Showing Off The Linux-Friendly Unigine Renderer

[curaga]

That, and the fact they don't offer the SDK for free for non-commercial use / during development. This in addition to having no non-Unigine co game using it doesn't encourage people to pay for it.

[sgtGarcia]

That's why:
1. Unity - free version ( not to comparable to full version but something to test with )
2. CryEngine - full version for testing & non-commercial use
3. Unreal Engine - If I'm not mistaken - full version for testing & non-commercial use
I can download each of them, test them, check work pipeline, etc.

Unigine - I see that there is website where You can request Evaluation Kit http://unigine.com/evalkit/
but I think they will give it only to companies not single developers & people who want to learn ( but who knows ).

How I see it:
- hobbyist/amateur have small/zero interest in Unigine, that comes from lack of a free for non-commercial SDK;
- indie small interest in Unigine comes from lack of free SDK and/or lack of documentation/tutorials & probably licensing/pricing;
- small companies - could probably target Unigine but they already have well documented, used in at least class A+ games to choose from ( CryEngine, Unity, UDK );
- big companies avoid Unigine - because most of them already got big, massive engine.

So they are closing they own door from developers that's already on the market & from future developers that cannot access SDK & learn it.

[AJSB]

I will wait for their confirmation if there will be a Steam client for Oil Rush running under Linux....

The Valve Linux Team seem to be collecting a list of games that will be ported and if they publish that list, i will be sure of what to do, go with a Steam client of the game or the standalone...

[Kakarott]

That's why:
1. Unity - free version ( not to comparable to full version but something to test with )
2. CryEngine - full version for testing & non-commercial use
3. Unreal Engine - If I'm not mistaken - full version for testing & non-commercial use
I can download each of them, test them, check work pipeline, etc.

Unigine - I see that there is website where You can request Evaluation Kit http://unigine.com/evalkit/
but I think they will give it only to companies not single developers & people who want to learn ( but who knows ).

How I see it:
- hobbyist/amateur have small/zero interest in Unigine, that comes from lack of a free for non-commercial SDK;
- indie small interest in Unigine comes from lack of free SDK and/or lack of documentation/tutorials & probably licensing/pricing;
- small companies - could probably target Unigine but they already have well documented, used in at least class A+ games to choose from ( CryEngine, Unity, UDK );
- big companies avoid Unigine - because most of them already got big, massive engine.

So they are closing they own door from developers that's already on the market & from future developers that cannot access SDK & learn it.

You say it.

Just to add my experience:

1. Unity free version is a bit pain in the ass if you want to make something better but for lots of small things it's enough. And you can sell it:
" Can we sell games and make money with the free version of Unity?
Yes! You certainly can-- and without royalties nor paying any revenue share! If your game is a commercial success, we hope you'll upgrade to Unity Pro! "
There are lots of people using it and the documentation is good. So if you need help you nearly always find something.

2. CryEngine - full version for non-commercial use. And if you are Indie you can sell it for cheap:
"We’ll offer a royalty-only license model for Independent Developers, where Crytek require only 20% of the developer’s revenues from the commercial launch of their game."

The visuals are awesome – but from what I heard from some people trying to use it was a real pain if you want to do something else then what is there. There is not a big community and the documentation is not so great. But hey, you get awesome visuals for free.

3. Unreal Engine - you get nearly everything of the real version and can use it for non-commercial use. And selling is also not a problem:
"He would need to purchase our $99 license and then pay us royalties of 25% of his earnings after the first $50,000 he makes."

A big community and a big documentation. There is everything you need.

4. Unigine -
" UNIGINE SDK is available on a per-case basis (an average deal is about 30,000 USD per project). "
"Please take into account that we provide Evaluation Kit only to companies working on commercial projects."
I also wrote them some mails and got answers: No evalKit, no free license, not even for student projects, nothing.
There isn't even an SDK for OilRush (their game) which might have worked like UDK or such.
Some Indies won a license some time ago but nothing has shown up yet. Instead some are simply throwing it away with good reason:
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/index.p...ge-2#post-3453


So to sum up:
For nearly everything you can use UDK.
If you need it simple and have less expactations use Unity.
If you wanna clone Crysis with more awesome visuals use CryEngine.
If you are on Linux you can choose from lots of other engines: http://devmaster.net/devdb/engines
Blender Game Engine is getting better. Crystal Space had a nice new release lately. Ogre3D with some extensions. iodoom3/idTech4 with some dhewm3 and glsl.
With SourceEngine comming to Linux I guess they also release there SourceSDK for Linux.

Why would you choose Unigine?
Probably when you have lots of money and tried lots of engines that all sucked for you.


Btw.:
On my university game designers and computer scientists are having classes in Unity and UDK and are makeing games of lots of semesters with them.
From the beginning they are trained to use at least one of those two engines.
On new projects they always want to stick with the engine they already know.


PS: If you really want to do something with Unigine Engine
you can find really old GPL versions from Unigine engine on here: http://frustum.unigine.com/

[sgtGarcia]

Total cost at the beginning of work:

Unity: 1500$ ( full version win/mac/lin ) - but no revenue after selling game
CryEngine: 20% of the developer’s revenues from the commercial launch of their game - so basically it's free on the start
Unreal Engine - "He would need to purchase our $99 license and then pay us royalties of 25% of his earnings after the first $50,000 he makes." - 99$ for start
Unigine - 30'000$ - o.0 wtf

Really getting 30'000$ on start for a indie developer is INSANE.

