2011

Project Cloud Avinash Maddi

[TECHNICAL COMPARISON DOCUMENT]

2011

Game Engine Comparison Document

TABLE OF CONTENTS:-

1. Introduction 2. Overview of Game Engines i. ii. iii. iv. v. Unity3d Shiva3d UDK Torque3d IPhone Game Kit

3. Features 4. Requirements 5. References

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1. Introduction
The following document outlines various game engines technical specification that will be taken into consideration to help determine which games engine to use for our Real-time strategy, god game project.

THE DOCUMENT HAS THREE MAIN SECTIONS:

1. OVERVIEW OF GAME ENGINES This section gives an overview of the first five game engines that were researched

2. FEATURES This section lists the general features of the first five engines

3. REQUIREMENTS This section list game engines requirements or features that are needed for this project. Each 3d engine is ranked from 1 to 3.

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2. Overview of Game Engines

2.1 UNITY 3D U NITY IS AN INTEGRATED AUTHORING TOOL FOR CREATING 3D VIDEO GAMES OR OTHER INTERACTIVE CONTENT SUCH AS ARCHITECTURAL VISUALIZATIONS OR REAL -TIME 3D ANIMATIONS. UNITY 'S DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT RUNS ON MICROSOFT WINDOWS AND MAC OS X, AND THE GAMES IT PRODUCES CAN BE RUN ON WINDOWS, MAC, XBOX 360, PLAY STATION 3, WII ,I PAD, I PHONE AS WELL AS THE ANDROID PLATFORM. IT CAN ALSO PRODUCE BROWSER GAMES THAT USE THE UNITY WEB PLAYER PLUGIN , SUPPORTED ON MAC AND WINDOWS BUT NOT LINUX . THE WEB PLAYER IS ALSO USED FOR DEPLOYMENT AS MAC WIDGETS. U NITY CONSISTS OF BOTH AN EDITOR FOR DEVELOPING /DESIGNING CONTENT AND A GAME ENGINE FOR EXECUTING THE FINAL PRODUCT . U NITY IS SIMILAR TO DIRECTOR , BLENDER GAME ENGINE , VIRTOOLS, TORQUE GAME BUILDER , AND GAMESTUDIO , WHICH ALSO USE AN INTEGRATED GRAPHICAL ENVIRONMENT AS THE PRIMARY METHOD OF DEVELOPMENT . U NITY WON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2010 TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION A WARD IN THE SOFTWARE CATEGORY .IN 2009, U NITY TECHNOLOGIES WAS NAMED ONE OF GAMASUTRA'S "TOP 5 GAME COMPANIES OF 2009" [7] FOR U NITY. U NITY WAS A RUNNER -UP FOR THE BEST USE OF GRAPHICS ON MAC OS X IN THE 2006 APPLE DESIGN AWARDS.

2.2 SHIVA3D SHI VA3D IS A NEXTGEN 3D GAME ENGINE WITH A GRAPHICAL EDITOR DESIGNED TO CREATE APPLICATIONS AND VIDEO GAMES FOR THE WEB , C ONSOLES AND MOBILE DEVICES. I T CAN PRODUCE GAMES AND 3D GRAPHICAL SIMULATIONS FOR WINDOWS, MAC, LINUX , I PHONE , I PAD, ANDROID, PALM OS, WII AND WEBOS, STANDALONE OR EMBEDDED IN WEB BROWSERS (INTERNET EXPLORER , FIREFOX , SAFARI , MOZILLA, NETSCAPE ,...) THE GAME ENGINE USES OPEN GL, OPEN GL ES OR DIRECT X, AND CAN ALSO RUN IN SOFTWARE MODE . SHI VA3D ALSO SUPPORTS INDUSTRY STANDARD PLUG -INS SUCH AS NVIDIA PHYSX, F-MOD SOUNDS LIBRARY , AND ARTOOLKIT . OVER 9,000 APPLICATIONS HAVE BEEN CREATED USING THE SOFTWARE . SHI VA PLE IS A FREE , UNLIMITED AND FULL EDITION OF SHI VA UNLIMITED EDITION WHICH CAN BE USED FOR TESTING PURPOSES. 5

