Unity vs. UDK vs. ???

[dandylion13]

Tomsamson, you might also like the Unreal 3 engine:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/udk.html

It's a good option for indie developers. It probably provides the best performance and Unrealscript is a Java/C#/AS3 clone so it's easy to pick up. The UDK is free but there's a licence fee for commercial work. I have friends in a small shop using it for museum installations (walkthroughs) and they seem really happy with it, having migrated from Flash.

[tomsamson]

Tomsamson, you might also like the Unreal 3 engine:

http://developer.nvidia.com/object/udk.html

It's a good option for indie developers. It probably provides the best performance and Unrealscript is a Java/C#/AS3 clone so it's easy to pick up. The UDK is free but there's a licence fee for commercial work. I have friends in a small shop using it for museum installations (walkthroughs) and they seem really happy with it, having migrated from Flash.

Thanks for the thinking and suggestion =)
I already had a look at UDK and decided that its not for me right now.
First of all i often see it that people use UDK synonymously with the propper commercial Unreal engine. There are quite a lot of differences though, like UDK is more platform specific and the propper Unreal engine costs huge sums but in return one can make commercial stuff whereas with UDK if one makes commercial stuff that passes a certain threshold one has to pay.
Next to that UDK doesn´t have the choice of platform and various other features the full blown Unreal package has.
I think UDK can be a great choice as learning experience and for personal projects or if one wants to create a prototype to then get publishers interested. I´m not convinced its an ideal solution for the average indie who usually releases stuff on his own or at least finances the development and tool costs mostly on his own, at least for his first few games. Next to that most indies i know also try to release some stuff on the web, not just as download or retail games for desktops and/or consoles and well, udk doesn´t offer that side at all.
With unity i bought it once and can use it for whatever i want on various platforms without paying additional money for any project. Then i bought unity iPhone which allows me to deploy to yet another platform. Dunno, for my needs that seems like the better choice right now, even if i don´t release every game i do on desktops, web, iPhone and Wii, i knida like the thought i have the choice to and also not have to worry i´d have to pay this or that additionally if i make propper money with a game.
Now if they would add more supported deploy platforms and would raise the cap for what one can release without having to pay (or one could pay a reasonable low one time fee), it would become more interesting to me, but not sure all that will happen soon.

[dandylion13]

Forked from:

http://board.flashkit.com/board/show...=808508&page=2

Discussing the pros/cons of various 3D engines available to indie developers.

[tomsamson]

i moved the related posts..

[rumblesushi]

Thanks Dandy.

As I said in my thread, I'm quite excited to try out Unity, but I'm 100% focused on this project at the moment, so I'm going to wait till it's properly up and running.

[dandylion13]

Has anyone tried the Sio2Engine?

http://sio2interactive.com/SIO2_Free...Pod_Touch.html

[tidenburg]

UDK may offer less than the full shabang but it certainly offers a whole lot more than just modding a total conversion from an unreal-powered game. The benefit of UDK is that you can start out free and then, if the game kicks off, get picked up by someone who will pay for a licence. If you start off with the full package you're paying alot of money for something that may not necessarily be a hit.

That said, I don't really like UE. It's very flexible but the level editor always feels very clunky and unintuitive compared to something like Hammer for Source. However much the power/capabilities of UE are obviously incomparable to Source, I think they should be taking a few leaves from their book when it comes to the editor.