Game engines again…
As I said in the first blog about engines, I don’t really understand them. I don’t think it’s because I’m unintelligent, I think it’s just because I’m lazy and haven’t tried to understand them. I’ll start by talking about the two big engines I’ve looked at and what games they’ve supported.
The unreal engine: the big daddy of the gaming industry. It’s a well-known fact most modern day engines are based off the unreal engine in some way shape or form. The main thing with the unreal engine is that it can be downloaded for free. Obviously you will have to pay for using it if you publish a game off it, but this means that people learning the trade like myself have a chance to learn for free. However because a lot of people develop work using the unreal engine, when it comes to publishing they choose to make their own version of the engine to avoid paying for the licencing. With is being so popular it is of course compatible across most platforms and written in C++ programming language (makes me sounds cool).
The unreal 3 engine is coming up to 6 years old now and has reached its potential in gaming but with the success it has had comes a successor that is being worked on currently. Proof of its success can be seen in the title it has been involved in confirming its position as the big dawg of the industry.

Unreal engine games:

Unreal Tournament 3
Gears of War and Gears of War 2
Mirror’s Edge
Medal Of Honor: Airborne
Bioshock and Bioshock 2
Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas and Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six: Vegas 2
Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2
Mortal Combat VS DC Universe

So what’s the other big engine in the industry? Don’t ask me as I know nothing about it, but apparently it’s the Cryengine, or specifically Cryengine3. This engine without a doubt makes games look better. I will post comparison screen shots of the engines at the bottom. Its showcase from GDC 09 is well….unreal. The engine is available for education use but not as freely accessible as Unreal as you have to apply for an educational licence from them. The engine is meant to use more memory than unreal and isn’t as developer friendly with some tools being a difficulty. But who cares? If it can games to next level of realism it’s surely a winner? However when I say games…


Cryengine 3 games, in total
Sniper:Ghost Warrior 2
Nexuiz
Lichdom
Warface
Cabal 2
Forged by Chaos
Crysis 2
Codename Kingdoms

Now I keep up to date with games, and I can only really see one big name in Crysis 2 and one mid-card game in Sniper:Ghost Warrior 2, is this due to the difficulties in getting this engine to work or just a sign of Unreal’s domination in the world of game engines? And will the revenue from the listed Cryengine 3 games cover the cost of its development? If they don’t we could be looking a case of genius before its time or pure and simply bullying into extinction from unreal and it’s numerous offspring.


Cryengine3 with Unreal engine 3 below