3 ms·

Unreal is the best comparison but the original statement isn't entirely bullshit. What Unity did (as does Unreal) is make the game engine more as a platform as

Unreal is the best comparison but the original statement isn't entirely bullshit. What Unity did (as does Unreal) is make the game engine more as a platform as the goal in and of itself. That is, wide feature set, mostly stable APIs, incorporating developer feedback, deprecation/evolution paths, etc... whereas other engines like idTech are more like a static library drop that you're expected to then tweak & adjust to your needs. And those other engines were often developed for a specific game, and then sold as more of a "why not?" than being the goal of the development. idtech, for example, was consistently developed very specifically for the id flagship game of the generation, and it's design decisions & tradeoffs reflected that. There's a reason that as widely used as the idTech 3 was at the time, it also was nearly exclusively used with FPS games - the engine wasn't a good fit for other things, and id wasn't really investing in changing that. It's not unlike the library vs. framework debate of the modern JS world. Unity & Unreal are more frameworks, while most other engines are libraries.

causality0 3y ago
RenderWare is a better comparison than Unreal, since Unreal was developed first as an engine for a flagship game and only later licensed out. From Wikipedia on RenderWare: It was licensed over 200 times. The scope went towards an integrated middleware with low level APIs for rendering, physics, audio, AI all of which are extensible through plug-ins which also serve the official high-level API. The aim was to reduce the learning curve by also including service and support for licensees. With RenderWare Studio an integrated development environment including a debugger was included.[3] RenderWare themselves claimed a 70 % marketshare across studios that choose an external engine in 2003
- kllrnohj 3y ago
  > since Unreal was developed first as an engine for a flagship game and only later licensed out. I was more referring to "modern" Unreal. Like UE4 didn't have any flagship game associated with it, at least not at launch. That transition seems to have happened over the life of UE3 which started life associated with a flagship game & genre, but by the end of it was a lot more diverse (such as Infinity Blade on iOS) Good point about RenderWare, though

causality0 3y ago

RenderWare is a better comparison than Unreal, since Unreal was developed first as an engine for a flagship game and only later licensed out. From Wikipedia on RenderWare: It was licensed over 200 times. The scope went towards an integrated middleware with low level APIs for rendering, physics, audio, AI all of which are extensible through plug-ins which also serve the official high-level API. The aim was to reduce the learning curve by also including service and support for licensees. With RenderWare Studio an integrated development environment including a debugger was included.[3] RenderWare themselves claimed a 70 % marketshare across studios that choose an external engine in 2003

kllrnohj 3y ago
> since Unreal was developed first as an engine for a flagship game and only later licensed out. I was more referring to "modern" Unreal. Like UE4 didn't have any flagship game associated with it, at least not at launch. That transition seems to have happened over the life of UE3 which started life associated with a flagship game & genre, but by the end of it was a lot more diverse (such as Infinity Blade on iOS) Good point about RenderWare, though