SIO2 are appealing. SIO2 also seems to have a good range of tutorials.
I'm also willing to spend money on Unity or Torque Game Environment if they will save me significant time. The pricing gets interesting though - the Unity Indie license only applies to companies with turnover (not revenue!) of under USD 100,000 so you're easily out of that category and up for USD 3,000 per seat. I'd want a lot of convincing it will save time to justify that investment over just using SIO2! The Torque 3D product doesn't seem to be released yet but looks like costing about USD 500 on top of a USD 150 Indie license (their income threshold is USD 250,000).
**Edit Dec 2011 - SIO2 is no longer free **
I started my first SIO2 app last night and it was easy to get up & running from the tutorials (the tutorials include a full XCode project that you can load and start hacking on). The tutorial projects are also very well commented - this makes it quicker to pick up.
The interfaces to SIO2 are mostly in C, so your C++ background should make that transition pretty easy.
Even if you don't use it, download SIO2 and open one of the tutorials and check out the comments & code. You'll be able to tell pretty quickly if it's a toolkit & style you like.
Not directly related to speed of uptake, but a big plus for me was the Blender integration. It lets me use a free 3d toolkit to make & export models and then go from there. I saw that Oolong uses 3DS and I'm not sure if Blender exports that format or not so I could be wrong.
If you're curious: SIO2 provides a python script that exports the Blender scene to a zip file. Then, from inside the SIO2 code you reference your objects from the scene and pull them in to your iPhone app.
I try both OOLong and Unity way. I suggest to use unity:
Learn Curve is very short if you have a basic game background
Unity include a large set of utility outer of 'graphics & audio'
With unity you don't care about graphics/audio file format
One code for both iOs and Android
Full set of pre-assembled asset free from the store
Exendible editor to make your level-editor
I spend one year to close a OOLong project. I probably would have saved six months of work with unity.
Related
I have good experience with the iPhone development tools and making apps with window based applications and stuff. I am now trying to make an awesome 3D game, which is an area I have never tried out.
I am very interested in learning about the development of "INFINITY BLADE" and I am very curious to know how it was developed and how they were able to develop it with so much detail.
I had already looked at links like iPhone 3D Engines, but it seems outdated.
Where is a good place to start for learning HIGH Performance 3D games for iPhone / iPad ?
Could you share any tips on the development life cycle for the 3D Games ??
Tools used for making high quality 3D images for the creative side of iPhone Development ? And resources on the creative side ?
Could you share the game development life cycle for a particular app , or perhaps your comments on the development of Infinity Blade ?
This isn't a full answer, but I decided to post it anyways.
Infinity blade was written using unreal engine 3, which recently (or not so recently) got an export to iPhone option. Unreal engine is the same engine used for games such as gears of war. I'm assuming that the actual difficulty of getting high quality graphics to run well on the iPhone was handled by unreal engine. As for making the graphics, I'm sure they hired a (bunch of) 3D artists. You can get the UDK for unreal off of their website, which allows you to start learning with it. The only caveat is the cost of the engine when you actually want to release a game.
I've never actually used it so I can't give too much information on it, but you could try looking at cocos2d's lesser known sibling, cocos3d. That would probably be the most cost effective way to learn how to do some 3d game programming in obj-c.
http://brenwill.com/cocos3d/
But if you're looking to bang a game out quickly and learn a good amount about game development, Unity3D might be the best option. They have a few really good hands on tutorials.
http://unity3d.com/support/resources/tutorials/
I might be wrong, but I think Unity might require the use of C# under mono, in which case I'm not sure if that would be something you're looking for.
I have a couple ideas for some 3D games/apps and need to know which 3D engine to go with. I like the high-level approach of Unity and UDK. I have done some 2D games using cocos2d before, but I'm entirely new to the 3D world, which is why i think Unity or UDK are a good choice. I know about the differences in licensing, and i am more concerned with the learning curve instead of the licensing cost.
Plans:
A 3D "side scroller" that goes forwards (up) instead of to the side. Third person space ship. This would primarily be for learning. Tilt to steer, tap to jump. Very simple graphics, vertex coloring would be enough.
A 2.5D "side scroller" like the above one but with a car. This game would generate the levels randomly out of a couple prefab blocks of a certain length that fit together seamlessly.
A 3D augmented reality display for pilots with a terrain mesh loaded from DEM data. Accelerometer and GPS access required.
Other important points:
Must be able to tie in to In-App purchases.
The more community content like tutorials and forums the better.
Ability to add third party libraries like Flurry Analytics is a big plus! But i guess this isn't possible?
Which engine would you recommend for these projects, and why? Preferably, i'd like to pick one and stick with it.