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2.3 UDK THE UNREAL ENGINE IS A GAME ENGINE DEVELOPED BY EPIC GAMES, FIRST ILLUSTRATED IN THE 1998 FIRST -PERSON SHOOTER GAME UNREAL . SINCE THEN , IT HAS BEEN THE BASIS OF MANY GAMES IN THE TIME THEREAFTER . A LTHOUGH PRIMARILY DEVELOPED FOR FIRST -PERSON SHOOTERS, IT HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY USED IN A VARIETY OF OTHER GENRES, INCLUDING STEALTH , MMORPG S AND RPGS. WITH ITS CORE WRITTEN IN C++, THE UNREAL ENGINE FEATURES A HIGH DEGREE OF PORTABILITY AND IS A TOOL USED BY MANY GAME DEVELOPERS TODAY . THE LATEST RELEASE IS THE UE3, DESIGNED FOR MICROSOFT 'S DIRECTX 9 (FOR WINDOWS AND XBOX 360), DIRECT X 10 AND 11 (FOR WINDOWS VISTA AND LATER ), OPEN GL FOR LINUX , MAC OS X, PLAY STATION 3, I OS AND ANDROID, AND STAGE 3D FOR A DOBE FLASH PLAYER 11.

2.4 TORQUE 3D THE TORQUE GAME ENGINE , OR TGE, IS A 3D COMPUTER GAME ENGINE ORIGINALLY DEVELOPED BY DYNAMIX FOR THE 2001 FPS TRIBES 2. THE TORQUE ENGINE AND ITS MANY DERIVATIVE PRODUCTS ARE AVAILABLE FOR LICENSE FROM GARAGE GAMES, A COMPANY FORMED BY MANY MEMBERS OF THE TRIBES 2 TEAM AT DYNAMIX. GARAGE GAMES WAS LATER ACQUIRED BY INSTANTACTION , BUT ON NOVEMBER 11, 2010, I NSTANTACTION ANNOUNCED THAT IT WAS WINDING DOWN ITS OPERATIONS AND LOOKING FOR POTENTIAL BUYERS FOR TORQUE .A S OF J ANUARY 19, 2011, GARAGE GAMES ANNOUNCED THEIR RETURN TO THEIR OLD NAME AND WITH NEW OWNERS.TORQUE 3D (AS WELL AS MOST OF THEIR OTHER PRODUCTS ) ARE CONTINUING TO BE DEVELOPED AND SUPPORTED. SEVERAL NOTABLE COMMERCIAL TITLES DEVELOPED USING THE TORQUE ENGINE INCLUDE BLOCKLAND, MARBLE BLAST GOLD, MINIONS OF MIRTH , TUBE TWIST , ULTIMATE DUCK HUNTING, WILDLIFE TYCOON : VENTURE AFRICA, THINK TANKS, THE DESTINY OF Z ORRO, PENNY A RCADE ADVENTURES AND MOST RECENTLY , INDIE VIDEO GAMES S.P.A.Z. AND FROZEN SYNAPSE .

2.5 IPHONE GAME KIT It is a higher level game development framework (or engine) which is built upon iPhone SDK and Cocos2d. Developers can use it as a starting point for their iPhone game development. The kit also contains a lot of clear codes you can use or customize , such as Joystick touch control. The kit will include high resolution support in next version for iPad and iPhone 4, and the guide book will show you how to do that in your development.

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3. Features
Game Engines UDK
*Gemini, the multithreaded rendering system. *UDK features a 64bit color HDR rendering pipeline. While supporting motion blur, depth of field, bloom, ambient occlusion and artistdefined materials. *Supports all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques. *Supports a highperformance texture streaming system. *Supports Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11. Direct3D 11 allows the utilization of new hardware features like tessellation. *Lua *AI model for designer editor *Ambience editor *Animation editor * HUD editor * Terrain editor * Material editor * Navigation editor * Particle editor * Trail editor * Lightmap compiler with ambient occlusion *Cloth simulation (with plugin) *Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics. *Unreal script *Level *Model *Terrain Editor *Material Editor *Mesh Editor *Animation Editors *Foliage Editor *Unreal PhAT *Unreal Cascade *Unreal Matinee *Unreal Kismet *UI Editor *Sound Cue Editor *Post-process editor *Unreal Content Browser *UnrealPhAT (Visual Physics modeling) *Rigid bodies, Soft bodies,elastics,Ragdoll *Animation Blending *Vehile Support *Crowd System (Simulate crowds of

Features Rendering

Unity3D
*Material properties for static and dynamic objects *2d rendering still images, 2d sprites, panels, buttons, sliders. *3d views and movies can be rendered on dynamic or static surfaces. *Deferred rendering for dynamic lighting and dynamic soft and hard shadows. *100 built in shaders for diffuse, glossy and programmable shaders can also be applied with scalability which assures smooth running of the game. *comes with full screen post processing effects like sun shafts, lens effects and curve color correction.

