I'm Looking For an Engine Thread

Hey Everyone, I just joined this forum, and it's because I have one very specific question I need answered. I am trying to make a seamless 2d, tile-based open world cooperative MMORPG with a single player campaign. I know that's incredibly ambitious, but I have a lot of time, and a ton of obsession. I have experience in C++, Java and GameMaker: Studio, if that helps narrow it down any. I have a prototype in GameMaker, but I can't go any further without a better engine. Please help me!

Well, Unity is a good engine for 2D and 3D games, it does use Java so it should be good for you.

Badtothebones wrote:

Well, Unity is a good engine for 2D and 3D games, it does use Java so it should be good for you.

Well, actually Unity only uses C# and JavaScript. JavaScript is pretty far from Java, but C# has very similar syntax, and is pretty easy to pick up from fluent Java developers, (And C++ developers, from what I hear.)

Nonetheless, I second this. Go for Unity. It should work perfectly for what you are trying to achieve.

Defold

Edited by: Nightshade

What about looking at the Grit Game Engine?

the engine is a is a community project to build a free game engine (and pipeline tool-chain) for implementing open world 3D games, such as the those in the GTA series, Saints Row, Crysis, Fallout 3, Just Cause 2, Mafia 2, Burnout, etc. Anyone can use the engine as a foundation for their game, and anyone can read / modify / integrate the source code.

home page - Gritengine.com
source code - Github.com

Are you alone on this project ? If not then you should consider your team's skills.

All I've use before is Unity and UE4.

• Unity is great for 2D and mobile. Also it uses C#,javascript and boo. So if you're coming from a Java background (like I do) then it's very easy to adapt to C#. The syntax is very similar - in Unity you wouldn't even notice if not for the c# "using" instead of java "import" :p -
• Unreal relies mostly on C++ . BUT, in ue4 there are blueprint graphs where you "draw" your logic after you make the base class in c++. So it's especially handy in a team where there's less coders than any other developers.

IMO , after trying both, I think UE4 is a bit better organized than Unity.

Unity lets you put scripts everywhere and the scripts themselves are Objects (GameObjects). SO any class can be your character class, and any instance of any class can control your character, your scene... Basically everything can control anything

UE4 is better organized . You have Actors ->Pawns ->Characters (inhertiance) . And then you have controllers. So you don't really have to do a guessing game as of when to create a new script/object and what to name it and give it what role. Those roles are already there you just need to type in your logic (or draw it :p )

It's the same concept of when to chose private/public/protected in OOP. Sure you can make everything public, but it will make your life harder later when nothing has a precise role anymore and everything can access everything else.

You also have the graphics factor. I can say UE4 wins that battle. Just look at the default assets that come with it... they are amazing !

Anyways since you say you got time .. I'd say go with UE4, it's not simpler, but the outcome will be worth it.

Gonna give another vote for Unity3d, even for 2d game.
I have tried cocos2, HaxeFlixel eventually settled and got very productive with Unity.

ARMA III and ARMA II have an amazing engine that could theoretically support world's (Servers for instance) up to 120 players.

Edited by: Polyesta

It really depends on what you are best at and the outcome you want. If you're good at c++ i would go with Unreal but Unity actually makes it very easy to make a simple 2D style game(as long as you have the correct coding knowledge). Honestly my team and I have been using Unity and because our game is more art based, we wished we went with Unreal. Also Unreal's networking is alot easier, while Unity you have to code it in and so many errors can occur with syncing.

So if you want easy integration with art and easier networking I would go with Unreal but if your strength isn't art and don't need that feature, I would learn C# and go with Unity.

Hi OP,

Personally for 2D projects I'd recommend Unity, especially as programmers generally seem to have a much easier time with it. But I am bias on this because I have experience with Unity. For 2D games, besides Game Maker, the Godot engine is quite good from what I hear. I have not used it personally but I have seen some quality 2D games made using it (both at 48hour game jams and online).

It's an open source engine so it's completely free to download here's a link. Godotengine.org

I hope this has been useful! Good luck with the game!