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Suggested engine for 3rd person game (Forums : Suggestions : Suggested engine for 3rd person game) Locked
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Jun 10 2010 Anchor

I'm a 2nd year student on a games design course starting my 3rd year in September.

We have a final project next year and one of our ideas was a 3rd person RPG game. Personly I would love to use UDK as it seams like a good engine to have knowledge of when applying for jobs and from what I can tell it's quite powerful. However I've heard that creating 3rd person games in UDK can be pretty problematic.

So has anybody got any suggestions for an engine to use for a 3rd person RPG game? And would UDK be a feesable option?

Thanks!

Jun 10 2010 Anchor

Thanks for the advice :)

We used unity3D fr our last project and it is quite nice to use but the drawbacks (in my opinion) are that the lighting in the free version isn't great especially compared to UDK and UDK seams to have more options already set sutch as volume brushes for swimable water etc.

Another thing I should have mentioned is that the team for the project will be 3 artists / designers so we have a pretty poor knowledge of scripting, so that will be outsourced.

Arxae
Arxae Resident Stepmania Freak :D
Jun 10 2010 Anchor

notoriginal wrote: UDK is the better engine/toolkit overall.

actualy no :) it depends on your project requirements
if you wanna aim for iphone/web and/or pc/mac, then unity squashes UDK bigtime
udk has its strong points in..well its unreal engine :)
but saying that udk is better then indy by saying that UDK is made for AAA titles, thats just wrong
because for starters; UDK is aimed at indy devs :p

by the time you booted up UDK, you allready started developing on unity :)
unity mainly has the advantage of multiplatform
you make the game like you want and just use the build options to deploy to web, pc, mac and iphone (if you purchase the module)
only iphone needs some special things (touchscreen :p)

--

°w°

Squiggers
Squiggers I'm British, you Muppet.
Jun 10 2010 Anchor

Biased towards FPS games? Good lord, obviously not been playing many of the games produced on the engine such as Arkham Asylum then.

Personally, I'd recommend the UDK, but Unity is also worth having a look at for the reasons already outlined by others. :)

Cryrid
Cryrid 3D Artist
Jun 10 2010 Anchor
50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
Alpha Protocol
Army of Two / The 40th Day
American McGee's Grimm
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Black College Football: BCFX: The Xperience
Blade & Soul
CrimeCraft
Damnation
Dark Void
DC Universe Online
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
Fairytale Fights
Fatal Inertia
Fury
Gears of War / GoW2
Global Agenda
Hail to the Chimp
Highlander: The Game
Lost Odyssey
I'm too lazy to check the rest of the list. I know there's more though. Not even including games like AA3 and Rainbow 6 which let you switch to 3rd person perspective for certain actions, or Unreal Tournament 3 which I remember playing in 3rd person (action cam?). I wouldn't say it is biased towards fps just because the demo is fps (Unity too) and it shipped with UT3 (Epic seems more focused on Gears lately). It's been used for third person rpgs before (Square, etc), but I'm not sure how much work is required to set it up. Unity might be easier if you lack a consistent programmer
Jun 10 2010 Anchor

wow a lot to think about :) thanks for all the advice!

I do really think it depends on the specific details of the concept that we come up with, which engine is best. Although I'm still leaning towards UDK, even if it's just because it's a more widely used engine and the benefits that has on being on your CV.

@ Cryrid, we do lack a consistent programmer at the moment but we are allowed to outsource parts of the project (scripting, sound etc.) so as soon as we have a firm concept we will be looking for a programmer. I would be more than happy to recruit from on here, although I would obviously have to check with the rest of the team if that's ok! And as it's a final major uni project we are making sure we produce something that's high enough standard to be a portfolio piece and we're all passionate about creating something great!

again thanks for the replies :D

MrMattWebb
MrMattWebb The forums are a karma-free zone.
Jun 10 2010 Anchor

Cryrid wrote:

50 Cent: Blood on the Sand
Alpha Protocol
Army of Two / The 40th Day
American McGee's Grimm
Batman: Arkham Asylum
Black College Football: BCFX: The Xperience
Blade & Soul
CrimeCraft
Damnation
Dark Void
DC Universe Online
Destroy All Humans! Path of the Furon
Fairytale Fights
Fatal Inertia
Fury
Gears of War / GoW2
Global Agenda
Hail to the Chimp
Highlander: The Game
Lost Odyssey


Fallout 3!

Cryrid
Cryrid 3D Artist
Jun 10 2010 Anchor

That's Gamebryo?

Arxae
Arxae Resident Stepmania Freak :D
Jun 11 2010 Anchor

indeed :p

best thing to do is
create a basic game both on unity and UDK and see which one you like most, dev flow wise and things like that

--

°w°

ambershee
ambershee Nimbusfish Rawks
Jun 11 2010 Anchor

UDK is NOT biased towards first person shooters.

To get it into a third person perspective takes ONE line of code.

Jun 11 2010 Anchor

I spoke to my tutor and he said it wasn't really a problem with UDK more that getting the rigged meshes in can be tricky , he also said that the recent updates to UDK may have made this easier.

ambershee
ambershee Nimbusfish Rawks
Jun 11 2010 Anchor

You need rigged meshes for both first and third person games? - and in any first person game, you usually still view other players or NPCs, who would be using 'third person animation / meshes' anyway ;)

Edited by: ambershee

Jun 11 2010 Anchor

ambershee wrote: You need rigged meshes for both first and third person games? - and in any first person game, you usually still view other players or NPCs, who would be using 'third person animation / meshes' anyway ;)


yea I was thinking the same thing when he told me :/

Maybe he meant with a 1st person game we could get away without using our own rigged meshes.

I think I would like to go with UDK for our project, from what everyone's saying it sounds like along as we have a decent programmer on board and take time to learn the ins and outs of UDK we should be fine!

Oh and if you want to see some examples of the work done by the guys and girls who just completed their final major projects here you can check out Q.U.B.E, Romley Court and Colour Runners, they each have a profile on moddb :)

Edited by: PeteH

Cryrid
Cryrid 3D Artist
Jun 11 2010 Anchor

To get it into a third person perspective takes ONE line of code.

The horror!

Rigged meshes shouldn't be a problem. If you were modding an existing game like UT and wanted to reuse existing animations, it can be a bit trickier to get the right rig (I think they are floating around the web somewhere). Otherwise, both engines can use FBX now so piping in custom rigs and animations sounds easy enough.

ambershee
ambershee Nimbusfish Rawks
Jun 11 2010 Anchor

The UT3 / UDK skeletal rigs are on ModDB.

Jun 18 2010 Anchor

*reads some of comments*
O.o

Anyway, AFAIK, The Ball authors with some 3rd party help created a helpful tutorial how to make a TPS fast:
Theballthegame.com

This time, I DID check Unity.

Unity -> lacks shadows and post-processing effects - you can buy them though... for *only* $1200! And SSAO would be d_mn handy.

UDK has all important graphical features, AFAIK.

Only RT strategies could be difficult to make (selection of units, etc.). A TPS would be pretty easy to do.
Unity would be really awesome if they had included Pro features. Only UDK (graphically better & free w/o catches) remains.

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