Shiva3D

Torque3D
*Terrain rendering for exteriors and BSP style rendered for interior. *multi-pass texturing *volumetric fog *decals *light mapping *Particle engine *water engine *No shader support by default

IPhone Game Kit

Licensing Scripting Built in Editors

*Unity script (Jscript) and C# *Level *Terrain *Model *Script editor * Procedural tree creator * Beast Lightmapping

*Torquescript *Level *Terrain *Shape *Road and River *Material *Particle *Decal

*Objective C *Level *Map

Physics

*Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics: Powered by the PhysX Engine, which also supports particle physics Cloth simulation

*Bounding box collision detection, collision with world and other objects, vehicle physics

*Basic Physics, Collision Detection: Box 2D support

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hundreds) *Destructible Environments *General, BSP, Portals, Octrees, Occlusion Culling, PVS, LOD

Occlusion Culling: Scene Management Umbra occlusion culling

*General, BSP, Octrees, Occlusion Culling, LOD

Animation

Mesh

Sound

Keyframe Animation: Skinned character animation Procedural Characters and Animation: the ability to stitch multiple body parts into one character, and reassign bones to different characters. The entire skinned animation system is now scriptable. Mesh Loading, Skinning: Native importing from Cinema 4D, Maya, Cheetah3D, Blender. Also support for Collada, FBX, 3DS, OBJ formats *MPEG(1/2/3),Ogg Vorbis,WAV,AIFF,MOD,IT,S3M XM

Forward Kinematics. Keyframe Animation. Skeletal Animation. Animation Blending. *Mesh Loading, Skinning

Inverse Kinematics, Forward Kinematics Keyframe Animation Skeletal Animation, Morphing Facial Animation Animation Blending *Mesh Loading, Skinning, Progressive, Tessellation, Deformation:

*BSP/portals for interior objects LOD for terrain, spatial database Blended animations Skeletalbased

*Sprites

*All sound formats

*Support for the

latest major audio compression scheme for all platforms. *Optimized support for Ogg Vorbis compression and decompression. *3D sound positioning, spatialization and attenuation. *Multi-channel playback (4.0, 5.1). *Visual Sound Cue Editor in UnrealEd for complete control over sounds, sound levels, sequencing, looping, filtering, modulation, pitch shift and randomization. *Intelligent path finding, both predetermined and dynamic with obstacle avoidance *Decision-making based on adaptive state machines. *Navigation Mesh and Node based navigation system

*Exporters supplied for Milkshape, 3dStudio, Maya. *OpenAL 3D sound support; loads .ogg and .wav files

*AAC and CAF *MP3 for background

AI

*Community made AI prefabs for in game use (AngryAnt)

*Community made AI prefabs for in game use (EKI one solution)

*Little Official support, more features available with community resources

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Input Handling Tools
*Mouse and Keyboard *Touch Screen *Joystick *Supports Visual Studio for programming *Mouse and Keyboard *Touch Screen *Joystick included. *Mouse and Keyboard *Touch Screen *Joystick *Supports Visual Studio for programming *Mouse and Keyboard support *Supports external 3d modelers mentioned earlier in Mesh section Quark Hammer *Web *Windows *Mac *Touch Screen

Platforms

Misc

*Web *Windows *Mac *IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad *Android *Microsoft Xbox360 *Sony Ps3 *Nintendo Wii *Large Community *Extensive documentation

*Windows *Mac *Linux *IPhone and IPad *Android *Palm *Nintendo Wii

*Windows *Mac *IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad

*IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad

*Extensive documentation

*Extensive networking *Large community *Extensive documentatio n

*Large community

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