You bring good points. But, in life we pay on lot of things that won't turn us profit. Developing an engine isn't cheep. I think we should respect developers for their hard work by paying them what they've asked. Of course, as long as it's reasonable.
Was having a chat with a graphics coder at work yesterday, and he said that he can see in 5-10 years there no point using any engine other than the big heavyweights -> they're going to become like OS's. I can kinda see that happening too.
Really liking this discussion happening. Engines as a service is something our industry should have adopted years ago, and I am happy to see its finally happening. $19 or $10/month is nothing for the technology you'll have (legal) access to. I just wanted to share the links to our various forums for Unreal, CryEngine, and…
Positive... has been confirmed numerous times by Epic on the UE4 forums. They also confirmed that you can cancel your sub, develop your game, and re-subscribe right before you publish if that's the route you want to take. Obviously you miss support and updates, but once you pay a month the engine is useable forever.
One possible issue with CryEngine is its reliance on plugins to import content. (Unless this is changing.) If an indie studio decided to use the cheapest paid software (Maya LT, which can't use plugins) CryEngine isn't an option whereas the other two engines still are. Assuming the time spent developing an indie title is…
I just spent a good couple hours looking at the UE4 tutorial videos on youtube from Unreal Engine, and wow Blueprint looks like it is a powerful tool. I really love the PBR of the new materials and the way the UI is handled. $20 a month even for a individual is NOTHING for what is being offered here! I can't wait to start…
I find it invaluable. Iteration time is much quicker than other engines and non-programmers don't have trouble adapting things. I find it sorely lacking. Things like not being able to overlap more than a handful of lights, no specular on translucent surfaces, 'dynamic' lighting being performance intensive when it shouldn't…
Depends a lot on the user. Hobbyists are skeptical of even spending the first $20 and anybody who used UDK solely for learning purposes rather than professional work will likely not pay $20 a month because that ends up being a subscription fee that won't return any profits. I wouldn't really call it "cheating" and you can…
I've been working with the Crysis3 FreeSDK for the past 6 months now and I'm really loving the engine. However I'm really hating the documentation, or lack there of. Unless they invest some serious effort into building up the documentation and providing training I really don't see this catching on with Indies. I want the…
Another option with Unity is the free version plus plugins. I'm using NGui, Playmaker, MasterAudio, and SimpleSQL with the free version of Unity. Playmaker is the brains and the other plugins are designed to work with Playmaker. This costs a bit of money, but the time savings are huge. Down the road, if I make a…