technical comparison document

2011

“Project Cloud”” Avinash Maddi

[TECHNICAL COMPARISON DOCUMENT]

2011

“Project Cloud” | Technical Comparison Document

3

Game Engine Comparison Document

TABLE OF CONTENTS:-

1. Introduction

2. Overview of Game Engines

i. Unity3d

ii. Shiva3d

iii. UDK

iv. Torque3d

v. 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 engine’s 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 UNITY3D

UNITY 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, PLAYSTATION 3, WII,IPAD, IPHONE 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.

UNITY CONSISTS OF BOTH AN EDITOR FOR DEVELOPING/DESIGNING CONTENT AND A GAME ENGINE FOR EXECUTING

THE FINAL PRODUCT. UNITY 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.

UNITY WON THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 2010 TECHNOLOGY INNOVATION AWARD IN THE SOFTWARE CATEGORY.IN

2009, UNITY TECHNOLOGIES WAS NAMED ONE OF GAMASUTRA'S "TOP 5 GAME COMPANIES OF 2009" [7] FOR

UNITY. UNITY WAS A RUNNER-UP FOR THE BEST USE OF GRAPHICS ON MAC OS X IN THE 2006 APPLE DESIGN

AWARDS.

2.2 SHIVA3D

SHIVA3D IS A NEXTGEN 3D GAME ENGINE WITH A GRAPHICAL EDITOR DESIGNED TO CREATE APPLICATIONS AND

VIDEO GAMES FOR THE WEB, CONSOLES AND MOBILE DEVICES.

IT CAN PRODUCE GAMES AND 3D GRAPHICAL SIMULATIONS FOR WINDOWS, MAC, LINUX, IPHONE, IPAD, ANDROID,

PALM OS, WII AND WEBOS, STANDALONE OR EMBEDDED IN WEB BROWSERS (INTERNET EXPLORER, FIREFOX,

SAFARI, MOZILLA, NETSCAPE,...)

THE GAME ENGINE USES OPENGL, OPENGL ES OR DIRECTX, AND CAN ALSO RUN IN SOFTWARE MODE. SHIVA3D

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.

SHIVA PLE IS A FREE, UNLIMITED AND FULL EDITION OF SHIVA UNLIMITED EDITION WHICH CAN BE USED FOR TESTING

PURPOSES.

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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. ALTHOUGH

PRIMARILY DEVELOPED FOR FIRST-PERSON SHOOTERS, IT HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY USED IN A VARIETY OF OTHER

GENRES, INCLUDING STEALTH, MMORPGS 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),

DIRECTX 10 AND 11 (FOR WINDOWS VISTA AND LATER), OPENGL FOR LINUX, MAC OS X, PLAYSTATION 3, IOS AND

ANDROID, AND STAGE 3D FOR ADOBE FLASH PLAYER 11.

2.4 TORQUE3D

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 GARAGEGAMES, A COMPANY FORMED BY MANY MEMBERS OF THE TRIBES 2 TEAM AT DYNAMIX.

GARAGEGAMES WAS LATER ACQUIRED BY INSTANTACTION, BUT ON NOVEMBER 11, 2010, INSTANTACTION

ANNOUNCED THAT IT WAS WINDING DOWN ITS OPERATIONS AND LOOKING FOR POTENTIAL BUYERS FOR TORQUE.AS

OF JANUARY 19, 2011, GARAGEGAMES ANNOUNCED THEIR RETURN TO THEIR OLD NAME AND WITH NEW

OWNERS.TORQUE3D (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, TUBETWIST, ULTIMATE DUCK HUNTING, WILDLIFE TYCOON: VENTURE AFRICA,

THINKTANKS, THE DESTINY OF ZORRO, PENNY ARCADE 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

Features Unity3D Shiva3D UDK Torque3D IPhone Game Kit

Rendering *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.

*Gemini, the multi-threaded rendering system. *UDK features a 64-bit color HDR rendering pipeline. While supporting motion blur, depth of field, bloom, ambient occlusion and artist-defined materials. *Supports all modern per-pixel lighting and rendering techniques. *Supports a high-performance texture streaming system. *Supports Direct3D 9 and Direct3D 11. Direct3D 11 allows the utilization of new hardware features like tessellation.

*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

Licensing

Scripting *Unity script (Jscript) and C# *Lua *Unreal script *Torquescript *Objective C

Built in Editors

*Level *Terrain *Model *Script editor * Procedural tree creator * Beast Lightmapping

*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

*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

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

*Level *Map

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

*Cloth simulation (with plugin) *Basic Physics, Collision Detection, Rigid Body, Vehicle Physics.

*UnrealPhAT (Visual Physics modeling) *Rigid bodies, Soft bodies,elastics,Ragdoll *Animation Blending *Vehile Support *Crowd System (Simulate crowds of

*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

Scene Management

Occlusion Culling: • Umbra occlusion culling

*General, BSP, Octrees, Occlusion Culling, LOD

*General, BSP, Portals, Octrees, Occlusion Culling, PVS, LOD

*BSP/portals for interior objects • LOD for terrain, spatial database

Animation 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.

• Forward Kinematics. • Keyframe Animation. • Skeletal Animation. • Animation Blending.

• Inverse Kinematics, Forward Kinematics • Keyframe Animation • Skeletal Animation, Morphing • Facial Animation • Animation Blending

Blended animations Skeletalbased

*Sprites

Mesh Mesh Loading, Skinning: • Native importing from Cinema 4D, Maya, Cheetah3D, Blender. Also support for Collada, FBX, 3DS, OBJ formats

*Mesh Loading, Skinning

*Mesh Loading, Skinning, Progressive, Tessellation, Deformation:

*Exporters supplied for Milkshape, 3dStudio, Maya.

Sound *MPEG(1/2/3),Ogg Vorbis,WAV,AIFF,MOD,IT,S3MXM

*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.

*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)

*Intelligent path finding, both predetermined and dynamic with obstacle avoidance *Decision-making based on adaptive state machines. *Navigation Mesh and Node based navigation system

*Little Official support, more features available with community resources

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included.

Input Handling

*Mouse and Keyboard *Touch Screen *Joystick



*Mouse and Keyboard support

*Touch Screen

Tools *Supports Visual Studio for programming

*Supports Visual Studio for programming

*Supports external 3d modelers mentioned earlier in ‘Mesh’ section • Quark • Hammer

Platforms *Web *Windows *Mac *IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad *Android *Microsoft Xbox360 *Sony Ps3 *Nintendo Wii

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

*Windows *Mac *IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad

*Web *Windows *Mac

*IPhone, IPod Touch and IPad

Misc *Large Community *Extensive documentation

*Extensive documentation

*Extensive networking *Large community *Extensive documentation

*Large community

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