Ever since I decided to take this course I have been wondering what platform I would like to use to develop on. The course describes itself as completely platform agnostic, so I am wondering what would be best. I think it comes down to, for me, one of three.
- Unity
- Unreal Engine 4 (UE4)
- GameMaker Studio 2 (GMS2)
I see that a lot of people on the course who have game programming experience are using either Unity or Unreal Engine 4 (UE4). Up until the start of the course I had absolutely no experience of either of these, but have had a play with Unity this week.
Unity
I decided to jump straight in and see if I could get it up and running with as little Google searching as possible, and by and large I was quite successful.
I decided to write a set of 2D wrapper functions to mimic the 2D engines I have written in the past, and to have a set screen size. The reason for this is that whenever I start on a new platform, in 2D, I use a Space Invaders style game as a template, as it covers a lot of the required basics.
- Object management
- Gameplay loop and “scene” management
- Sprite rendering (through handled lists)
- Screen fading
- Audio
- Input
- Collision detection
- Object destruction
I have not managed to implement everything, but have managed to implement screen fading, all the game object management classes and sprite rendering through managed lists.
My main game loop handled scene changes, and therefore, unlike most Unity games, I only ever have one scene, and transition between game states through a single piece of game loop logic.
Unreal Engine 4 (UE4)
As stated, I’ve not looked at this yet. If I have time, I will next week.
GameMaker Studio 2 (GMS2)
And here we come to something I have a bit more experience with. I have a complete set of wrapper functions that mimic the 2D engine I’ve been carrying for 20+ years now. It contains all the features I have ever needed, and I have used it to knock together a few little demos and games.
I do like GMS2 as a platform for writing games, and because I have a decent template project in place I can rapidly develop slick looking prototypes, where I can focus almost immediately on gameplay mechanics rather than getting graphics on screen the way I want them.
Conclusion
To conclude, right now I think I would prefer GMS2. Although I’ve not used UE4 it is going to have to do really well to change my mind. I will give Unity some more time, as I think it deserves it.
I guess the real choice of platform though comes down to who I’ll be working with, and what type of game they want to write.