Quote from the link You ( Kakarott ) gave:

Steel Storm 2 is shaping up.. Since ToM has been in works before SS2, I had to focus on ToM to get alpha out.
SS2 alpha will be coming as soon as we add bots (hopefully it won't be an issue) and as soon as I finish another gun and pickups.
Unigine Corp doesn't see it as a priority. They think indies should buy 3DS Max or Maya. I already hired a third-party to develop Blender2Unigine exporter and they got it done. Now I have seamless export from Blender to Unigine.
However, while end-user thinks Unigine is awesome, I can tell ya it's not awesome to develop for. Support is horrible. I personally coded vweap to render and shoot, player to run around and animate in DarkPlaces in a week or two. Considering that I am no coder, this is awesome. I have a coder with 8 years of C++ experience and 2 years of Unigine experience trying to get first-person cam with a gun in Unigine done and he hasn't made that happen yet . Networking is extremely horrible in Unigine. DLC and mission pack support is non-existent. Modding aspects are non-existent. No dedicated servers for the community to run. No way to implement cel shading without Unigine Corp. writing it and supplying it with the engine's SDK. And they told me they won't do it. Basically everything I need for SS2 needs to be coded and either I have to pay for Unigine Corp to code it, or I have to buy full source license (we won binary license, similar to UDK, but less customizable) and code it myself.
So while I have a hope for Unigine, the hope is fading away. So SS2 alpha will be DP powered. If Unigine will not help us with what we need (networking, GLSL shader, modding support, dlc support, dedicated server, etc.) I will be very disappointed and will release SS2 powered by DP.

Really WTF. They really don't know how to make a business. Now I really don't know if they now how to make game engine in a way somebody actually can use it

[9a3eedi]

Makes perfect sense on why you don't see games using it now lol. But still, the unigine graphics are indeed impressive. I only want to see more games use it in order to see prettier games lol. Same thing for cryengine.

Is it possible to port an Unreal Engine 3 game to Linux? I haven't heard of an UE3 game running on Linux.. is it because it's not supported by default in the engine? Or is it because nobody has bothered? lol

[sgtGarcia]

Makes perfect sense on why you don't see games using it now lol. But still, the unigine graphics are indeed impressive. I only want to see more games use it in order to see prettier games lol. Same thing for cryengine.

Is it possible to port an Unreal Engine 3 game to Linux? I haven't heard of an UE3 game running on Linux.. is it because it's not supported by default in the engine? Or is it because nobody has bothered? lol

Unreal Engine 3 was ported to Linux by Ryan "Icculus" Gordon ( also the game Unreal Tournament 3 ). But there were some licensing issues and Linux port never seen daylight.

[AJSB]

Unreal Engine 3 was ported to Linux by Ryan "Icculus" Gordon ( also the game Unreal Tournament 3 ). But there were some licensing issues and Linux port never seen daylight.

I knew that about the game....didn't knew about the engine SDK itself....was also the SDK frozen because of same issues than the game ?!?

[Kano]

The first annoyance with OilRush is that there is not even a demo out there. So most likely ppl interested in checking it out before buy will dl it from some other places - and most likely will not buy it because they have got the full version already. From a marketing point of view it is the worst case NOT to release a demo. Especially when the hype is over. Btw.OilRush does not seem to use any of the fancy tesselation effection which have been in the Heaven demo. So what does that show? Not even the creatiors of the engine think that tesselation is a must have. Also for indie developers i would say it is too expensive and you can not target xbox 360 which is really bad. Most sells are usually for consoles and there you can use only ps3. How many games do you know which are PS3 + Win only but don't have got an Xbox 360 port? Would be a small list i guess...

[Kakarott]

The first annoyance with OilRush is that there is not even a demo out there. So most likely ppl interested in checking it out before buy will dl it from some other places - and most likely will not buy it because they have got the full version already. From a marketing point of view it is the worst case NOT to release a demo. Especially when the hype is over.

Good news Kano:

" Posted Yesterday, 09:12 AM by watchvombat
Sorry guys, some plans changing.
We have published new update, but the demo release is shifted for the next week - we need to make good promo-texts =) "
http://oilrush-game.com/forum/index....dpost__p__7793

Btw.OilRush does not seem to use any of the fancy tesselation effection which have been in the Heaven demo. So what does that show? Not even the creatiors of the engine think that tesselation is a must have.

You might not be right on this one:

"Posted 10 April 2011 - 02:47 PM by binstream
Update (btw rocks use hardware tessellation):"
http://oilrush-game.com/forum/index....dpost__p__1533

(As it should only be for preorderers if put it up here to show you:
https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B-D...DNLcW5LRHJMYVE)

Also for indie developers i would say it is too expensive and you can not target xbox 360 which is really bad. Most sells are usually for consoles and there you can use only ps3. How many games do you know which are PS3 + Win only but don't have got an Xbox 360 port? Would be a small list i guess...

Agrees…