You’re going to have a way, way better time developing with Unity. UDK’s got a fantastic, incredibly capable engine, but its tools don’t have the ease-of-use of Unity’s, its developer documentation leaves a lot to be desired, and the community hasn’t been using it for long enough for there to be much help to be found there. Some quick Googling suggests you can write your own Objective-C plug-ins for Unity games, so in-app purchases and third-party libraries are definitely a possibility. I think Unity’s your best bet.
What about cryengine? it free for non commercial use and also provides mono c#.
Check it out CryEngine
I am wondering if anyone knows of a open source or paid Xcode template.
It would be for a basic game, ( NOT COCOS2d ).
It would include simple items like profile management, load/save, Menu, Settings,
( perhaps include Openfeint/Game Center )
Something to use as a base for creating new games, things that get used over and over.
I am thinking about creating either a simple match three game, or maybe a card game.
Before I sat down and created one myself, I thought I would check to see if something
was available. ( No need to recreate the wheel right? )
Thanks everyone!
This isn't quite the solution you're looking for as it's not a game template, but it's worth checking out Sparrow - it's an open-source Objective C library so you don't need to learn anything new (unlike COCOS2D) and there's a nice Beginners Action Game tutorial you can follow.
Cheers..
If you don't want to use Cocos2D I guess you are thinking of 3D i.e. OpenGL ES games. If so, have a look at former question Alternative of Unity & SIO2. Maybe this is what you are looking for, but you should take SIO2 and Unity3D themselves into consideration. Especially Unity3D (I am just evaluating it the last 2 weeks) will save you a lot of work. SIO2 is a library using Blender for design and ships with customized exporter. It was open source since V1.4 but then they "convert" it into commercial software. What a pitty that the 1.4 source code is still not available at the according SF project.
There are two more engines: Unreal 3 Engine and Torque. I failed to find the pricing for Unreal now, but it might be something about 25% of your revenue or so. Torque stopped selling their 3D engine on iPhone and is now available in 2D only.
PS: Even for simple games I recommend using some kind of game engine, it will save you a lot of work compared to native XCode hacking.
You can use this template which is a well researched one available in the market.
http://www.binpress.com/app/ios-boilerplate-and-template/1597
I am searching for open source free API just like Unity or SIO2 which I can use for commercial purpose. Kindly tell me if there is any API for iPhone 3D games.
AFAIK there are two open source game engines:
irrlicht
oolongengine
I don't know much about irrlicht, but there are some dicussions about it here on stackoverflow.com. I think they support iPhone development for quite a while. oolong seems to have a hard learning curve because there is not much documentation and you have to subscribe to a good old mailing list.
If you are an Indie developer with less than 100k $ / year, Bork 3D engine might be worth to look at - you just have to pay $49. There is one drawback in that you don't have support for blender and you should have to check whether collada files are useful, if you don't use a commercial 3D modelling tool.
Just found this in my bookmarks :-) It's a bit out of date but a good place to start investigations:
iPhone Game Engine Comparison – Open Source
UNREAL
also you can use Unreal game engine which will you help al ot in making high graphics games for iphone.
Being a paid SIO2 user (Android) - My opinion of SIO2 is that the registration scheme on Android is TERRIBLE.
I've had to move on to another product.
The author of SIO2 seems to feel that answering customer questions is beneath him and gives answers in riddle form, as opposed to d
What are people's opinions and/or experiences with game engines such as Unity or Torque Engine? If one were new to iPhone game dev is it worth it to learn one of the engines? What is the performance difference between apps generated by those engines vs a natively built App using the sdk?
Both will equal the performance of what most people could write themselves (i.e. if you're not an experienced game engine developer).
Whether it's worth learning (and buying since both Unity and Torque cost for iPhone development) you'll have to ask yourself two questions:
Is my game idea suited the engine?
Is my passion for programming or game design?
Looking at the range of games made with Unity, it seems very flexible because although it is a 3d engine, lots of 2d games have been made with it. The downside of using Unity for something very simple (say, a match-3 tile game) is that it's a bit over the top in terms of download size.
On the passion issue, some people like programming a lot and will always feel it's better to write the engine themselves. And that's OK. But if you have a great idea for a game and just want to 'bring it to market' as soon as possible, and it requires 3d rendering, character animation, that sort of thing, using Torque or Unity is going to get you there a lot faster.
If you want to do 2d development you should have a look at cocos2d iphone it is implemented in cocoa free open source and very easy to pick up
I think time to market is important to consider - if your going to burn out after a short time and of the engines mentioned above will allow you to build and launch a game quickly compared to writing the engine & game from scratch.
Like U62 said, where is your passion?
Currently I'm building a framework/engine and a game. Its a great learning experience, but we had to understand that it would take a long time (we have day jobs) and that we have to just keep chipping away at it. So far, the experience has been an eye opener and I've learned a great deal ... however, would I do it again? Probably not - I think I prefer designing the game and coding game specific logic - not engine specific.
I've done a lot of research on the platforms and I personally really like Unity. You can email them and request the iphone trial license.
Anyways, good luck!