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Prospects For Open-Source Engines Now That UE4/Source2/Unity Are Free?

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  • Prospects For Open-Source Engines Now That UE4/Source2/Unity Are Free?

    Phoronix: Prospects For Open-Source Engines Now That UE4/Source2/Unity Are Free?

    How do you think the community-based game engine projects like ioquake3 will evolve now that Unreal Engine 4, Source 2 Engine, and Unity 5 are "free" for use by game developers?..

    Phoronix, Linux Hardware Reviews, Linux hardware benchmarks, Linux server benchmarks, Linux benchmarking, Desktop Linux, Linux performance, Open Source graphics, Linux How To, Ubuntu benchmarks, Ubuntu hardware, Phoronix Test Suite

  • #2
    The now-free AAA game engines will probably not be an option for developers who want to do their development on Linux. The development/editor tools for Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 are not available in Linux-native versions. I am hoping that Source Engine 2 will have its toolchain fully available on Linux, but AFAIK nothing has been announced in that regard.

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    • #3
      The inclusion of Unity 5 in the group seems somewhat incorrect.

      Not much has changed with Unity 5's licensing and revenue model, and that model is not as you describe. Also its source code is not readily available (though it is possible to license it).

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      • #4
        Michael, instead of using a trollish tone about game graphics (something unrelated to engines), can you please point people to Godot, Tesseract, OctaForge and Torque 3D?
        Last edited by Calinou; 08 March 2015, 11:25 AM.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Calinou View Post
          Michael, instead of using a trollish tone about game graphics (something unrelated to engines), can you please point people to Godot Engine, Tesseract, OctaForge and Torque 3D?
          Can these compete in your humble opinion?

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          • #6
            Originally posted by Calinou View Post
            Michael, instead of using a trollish tone about game graphics (something unrelated to engines), can you please point people to Godot, Tesseract, OctaForge and Torque 3D?
            What about Ogre?

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            • #7
              I'm a game developer myself, working on my own home-grown engine written in C from scratch.

              I admit that all these recent announcements made me drool. I would, of course, never be able to catch up with Unreal on my own, and there's something very liberating in handing off all that work to a 3rd party so I can focus on the game instead of the engine.

              But I agree with the Heggen's (jMonkeyEngine's) post: "free" is not always really free (libre), because there are various strings attached, and likewise lots of features is not what we indie game makers always want or need.

              I intend to make my games free (libre) software (though not "free" as in beer!). And I want to maintain control over as many aspects of the game as I can (creative, legal, technical, experimental).

              Of course, many game devs choose these libre engines due to lack of money, not because they value the libre aspects. These devs will embrace Unreal, Steam 2, etc. But the libre engines will stay relevant, even if we lose some users.

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              • #8
                The more important question is imho, would this have happened without open source game engines and open source movement in general?

                And I have to agree with JME guys:
                When you start competing to be ?the most free?, open source is the inevitable end-game.

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                • #9
                  The question that comes to my mind is: Will donations or kickstarter fundaraising be considered as income by the game engine manufacturers? What will be the status of subscription based mmorpg games? Both don't state an income from license fees so they don't in a legal sense sell licenses of the game.

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                  • #10
                    Well, in a limited fashion you can still use the gratis engines to make libre games. At least UE4 works via plugins. The entire game can and should be a plugin for the engine. And you can license the plugin however you want. Including GPL, if you add an exception for UE4 itself.

                    Originally posted by ZauberParacelsus View Post
                    The now-free AAA game engines will probably not be an option for developers who want to do their development on Linux. The development/editor tools for Unity 5 and Unreal Engine 4 are not available in Linux-native versions. I am hoping that Source Engine 2 will have its toolchain fully available on Linux, but AFAIK nothing has been announced in that regard.
                    False. Unreal Engine 4 is fully available natively on Linux.

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