Topic: I will make a bold prediction about game engines

[ShyGuy]

Unity will be the game engine of this generation as much as Unreal 3 was the game engine of last generation.

A lot of the big boys are switching to in-house engine to save on licensing fees and Unity seems to be doing all the right moves when it comes to indies. It's probably the most cross-platform 3D engine ever created.

This goes hand in hand with my prediction about indie developers rising to dominance over the next few years. I bet most platforms will have about a 70/30 split on downloadable titles versus retail titles by the end of the upcoming console generation.

It seems fairly obvious to me. Maybe my prediction isn't so bold.

[Wah]

Yeah it isn't that bad

[MukiDA]

Probably the biggest shift will be internal structuring to document games in a way to make them as engine/platform agnostic as possible.

That way, if licensing ends up better for CryEngine or Id Tech 7 or whatever else comes out, it's a far more practical proposition to look into shifting mid-development rather than having to throw out a lot of existing work.

[Ymeegod]

Unity doesn't have the toolset that comes with Unreal 3 or Cry Engine 3.  There's third parties tools you can purchase but that just add to overhead costs.  I guess Unreal 3 will remain king for the next 3/4 years then the shift towards UE4.

[ThePerm]

I like Unity. I've spent a lot of time with Unity the last couple of days. I think in about 3 months I can have something ready for a kickstarter. The biggest thing is i've been out of programming for a couple of years, but now im picking it up. Right now I just learned texture animation. Now I wanna change the shader of the object with code.

So far things I've done

The first thing I did was build a large terrain. I put a big red demon fish in it. I could make the fish fly and swim through the sand, and could ride it.

Next I started trying to figure out AI. The current AI that comes with it is not doing it for me. It works on flat planes, but as soon as you try it on the terrain it doesn't work. So I have to write my own AI code. I  was trying something called RAIN, but I really have to check the documentation on that. I was Using NaV Mesh, and setting the characters target.

I started off with some cubes, just to get the hang of it. But then I downloaded a skelleton and got him to animate and change animations depending on the situation. I then did the same thing with a spartan model.

I keep trying to make models, but its been years. Modeling can be fun, but for me...i have to be in the zone to do it. Otherwise its just tedious. I was watching some tutorials on sculpting, but blender seems to be the next level order more complicated then zbrush. Seems kinda difficult to make low poly models. That being said I'm going to keep trying. I also learned a couple of things. I would always model with nurbs before hand. I found a way to convert nurbs to polygons without having it be 40,000 polygons.  The most I aim for is probably 10.

Now I used to model in Hammer in the source engine, but I'm just going to have to use c4d or blender for the levels here. This has pluses and minuses. I really wish there was some mix between a bsp editor and minecraft.