Malintent
Veteran Member
For those of you that have dabbled (or more) in software development for video games, I thought I would pass on to you something I recently discovered (old news, but new to me)... Epic Games owns the Unreal Engine... possibly the best known and widely used development environment.. used in cinema for AAA professional CGI, and the video game industry for AAA titles like Doom (the new one).
This tool was only available to serious game and movie producers, due to prohibitive cost and complexity.
Well, things have come a long way... Today (like right now - go get it), the Unreal Engine is entirely free for personal use*... just create an account at unrealengine.com, install their portal, and from there install the engine. This development environment is amazing. Zero code writing needed (but you totally can). It uses a visual scripting language that is basically writing C++ code in the background while you are dragging and dropping things like you are drafting a viso flow chart. You "wire" objects together to create logic, control, and flow. As for creating a level (a scene), drag and drop... so easy.
It is so worth a few minutes to search youtube for "UE4 beginner tutorial", or the like... take a look at how easy and amazing this is...
* so how do they make money now? Only when you do! They moved to a Royalty-based system. Basically, if you end up selling something you made with Unreal Engine, they get 5% of revenue. If you sell that game on Steam for $5 (lets just say), Then steam gets 7%, and Epic Games gets 5%... so you make $4.40 per sale, in that example.
This tool was only available to serious game and movie producers, due to prohibitive cost and complexity.
Well, things have come a long way... Today (like right now - go get it), the Unreal Engine is entirely free for personal use*... just create an account at unrealengine.com, install their portal, and from there install the engine. This development environment is amazing. Zero code writing needed (but you totally can). It uses a visual scripting language that is basically writing C++ code in the background while you are dragging and dropping things like you are drafting a viso flow chart. You "wire" objects together to create logic, control, and flow. As for creating a level (a scene), drag and drop... so easy.
It is so worth a few minutes to search youtube for "UE4 beginner tutorial", or the like... take a look at how easy and amazing this is...
* so how do they make money now? Only when you do! They moved to a Royalty-based system. Basically, if you end up selling something you made with Unreal Engine, they get 5% of revenue. If you sell that game on Steam for $5 (lets just say), Then steam gets 7%, and Epic Games gets 5%... so you make $4.40 per sale, in that example.