Which engine should I use? Thread

I've been in the modding community before 2003, I built my first lovely map in 2004 and since then I've been designing various things. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, but a master of none. Then University arrived, and afterwards work 'n' stuff, so I didn't have much time, but now I found some spare time, compared to my daily routines and I've planned for a lengthy period for a certain project that I would like to work on. I'll be designing something of a Sandbox game, a small city with a surface of 30 km² and I was wondering which is the proper engine for such a thing?
I started off with GoldSrc, continued on to Source and they have severe limitations to their maps, making my project difficult to accomplish, so is there a suggestion as to what should I decide to use? I am hesitant between Unity3D and UDK.

I'd love to hear your experiences and suggestions. Thank you.

Unity3D.

Are you going to make this huge place all alone? Because to actually make a city with different houses and a proper landscape with 30 km² will take for ever. Especially if you say that you don't have lots of time. At least in UDK 30 km² is a HUGE area to make. If you plan this to be a large project over months and months it's okay.

Anyways for a large world and especially a landscape I'd prefer UDK because there's already a terrain editor included with which you can easily create terrains.

However I haven't used Unity3D yet so I just can tell you my experiences with the UDK.

Oh and I forgot to tell you that there's also a world border in UDK, that means that you have to include several loading screens in your game if the player reaches a certain point. 30 km² will definitely not fit into one single world in UDK.

Hope this helps you a little out.

Phoenix1747 wrote: Are you going to make this huge place all alone? Because to actually make a city with different houses and a proper landscape with 30 km² will take for ever.

Compared to the past, I can spend more time daily on it, and still have some time for relaxation. I am aware that it will take a while, however I've been passionate about this for years now, and a mere "Gee, this is going to take a long time" is not going to stop me. I have more than a decade of 3D design, and compared to the beginning, I've gotten quite fast and decent at it, especially at designing optimized, low-poly structures without any extra tri's that would be a waste of resources.

Phoenix1747 wrote: At least in UDK 30 km² is a HUGE area to make. If you plan this to be a large project over months and months it's okay.

From what I read, UDK's limited to 25km², but that can be circumvented with some methods.

Phoenix1747 wrote: Anyways for a large world and especially a landscape I'd prefer UDK because there's already a terrain editor included with which you can easily create terrains.

And from what I browsed, the UDK, The CryEngine and Unity3D have lovely terrain design tools, both built-in and as assets/addons. Heck, I can even design a terrain in another piece of software and import that into any Engine I like.

Phoenix1747 wrote: Oh and I forgot to tell you that there's also a world border in UDK, that means that you have to include several loading screens...

Well, that is what greatly annoys me, I don't want a loading screen. If we had access to the RAGE engine of GTA IV, that would be lovely, but I don't wish to construct a mod for GTA, I wish to make my own thing. The city I've got in mind is merely my passion, once that is done, it's like I have a playground. It can be any type of a game.

Thank you for taking the time to reply!

I am heavily biased towards the CryEngine, so I can't really say this is the right engine to use.

However, just in case you don't want to make an entire city from scratch and you have not heard of those; there is Blender plus Scene City. It takes one minute to make one rough city block.
Links:
Blender.org
+
Cgchan.com

Taamalus wrote: Just in case you don't want to make an entire city from scratch and you have not heard of those; there is Blender plus Scene City. It takes one minute to make one rough city block.

Thank you very much, that can be quite handy for some things!

Hard to beat CryEngine for beautiful photorealistic environments.

monkeypuzzle wrote: Hard to beat CryEngine for beautiful photorealistic environments.

That's true but the UDK looks nice as well.

Phoenix1747 wrote:

monkeypuzzle wrote: Hard to beat CryEngine for beautiful photorealistic environments.

That's true but the UDK looks nice as well.

I'm seen some nice environments come out of Unity3D though too.

--

Lead Developer for Carnivores Online.

take then all for a month spin, and grab the one you feel comfortable with.

If youre bad at graphics or good and you want amazing graphics for the game go with UE4. If you are not a good programmer or you are a good programmer go with UE4. If you are good at programming unity. If you are bad with graphics and would hate bad graphics in your game DO NOT PICK UNITY AT ALL.

SamTheGameDev wrote: If youre bad at graphics or good and you want amazing graphics for the game go with UE4.

UE4 just looks amazingly awesome that is true. Everything in UE4 just looks incredible, it's just insane...

Use whichever engine best meets the requirements of the game concept and the skill sets available to you.

Unity. And UDK.

Edited by: GamerWolfOps

Unity

Unity Free is an amazing tool for beginners and if you have a game that you want to develop in mind you can easily start learning by buying an asset to your taste in the Unity Asset Store (platforming, racing, FPS, etc. genre assets)

Unreal 4 is free but it is hardware intensive. I think it is the best engine right now because the games look beautiful and comes with a ton of assets (without having to buy and test a lot of shaders from Unity's asset store) and the blueprint system is really great after you take the time to learn it. C++ is stil